Another morning of stressy squabbling – me and Ady, not Davies and Scarlett. It’s stress, anxiety, totally understandable different ways of dealing with everything but all makes for a fairly unpleasant time while people are shouting at each other 🙁 Hurrah for that all being over with now.
We did not get as far as I’d hoped with packing up when Caz, Bid, Archie and Eliot arrived. We’d asked them to bring their kids scooters with them and the four kids spent the whole morning scooting about up and down the road. I had some common sense, supportive loving words from Caz while Bid helped Ady clear the garage – most into our horse box and a few bits into their van. We drank lots of tea / coffee and ate food on the lawn. It was very good for all four of us.
They left with just enough time for us to clean ourselves up and walk up the road to Mike & Rose’s for a pre arranged afternoon tea. Due to various things they had Mike’s mother, sister, BIL and niece staying with them so it was a full house. Mike had produced a section of crusts cut off sandwiches, scones with jam and cream, proper tea leaf tea and a chocolate cake. It was all very delicious and very English which I think was the intentional theme – our last English afternoon tea before a lifetime of neeps, tatties, haggis, highland shortbread, irn bru, whisky and of course deep friend Mars bars 😉
Mike’s sister and Mum were not at all what I would have expected having known Mike for about 5 years. Ady said the same. Funny how you have in your head an image of who someone is and where they came from… they were all very nice and we had a lovely few hours chatting, a walk to the park across the downs with the dogs and then they left us to it with Mike & Rose in the garden for a final cup of tea and chat. Mike and his daughter Chloe will be visiting us in August and Rose is hoping to come up next year so it’s not a long term goodbye at least.
We walked back down the hill home again in the sunshine. We then planned to finish off the packing the horse box with all but last minute things but Mum arrived and had a cup of tea with me while Ady did further horse box loading.
Mum left and we whizzed up to the retail park – we filled the Pajero up with petrol, got some food for dinner tonight, breakfast tomorrow and snacking in the car – all paid with with five bags of coppers that Davies had been stashing and saving. We realised if he wants to spend his money once we’re on Rum it will probably be ordering stuff online therefore he’ll give his cash to us and we don’t want a bag full of coppers so this seemed like the best way of changing up the money. It did mean about 10 minutes at the self service till though, loading in hundreds of coppers to the coin slot!
I called in to Boots to stock up on make up (I wear Boots own brand stuff) and Ady picked up some padlocks from Argos for the horse box.
It was late when we got home so dinner was late all round. Ady and I had Last Baths and did a bit more packing. We reckon we have about 2 hours worth of stuff to do in the morning – last minute packing up and quick clean round as we go – we are only in two rooms now, all others are empty and cleaned.
It’s been a typical last day really, can’t say it’s been easy and the seeing of friends has meant we’ve not really got as much done as I’d hoped but I suspect that has been a good thing. Everything will get done and the time in the sunshine with friends is what makes life worth living – not the shouting at each other over what should have been packed next which is where I fear we would have degenerated without the time with friends.
Tomorrow – the final goodbye to Sussex.