Feeling most friend sick today 🙁 Not only was it a meet up of some of my Feminist Parent friends it was also a meet up at Chris & Helen’s. I hope we were missed as we most certainly missed being there. We knew when we set off that we would miss out on some of the get togethers over the course of a year and of course overall the excitment of our adventure makes up for that but being in the same country and theoretically within travelling distance makes it hard to swallow not to be there really, even though time, finances and all sorts of other sensible reasons dictate it not being remotely feasible.
So today I managed to sleep in til 10am. There is something about this house that utterly drains me and I don’t sleep well either which means I really struggle to get up in the mornings. I am still stiff from the caving adventure (not to mention bruised in all sorts of random places) too. Ady had already disappeared so I snuck out of bed and downstairs where hopefully no one realised I had only just got up!
I got involved in laundry, drying up, chatting with Ruth and Janicke and then they headed out for the afternoon. I got lunch sorted, made some apple juice with the girls and Scarlett and then got really hacked off when I realised Ady and Andy had gone off our again. Ruth had been most adamant that she couldn’t leave the twins without Andy present and he’d buggered off leaving me with all the kids which is totally against all their codes and rules. They reappeared and ate with us and then we headed off to the Grumble Pail.
It was quieter both in terms of people and goods for sale this week but I picked up a couple of pairs of trousers for Scarlett, Ady got a couple of pairs of jeans, the kids bought a few pieces and then we walked to the little sweet shop in the village for some sweets. While we were out I got a text message from Lynda asking about our plans for the next few weeks incase we could catch up with them at any point. I replied with our movements for the next few days and Lynda suggested we drop in or even stay on our way to Llangollen tomorrow, which had not even occured to us. I rang Julie to check her plans which were all still in order and sent a speedy text back to accept! We didn’t really have any plans other than biding time here tomorrow so actually a night at Lynda and Stuart’s to break our journey to Wales, catch up generally and bring then up to date on the last 3 hosts will be great 🙂 Plus we get to leave here a day earlier than planned.
We came back to break the news and Andy invited Lynda and Stuart here which was very kind. Throughout all their fairly crap WWOOF hosting they have always been excellent hosts generally. We did a sort of communal barbecue which was fairly stressful as such styles of cooking often are as the people who put all the work in tend to get very little of the food but everyone got something eventually.
Andy brought his guitar out and played some songs and we all had a bit of a sing song which was lovely – I do love singing 🙂 A neighbour came over for dinner too and we all had a nice last evening including a late night chat with Alec who has been our favourite of the foster kids here. We got goodnight cuddles from the twins who will definitely miss all four of us and I had a tidy up of our bedroom and took one load of stuff down to the van.
Everyone leaves here at 945am to go to church so our plan is to head off at the same time. I’m already putting this host into perspective although I am the wrong / right? side of a couple of bottles of shared wine, a box of shared beer, a few glasses of Baileys so inclined to love everyone…
Aww. Of course you were missed! Lots and lots xxxx
Comment by Michelle — 22 August 2011 @ 8:17 am