If you carry your childhood with you, you never become older -Tom Stoppard

I'm struggling to get to grips with the whole business of Christmas shopping this year. It seems that time has gone on fast forward since our holiday in Norfolk August and suddenly it's mid November. I have managed to do a little bit of Christmas Shopping because we went to see my brother in law and his family in Plymouth at the end of October and I took the opportunity to deliver the presents for my niece and nephew. I love going to see them, but we don't manage to get there as often as I would like, it's a long way to drive for a weekend and it's expensive to travel by train. We planned this trip to fit into Robbie's schedule, he is very busy with work at the moment and most weekends seem to be booked up in advance with an assortment of commitments. Robbie was very kind to me, he booked our tickets and reserved our seats making sure that we were booked to travel on a Voyager rather than an HST for both journeys. I can see the attraction of HSTs but in terms of comfort I prefer Voyagers because I'm not very tall and I find the seats more comfortable. I know the vestibules are a bit smelly but we usually get a good journey on a voyager and recent experience with Cross Country suggest that we get better service on a Voyager than on an HST. 

My favourite part of the journey is stretch Just south Exeter which follows the River Exe to Starcross and onward to Dawlish Warren and the sea. It then skirts the coast to Dawlish and on towards Teignmouth where it turns inland again and snakes along the edge of the River Teign towards Newton Abbott. It's a beautiful route and I always stop what I'm doing to look out of the window and soak up the view. In the winter it can be a bit alarming when the waves pelt the train along the sea wall at Dawlish. This area of track was badly damaged in the storms last winter, it is in use again now but there must be a question about it's long term viability.

My favourite part of the visit to Plymouth, apart from the obvious pleasure of spending time with family, was our Sunday morning walk to the Barbican. What could possibly be better than breakfast at Cap'n Jaspers on a sunny autumn morning. No trip to Plymouth is complete without a visit to Cap'n Jaspers. 

Early morning in Plymouth

My son came home from uni for a few days last week, it was nice to have him back but I didn't see much of him because he had things to do and he wanted to catch up with his friends. I took on my old familiar role of his 'taxi' driver - I had forgotten how many extra journeys one nineteen year old could create! When I picked him up from his friends house on the other side of town he was chatting to me about his friend's odd perception of age. Apparently they had been discussing a local news story and his friend described a 38 year old man as elderly. I was briefly reassured when Will told me that he'd explained to his friend that thirty eight is not elderly, but then he went on to say that it is probably more accurate to describe it as late middle age!! I wondered out loud how on earth someone so bright could have such an odd perception of reality! He looked at me with a grin on his face and informed me that as he's nearly 20 he is due for his 'quarter life crisis' so that he can get some practice in before his mid life crisis. I love his sense of humour, but he makes me feel very old.

Last Monday I drove Will back to Cheltenham. There are two possible routes but I prefer the one through the Cotswolds, it takes about the same amount of time as the other route but it is a much more interesting drive with beautiful views of the countryside. Will disapproves of my iTunes playlist, he is not a fan of Woman's Hour and I can't tolerate the overspill noise from his headphones so we had to resort to that quaint old fashioned pastime - conversation. Chatting with Will is fraught with difficulty, if I seem too interested he claims that I'm interrogating him, if I say too little I'm variously accused of disinterest or disapproval. So I take my lead from him, sometimes he is very chatty, but often when we travel together he is less talkative and we lapse into comfortable silence. It was like that on Monday, he had chatted happily about his university course for the first few minutes of our journey but by the time we reached Banbury we were both lost in our own thoughts. 

As we drove through the town I pointed out a rather ornate monument ahead of us and said "I wonder if that is Banbury Cross?". Will looked at me as if I was speaking in a foreign language and I explained that I was referring to the nursery rhyme Ride a cock horse to Banbury Cross. To my surprise he told me that he had never heard the rhyme before and I couldn't convince him otherwise. It seems that I neglected  my duty as a parent to pass on the rich assortment of nursery rhymes which have been passed down the generations, so rather belatedly I recited the nursery rhyme to him. With a look of horror he begged me to stop, he knows me too well and  he was afraid that if I got started I would progress from nursery rhymes to poems and we would still be ploughing through the Pied Piper of Hamelin when we reached Cheltenham. My maternal grandmother could recite the entire poem from memory and thanks to her frequent renditions I can still manage to recite most of the poem without prompting. Will hastily changed the subject to the more pressing matter of lunch and we decided to treat ourselves to lunch at Wetherspoons when we got to Chetenham.

After lunch Will took me to see his flat, I hadn't been inside since the day he moved in. To my surprise his room and his adjoining bathroom are neat and tidy. I sat on his bed I glanced around at the unaccustomed sense of order and I noticed a row of bottles of alcohol arranged in height order along the top of his bookcase. As my eye travelled along the line of bottles I noticed with some concern that all were less than half full, then I noticed the smallest bottle at the end of the row, it was Gaviscon! I couldn't help laughing. 

Will and I walked into the centre of Cheltenham to have a look at the Shops. He showed me his favourite book shop and we had a look at a slightly quirky clothes shop. He pointed out various garments on his wish list, but having already bought him a lava lamp I didn't grant any further wishes that day. His birthday and Christmas are almost upon us so I expect some of his wishes will come true in the near future. We visited Tiger, one of my favourite shops, we don't have one locally so I enjoyed browsing and by the time I reached the tills I had a full basket and I had ticked off a few more items on my Christmas shopping list. Then it was time for me to head home, alone with my thoughts and leave Will to his new found independence.