Skip to main content

Happy birthday Grumps!

The end of yet another whirlwind weekend - I'm really not sure where they go to but one moment it's Friday afternoon and then the next it's Sunday evening.

We had planned this weekend (unknown to Mum & Dad) to hot foot it down to Somerset on Friday evening in order to join the birthday boy for a 70th birthday dinner at a pub in Langport. Amanda had booked a room for us all with the expectation of us being there between 6 and 6:30... quite how I thought that was doable on a sunny Friday afternoon in September I don't know. Even the girls commented as I picked them up at gone 4pm from school that we didn't have a hope of making it. The pick up would have gone smoother had the kids appreciated the sense of urgency I was feeling. Abi managed to appear relatively quickly, even finding the time to get a drink from Gabbies on the way, but Izzy took ages. Having rung her 5 times I finally discovered she was waiting in the normal pick up spot rather than in the car park as requested - arghhhh! By then the queue to get out of school was enormous and so it took us another 5 mins to get out. This all meant that my mental calculation of getting away at 4pm had to be adjusted to a 4:36pm departure time - not ideal! We then had to battle the A303 which is never great at the best of times. In the end we switched the Waze App on and it took us down some interesting (very narrow) diversions to miss the worst of the traffic, along with the other 30 cars all following the same App no doubt! By some miracle we arrived only a few minutes past the allotted 6:30 window feeling a bit flustered by in one piece.
Why this surprises me I don't know, it's always a bit of a rush to get to Somerset and I never feel completely relaxed - a weekend never feels long enough given all of the other things I want to squeeze in before it's time to go back to work / school. Anyway, Dad was chuffed we were there and we had a lovely meal before heading back to Amanda's for the night. Before bed we decided to have a 'quick' game of Scattagories which turned into about 6 games. At 11pm I had to give up and we left Abi and Laurie playing - gone are says when we used to get them into bed so we could have some time alone!

Saturday dawned clear and sunny and after walking the dogs and breakfast we settled in to shout at Laurie and Abi to get dressed and eat something so we could head over to Mum and Dad's. Blimey they are alike - they'd got stuck playing some game and didn't want to move! Hearing Amanda shout at Laurie is just like hearing me shout at Abi - pretty much word for word!  We finally got them motivated and went over to Stocklinch for coffee and birthday cake before leaving to go to Langport to put their canoe in the water and spend a few hours messing about in a boat. We really couldn't have asked for better weather, in fact it was baking hot and I caught the sun. The standard of canoeing did differ slightly (an understatement if ever there was one) but everyone got a go (apart from Mum who I think is still waiting for her turn) and all the kids loved it. We managed to get a decent sandwich in Langport before turning the boat round and heading back, with Amanda braving the boat with both Abi and Izzy in it. Clearly there was no way was I going to do that - i'd have been shouted at within the first 30 seconds regardless! 

Conscious I wanted to get back we finally got the boat out where we had parked the cars (we had to wait for a couple having wedding photos on the slightly muddy bank of the river - random), said our goodbyes and let the Sat Nav take us what seemed to be a long way round until I realised it was heading for the M5 rather than an apparently very congested A303. Turned out this was probably no bad thing as just before Junction 16 the car started making a very ominous grinding noise from the front driver's side, so much so that I decided we would have to pull over. We rang Glenn who got us to ring the AA, only to hear it would be 2 hours before they expected to be with us. Fortuitously (according to the kids) we had stopped right next to a Costa so they were happy for the first 10 minutes before realising it was going to be a long wait. Luckily Glenn came to our rescue and turned up first, had a quick look and declared it driveable so he took it with Izzy while Abi and I jumped in the Mini to come home - hopefully the Landrover isn't too broken. My professional opinion (Google) is the wheel bearings but who knows what that actually means!

Today was a case of getting through the washing, my normal 10 mile run, the Bike Show for Glenn and Segway races for the kids (we finally have 2 of them!)... oh and also trying to remember it is Glenn's birthday as well today. Let's face it, he doesn't want us to make a fuss so we haven't. In fact, we didn't even bother with cards as he would have only put them straight into the recycling. We just aren't very good at birthdays!



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

It's beginning to feel a bit like Christmas...

I was sure I write the blog last week.... but, it seems another 2 weeks have flown by and now we are staring down the barrel of the Christmas holidays and the end of the year! Currently it's all about Doug and what a star he has proved to be so far. He has now been with us for 3 weeks and he is (so far, I keep thinking at some point it will change) a pretty chilled out puppy. As a second dog he has been thrown in at the deep end and has been to Sunday lunch with Alan & Sarah (which he loved), socialised at home with friends and their dogs, met babies (he loved Elsie) and started to go for walks. The walking has been a bit different to our previous approaches with new dogs. In the past we have ventured out carefully, making sure that our new baby only walks a short distance so they can experience all the new sights and sounds. Doug's first walk was after Sunday lunch last week, just him and 8 other dogs for bout 45 mins - he loved it! In our defence we didn't let him wal...
Post a Comment
Read more

Welcome Albert James!

So this week has been full of new things - Jess and Chris have welcomed Albert James Wilkinson Rayner to the family, a tad early but all doing well apparently (and so cute!!), I started my new job, Abi has her new shed and Dad got sorted on a phone that wasn't invented before the kids were born!! I always knew this week was going to be full on and it certainly has been. The first thing I had to do was try and sort out my diary which had been filled from dawn to dusk by my predecessor with meetings. I decided to set out as I mean to go on and immediately took out those that started before 9am. While I can get into  the office for 8am , it's a pain and requires me to be on the 6:30am train which is just a bit much every day (stating the obvious). I then made it clear that we don't need to be joined at the hip for the next 4 weeks which is a sensitive process - even though he is retiring it's hard to let go and he is understandably keen that the team are looked after. ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Diary management!

This part of the summer is definitely typified by me trying to remember who is supposed to be where and when. Abi likes to be off doing something with someone while Izzy is happier to know she's close to home and so for the last week they've gone their separate ways. Abi has been down in Somerset making the most of Ben and Laurie being about. From what I can tell she's having a lovely time. Apart from the covert phone call one evening to tell me she was 'starving'  (Mum was cooking for the hordes and so it had been delayed), I've barely heard from her. The few calls I have had have very quickly ended in "can I go now" like I'm making her speak to me! Today she switches from Mum and Dads to a night or two with Kerrie - not sure who is more excited! Izzy didn't want to be away for that long so she opted not to go. She's very conscious that Abi and Laurie are joined at the hip when together and Ben has his own things he wants to do so she ...
Post a Comment
Read more