I'm slacking again, no blog entries since Friday. I think it took me so long to type up the saga of my hospital visit that I had enough blogging for a few days! I am feeling quite well today and I am trying to get a lot of my house work done. So that I don't get too exhausted I shall work my "half hour" system. I have already cleaned the upstairs bathroom and done 2 lots of washing and a bit of ironing. I have washing, drying on the line as it is quite a nice breezy day and I have more washing going in the machine. I am going to start hoovering soon.
Friday was a very nice day, Coralie came over and we had a nice chat over some scones with clotted cream and jam. Coralie had got them for a mid morning treat as she knows I like them. After that Lisa came over for a while with Ellie and we all went out to the shops. We went to Kiddicare first so Lisa could buy some reins for Ellie. She likes to walk now, but will run off in the opposite direction to where you want to go!
From there we went to the shopping centre at Hampton. I carried Ellie again in between her walking. Lisa tried out the reins but I'm afraid that little Ellie was none to impressed with them! She had a bit of a screaming fit! Much to mine and Coralie's amusement. I think Lisa will just have to persevere. We had lunch at Hampton before coming home. I bought Ellie a little toy buggy for her bunny and also a ball and a gorgeous dress in Next, so it was a good shopping trip for her!
Saturday was a busy day. We got up quite late and had an easy morning then Simon, Saskia and I went over to Sams house to look after Ellie while Simon and Sam got on with some work in the kitchen. Sam is making a fantastic job of it and it is over half way done. He has some more units to fit and the new oven to fit into the corner. I have so much admiration for him, he works so hard. He has done all the kitchen himself in the evenings and weekends. It is looking good. Once it's finished his next job is to knock out the dividing wall between the two living rooms to make one big room. That's going to be a big job!
Ellie was a really good girl as always. Saskia and I took her to Sainsburys to buy some stuff for lunch and she fell asleep in her buggy. It absolutely poured with rain on the way back and we got soaked. We had to borrow Lisa's hair dryer to try and get dry! I fed Ellie her lunch and she was very good. Then we had a lovely time playing. It was a shame we couldn't go in the garden because of the rain.
On Sunday Simon and I travelled to Chipping Camden in Gloucestershire. Simon does moderating for the exam board and he has to travel around to different schools. Usually they are not too far away but if they are then the exam board will pay for a hotel overnight. He had 1 school in Chipping Camden and another in Cheltenham. As he was staying over Sunday night ready for his visits on Monday morning it seemed like a good idea for me to go too.
We took a nice scenic route to avoid the motorways which I hate. It took about three hours. Simon had booked a lovely little guest house that only had 2 rooms. The owner Jenny, was very welcoming and said she would cook dinner for us in the evening. Chipping Camden turned out to be a really quaint market town with lots of old buildings. The town was having an "open Gardens day" for charity.
You purchased a ticket for £10 (money going to medical research) then you got a map showing the 24 gardens that were open to the public for the day. Some were big public places and hotels, some were the gardens of ordinary people. We visited about ten before I was too tired to do any more. It was very interesting walking around the gardens and seeing the different things that people have done. The town is really interesting and I would quite like to go back and explore the surrounding area.
In the evening Jenny cooked us a lovely meal of chicken in red wine with apple crumble for dessert, accompanied by a very good red wine. There was only Simon and I eating and the meal was served in a small dining room with just the one table, off of the kitchen, which meant jenny was able to chat with us in between, although she wasn't obtrusive.
We don't usually stay in this kind of place. Over recent years we have stayed in big hotels whenever we have gone away and I quite like the impersonality of that. We are the kind of people that are happy just to be together on holiday. We aren't looking to make lots of friends and sometimes when we have been on holiday we haven't spoken to anyone at all apart from hotel staff. It's the way we like it.
It was quite a surprise that we actually enjoyed this little guest house so much, but Jenny was so friendly and it also helped that there was a lovely dog called Tilly that I spent quite a lot of time fussing. You don't get that in big hotels!! We would both be happy to stay there again.
On Monday Simon has his 2 schools to visit. He was at the first one for nearly 2 hours and I sat in the car and read my book. It was quite pleasant as I was parked in the sun. I don't mind just sitting in the car as long as I have something good to read.
It took us well over an hour to drive from there to the second school in Cheltenham. There was a lot of traffic and several diversions! When we arrived we had great difficulty finding the school as the map that Simon had wasn't very good. We eventually found the school and Simon went off leaving me to another reading session in the car.
He returned after about 10 minutes as it was actually the wrong school! There was a lot of confusion as Simon's paper work from the exam board said Church Down School, Chosen Hill. The school we had found was certainly Church Down School and it was located close to a road called Chosen Hill as shown on the map.
It turned out the school that he should have been at was actually called Chosen Hill School, in Church Down!!! We had to ask 3 different people before we found it, despite one of the teachers at the first school giving us directions. His directions took us up a dead end! I think maybe he was having a laugh! Simon was over an hour a late!
When we did arrive, he parked the car in a nice quiet area so that I could read my book in peace. Unfortunately ten minutes after he had gone, the bell went for the lunch break and it seems the car park is where the children of that school like to spend their lunch! The car was surrounded by shrieking, swearing, loud mouthed children. I had a football hit the car three times plus also a shoe and a bottle. Peaceful it was not! I gave up on reading. Fortunately Simon was not there quite so long.
We then set off home and that didn't go to plan either as we couldn't find the way and lost count of how many times we discovered that we were going in the wrong direction! It took 4 hours to get home! After all that we just had a quiet evening. Simon doing paper work and me having a relaxing bath and reading my book.
It's now nearly 2pm and I have been writing this over the course of the morning in my spare half hours. I have now got some of the hoovering done and a lot more washing and ironing. I am just having a fruit tea before going up to the post office to post a couple of parcels. I also have 2 library books to take back. Later on, I am going to try and do a Tuesday Thirteen.
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