"Little darling, it's been a long cold lonely winter"..

.....Well it’s been months since we last blogged hope you haven’t missed us too much. It’s not because we’ve been lazing around doing nothing since our return last September; on the contrary it’s because it’s been so chaotic. Now as we start to get ready for another summer on the sun-drenched island of Corfu, we thought it was time for an update.

We arrived back in sunny Yorkshire mid September and threw ourselves back into work, Keith went straight back into gigging in the Pubs, and we rounded up the usual suspects to come and support the cause. Including Paul & Milena, all the way from Germany. Paul is seen here passing on the finer points of his Dylan repertoire to Keith!!

We also returned to a new home............ (living with Liz’s son Adam & his girlfriend Amanda). We all very quickly realized though, that house sharing was not for us, we felt as though we were living the student lifestyle all over again! But we made it work for 4 months until we found a place of our own at the end of January.

End of October it was Arwen's first birthday, so she had a Halloween Party (find Keith in this picture?? Ha Ha)

We had a fab December and Christmas; starting when we went to the Officers Christmas ball at Sandhurst with Paddy and Lorraine. A very posh do, with lots of posh nosh and champers!! Christmas involved most of Lizzy’s family; including Siobhan after her gap year traveling round the world, and Sheila who had taken her first winter off for years of being a ski rep; all converged on Helen & Martins house at some point over the festive period. Resulting in impromptu parties and social gatherings on a daily basis! On Christmas Day Pippa tried (in vain) to teach her mum the art of ‘charades’

We collected Gemma and the grandkids from Durham and spent Boxing Day at Keith’s parents with his youngest son Simon.

Phil was still in Thailand but he returned home late January full of tales from his 6 months in the Far East. Even Debbie and Franco (Keith’s sister & family) got over for a pre-Christmas visit.

As Caitlyn's birthday falls between Christmas & New Year we usually go over & do something for her birthday, this year she decided it would be ice skating at Whitley Bay ice rink, as stadiums go it would give Bradford ice rink a run for its money as 'the grottiest public venue', it had a bowling alley upstairs that had seen better days it was like a being in a film set from the 50's but a good time was had by all & we returned to Gemma's for an evening on wii-fit & alcohol.

NYE resulted in Liz having a few anxious days, as news of her daughter Carmel in Oz taking a tumble flew round the internet (via facebook, twitter, skype and the rest)

She spent NYE in hospital with only her laptop for company and high on painkilling drugs, rather than partying as she’d planned, but luckily with physio and a strong heart she has made a speedy recovery.

January and February saw several days of deep snow adding to the bleak mid winter we experienced as we sought to find a home of our own. Then fate took a hand as it does and a chance conversation with a friend of Keith’s saw us move out of the city and relocate to the beautiful countryside on the outskirts of Keighley.

It feels like we have finally found home, a 200 year old stone cottage for the two of us, in a village called Steeton; with 2 pubs 100 yards away, easy commuting distance either by road or rail, to Leeds and Preston for work and family and nights out. Liz managed a sight-seeing trip of the local area on her first train journey home from work. She managed to miss her stop and ended up in Skipton! Not a great start but she got over it and has managed to get off at the right station ever since!

So here we are, it’s Easter, and with spring arriving.......it's the start of the wedding season!? In our village here in Steeton they seem to like to do things differently. Here is a picture of a wedding we spotted a couple of weeks ago

anyway............... our ferries are booked, we’ve contacted all our relatives on route and organized our overnight stops, on our way to Venice for the ferry to Corfu, We will arrive in Corfu on 1st May for the summer season. Keith’s been practicing some new songs for the summer, plus trying to learn all the ones he tried to play last summer. Liz has been trying on her little black dress and organizing her sales pitch ready for selling cd’s to her public. “Here comes the sun…..do do do do …………”