The word is a very exciting place

 January and 2022 came, so happy new year to you all! And by god was it cold. This had to have been the coldest winter for a long time. It was so cold in fact, that my friend and colleague Mel (who is Welsh, but I don't hold it against her!) refused to let me walk home from work, and would drop me home instead. We went out to her car after finishing the late shift, and I discovered these beautiful patterns in the frost on the roof of her car. We were then told that January was the warmest January on record, with temps of 15 degrees. I don't know where that was, but Southampton was having it's own mini ice age!

I had a day of freedom in December, can you believe it? Well I had two or three I think in the end. Most of them I was too knackered to do anything, but on one of my days off I headed up to London to visit the Jack the Ripper museum. I'd seen it advertised somewhere, and thought it sounded interesting, particularly as there seemed to be more about the women themselves than just about the killer.

 Bonsoir! And welcome back. This is part two of #JESC2021, where we discuss the interval performances, the voting sequence and of course, most importantly, I will give you my votes too! We saw all the performances in the first part, and we will kick off right after the end of Portugal's performance. So without further ado, let's get started!

 It's that time again, for the Junior Eurovision Song Contests 2021! Held in Paris, the contest features 19 competing countries, all fighting for the Eurovision trophy. Will France continue their successful run? Will Poland, having won twice on the trot win again? Or will it be the dark horse, could Ireland, Albania or Macedonia who win for the first time? I guess we will have to wait and find out. I will of course be reviewing all the entries and the contest itself, and at the end, I will give my votes, and we will see if it changes the scoreboards. So, without further ado, let's start the show!

 November brought joyous news, and no I don't mean christmas! I had a call from the spinal specialist I had been seeing, who had the results of my MRI. She explained I had a severely herniated disk on my right side, that was affecting the S1 nerve. This was what was causing me so much pain in my lower back and right leg. She advised for me to have a nerve root block done, a procedure where a long lasting steroid and pain killer would be injected into the area where the herniated disk was, which should hopefully improve my symptoms and reduce the amount of pain I was in. I was out having lunch with my brother when the call came, and we toasted pizza slices to celebrate.

Well how did that happen? How is it the final day already? I swear this keeps happening to me, two weeks of holiday evaporates and all of a sudden the final day is here! And boy, did we pack a lot into the final day! Our first stop was Lowther Castle, and let me state this right here, this may be my favourite castle that I have ever visited. A bold statement yes, but let me show you why.

 If you've never heard of St Bees, then I won't hold it against you. I had only heard of it from watching a documentary about the St Bees man. His body was found during excavation at St Bees Priory, in 1981 and is one of the best preserved medieval bodies found in the United Kingdom, so well preserved, that skin and the iris's of his eyes still had colour to them.

 If you're bored of Medieval history, and desiring something earlier, then this is the post for you! We decided to head to the coast and spend some time rubbing shoulders with our Roman ancestors, and what best way to do it, then by visiting where they would have washed themselves. Yes, a Roman bathhouse!

 So I woke up from the first night in the lodge like death warmed up. Streaming nose and eyes, a fever and feeling very under the weather. I thought I had managed to dodge James's cold, but here it was in all its glory. So that was our first day gone, with me confined to bed, and him confined to the sauna and hot tub. Not sure if confined is quite the right word for him! The second day was a bit better we managed a small trip out to the Lake District, or more specifically Windermere.

 The time had come to pack up and leave the lodge (glorified caravan) outside Easingwold where we had been staying, and to head over to Cumbria for the next part of our holiday. We seemed to have amassed a ton of tat during our holiday so far, and we were only halfway through! Funny isn't it, when you're on holiday you buy things you would never normally buy at home! Anyway, we decided to break the journey to Cumbria up a bit, with a couple of scheduled stops, up first, was Bolton Abbey.