When it was time to turn in on Christmas Eve I for some reason decided to take the cat with us so that he would not be tapping on the door in the middle of the night. The cat took some pursuading and took a few chucks out of my arm. Once in he surveyed the whole van and made himself at home on the drivers captain's chair.
Christmas Day morning there was a loud knocking on the door of Matilda at about 7.00am , with instructions to get in the house to open the presents. Later, well about 9.00am our other son arrived and it all started again. The rest of Christmas Day well and plenty of food and drink was consumed. We were introduced to the game Pie Face which the grandchildren loved although after the first pie in the face they wanted to continue their turns without the cream.
We went back to Matilda at about 23.00hrs and with a few minutes the cat was under the van meowing, as soon as I opened the door he was in and spent some time climbing all over the bed until finally going to the drivers chair.
We had an almighty storm during the night along with high winds. The van was parked outside the house but exposed to the full force of the wind and rain. The cat woke me at 5.00am and I got up to let him out but he saw what the weather was like and came back in. Half an hour later he is pawing the sofa so I get up and put him out, it has stopped raining but the wind has got up, I see the Sebastopol heater controls are flashing although the heating is off. I spend the next 2 hrs listening to the wind and worrying about the flashing lights. When I got up at 7am the heater control panel lights had stopped flashing but it wasn't until 9.00am that I realised the flashing lights were because the temperature around the boiler had fallen below 6' at which temp the auto drain valve opens to drain the boiler even though it had been emptied before we left home. I let out a sigh of relief that nothing was broken and spent Boxing Day with the grandchildren even though I was suffering from a little too much booze Christmas Day.
We packed the van and left after lunch so that we could check our pony although our neighbour had made sure he had water and I had extended his paddock before we left on Christmas Eve.
