More than a week in 7 days!

When I got back to France on Friday I realised that it was less than a week since the previous weekend. With everything that we had done both before I left and whilst I was in the UK, I couldn’t believe that it was only a week later. That might sound bizarre but I’ll explain. As Chris would say, strap yourself in!

On the weekend of the 8th, 9th and 10th we had begun setting up both our gite and our neighbour’s house for the two sets of guests for the week whilst I was in the UK. One of the things that is useful about our gite is that it is possible to lock off the top floor and one of the rooms on the first floor. So we prepared the three rooms on Friday. I also ironed all of the bedding for the rooms when I was away and bagged it up with labels in order that it was clear as to where it was going. That weekend our other two rooms were both booked out so there needed to be a relatively quick turnover before the whole gite booking came in. Our neighbour’s kindly lent us their house, for the double booking. It is a holiday home that is being renovated and that they have hardly been able to visit for the last two years due to Covid restrictions, which meant that there was quite a lot to do. Amongst other things we had to find out how their water heating system worked given that we didn’t want to turn it on and burn the coil. That would not have been good. We also had to put away their belongings and transport; cutlery, crockery, a coffee machine, coffee, tea and sugar to their house, as well as all the bedding and towels that we needed. So we were quite busy. Chris finished it off after I’d left and I thought it looked really good.

On Monday my eldest and I travelled to the UK. The ferry crossing was 6 hours, we followed this up with a 2 1/2 hour journey to his flat. We were a little tired after that. However given that the graduation, the whole reason I’d gone to the UK, was the next day we were back up and at it in the morning. We got to Birmingham just after midday. The ceremony started at 2pm but we had to be seated by 1:30 so we had to find my younger son, get our tickets take some photos and get in. For some reason we had been allocated tickets that appeared to be above the gods. Immediately in front of us was an enormous suspended speaker which was a little difficult to see around. Even with my camera on zoom it was difficult to make out my son. After the ceremony we were able to meet up, take photos and given we were in Birmingham go for a curry. Elder son and I then returned to Chippenham.

Wednesday became busier again. The elder son is in the process of buying a flat so we went to see that. The younger son had been wanting to change his car. This is a long and complex story that I won’t go into, suffice to say that for various reasons the elder son had the car and was trying to sort some things out for him. After the viewing we went to see and test-drive a car. It soon became apparent that changing a car, that was originally my father’s and at 12 years old has a genuine 21500 miles from new, would be sheer madness. Having established this we decided that the little Peugeot was in need of a bit of TLC, so we took it to Chippenham’s, ‘Car Spa’ who cleaned it inside and out, I filled it with petrol and off we went to Birmingham again! I feel that it was an exercise worth doing and the younger son now has a suitable vehicle, certainly whilst he is a student for another year. He is staying to do an MA.

Thursday was a three hour train journey back to Plymouth. I then had to find things to do for several hours before checking into an overnight ferry back home. It was a strange day but I did get to sit on the Hoe looking out to sea and doing some crochet. The Hoe is the place where it is said that you can; ‘… hear the sea and see The Sound’. The area of sea in Plymouth harbour is known as The Sound.

Friday morning I was back. Whilst I didn’t have too much to do on Friday another booking came in for the gite starting on Sunday. The group in the gite were not leaving until Sunday morning so we knew that it would be another full-on day. The booking has been complicated but that is another story too boring to go into! Suffice it to say that I am not friends with our booking company!

On a really positive note I have swum in Lac du Drennec every day since I got back. It has been a delightful respite from the heat and we are lucky to have something like this so close by. We have found ourselves a little cove which so far we always get to ourselves and the dogs can swim with us, which is a great way of keeping them cool.

Tomorrow I shall write about some exciting news with regards to crochet and pattern testing. Until then…