Back in Yorkshire...... after a very expensive few days

Well, this week's been a bit strange.

Molly and I were down in Dudley for the last few days; visiting the grandparents, dentist for me (replacement filling), popped into Nostalgia & Comics for the latest set of books to review, and then thought about heading home after the dentist on Thursday morning.

Then it all went horribly and expensively wrong. Dad noticed one of the tyres was a bit flat, so after a bit of pumping it up it became obvious it was a slow puncture. No problem, drop it into the garage and get it replaced.
Except when I get to the garage there's a bloody long queue and an hours wait to be told that it wasn't one tyre, it was all 4 of them. They were all showing cracks on the rims and could be potentially dangerous. Now what I know about tyres and cars in general you could write on the back of a very small stamp, so I have to just blindly accept this and get them all replaced.
Three hundred quid and a couple of hours later, I've got nice new tyres.
Ouch. Guess I wont be buying myself anything nice for a while then.

One of the strangest things about going back to Dudley was sleeping at Mom & Dads house.
Of course, the order of preference is well established and molly had my old room, so I'm booted into the guest room.
Lots of memories are tied up here and there's nothing like wandering around, trying not too make any noise, to bring all of them flooding back.
There's definitely something eerie about sleeping in a house that you once called home. How can it be that as soon as I'm back in my parent's home I feel childlike again, but not comfortably childlike, it's slightly more unpleasant than that. The memories of this house are not even childhood ones really. We only moved here when I was going to university. So my room isn't really my room, just somewhere I slept between terms, and somewhere I retreated to when the troubles of the unfinished Phd got too much.

Of course, even with those strange feelings it was still an enjoyable, if very expensive few days.
Good to be home though. And Yorkshire really is home, it feels right to be travelling back. Nice to visit Birmingham and Dudley and see friends and family, but as soon as I get off the M62 and pass over the bridge oer the River Ouse I really feel great to be home.