Saturday morning started with breakfast serving. 12 Italians who barely speak English (although we did manage quite well in French with one of them, Jill and I were really impressed with ourselves dredging up schoolgirl French) and drink a lot of coffee. We had four kettles constantly on the boil. Then I showed a local guy around who had come to teach the Italians how to make incence and is interested in hiring part of the venue here for courses in making your own cosmetics and potions. He was an interesting guy, hopefully he’s coming back for pizza night on Wednesday and I can chat some more to him. I’d still love to learn more about making stuff like that and I know Tarly would too, he has a small workshop in the town so I might talk to him about us visiting for a morning or afternoon and learning some stuff from him. Grab every opportunity and all that ;).
Ady and I then fixed a chicken coop that has seen better days, taking a few rotten bits of wood out and replacing them with new bits. The shepherds hut that I repainted when we were here before has been revamped and had the old slats for a single bed removed and a double bed base built instead so there is plenty of scrap wood here at the moment.
I mentioned to Jill that Scarlett had not slept well on the sofabed in the cottage the night before so as another cottage was now empty we moved again – this time into Springfield, one of the biggest and most expensive ones. I think it’s my favourite actually; two bedrooms and a bathroom with bath and shower upstairs, a third bedroom and large lounge / diner with large kitchen downstairs. We have dishwasher and washing machine too :).
One of my jobs this week is to look at the library again and put some games in to make a game and book library for guests and to move all the tourist information and leaflets out and into an old red phonebox in the carpark which has been stood redundant and empty until Jill had the brainwave of creating the smallest tourist information office in the world out of it :). It needed some shelving or racking so I turned all ‘chippie’ and used more of that scrap wood to build a three shelf unit, using hammer and saw and nails and everything :).
Davies and Scarlett were doing chicken feeding, visiting Paddington Farm next door, taking Maggie for walks, watering plants, planting out some plug and seedlings. Ady was starting to clear overgrown-ness around a compost heap and learning how to start and use the quad bike and the ride on mower.
Jill hatched the idea that she would return with Jon to London today for a couple of nights, leaving Shirley and us in charge so we split responsibilities between us and are unlocking the pool in the mornings, dealing with feeding, letting out and putting away of the chickens and various other things.
We had a quick swim, then back for Doctor Who before Jill & Jon came over for dinner – Ady did a curry. It was a really nice evening, far too much wine drunk and rowdy laughing and chatting but all very theraputic and just good to feel at home and even be able to entertain (albeit in one of *their* cottages feeding them food that they had paid for anyway!).Shirley called in at 10ish with the pool key and joined us for a hot chocolate laced with Baileys and as we had no cream to go with our strawberries for dessert we used Baileys to dip them in too.
Sunday Ady got up early to unlock the pool and let the chickens out. I got up slightly later but still early for me and we headed over to set up breakfast. Perks of that being loads of leftover fruit and pastries for our own breakfast 🙂 so we brought some of that back for the kids who had just about got up having cleared up and sat chatting and plotting the rest of our year and beyond over breakfast.
Ady did more clearing and chopping down while I moved over all the leaflets that are likely to be of interest to people visiting here – weeding out attractions in Dorset, Devon and other too far away for people to travel if they have paid the premium rate to stay in Glastonbury. I cut down an old leaflet stand and found a hook and created a tailor made leaflet rack 🙂
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After lunch I spent some time with Shirley getting a handover of the office for tomorrow morning. I also spent lots of time today snuggled on the sofa with Davies and Scarlett watching TV or chatting, stuff I’ve missed terribly the last couple of weeks.
We had a swim and used the steam room, first time the kids have ever been in one. Then we came back, Ady got a roast dinner cooking and we all watched Countryfile and ate together, just like a Sunday back at home. We did some good, bad, learnt for Evergreen for the WW blog but I’ve not finished that post so the rest of it will have to wait for me to fill in the gaps.
Coming back here did feel a bit wussy in many ways but we are still learning new skills; Jill now has chickens and is getting goats later this week and she is such a valuable contact – business and eco-wise as well as being a good friend now. Plus sleeping in the van for for solid weeks was fine but I can’t deny it’s good to sleep in an actual bed and have the luxury of cooking our own food at our own times, whilst now actually having to pay for the cottage or the food :).
After dinner Tarly and I put the chickens away then we rang my parents and caught up with them, I’ve ordered Ady’s birthday presents and all is well with the world 🙂