One word? When seven would do…

We’re having a Here, There and Everywhere week off this week which was supposed to be largely camping and thus far hasn’t involved any! This is just as well as August in the UK is clearly not the time or place for camping 🙁 Tomorrow we’re off again for 3 nights in Dorset which really will be a proper camping experience so fingers crossed for a better second half of the week weatherwise.

Saturday seems a very long time ago now. I worked in the morning, then Ady and the children picked me up from work and we headed straight off to J&J’s. The traffic was fine, the satnav got confused right at the end when we reached Holmfirth which was helped even less by us knowing Holmfirth a little, having a vague memory of arriving there 2 years ago for J&J’s last time we visited and presumably a slight change in road layout.

We were greeted in the rain by Jan who’s salutation was ‘you can sleep in the house!’ so in we went and were quickly swallowed up by friends in different directions :). Scarlett was delighted to see Alex, Davies was quickly in the middle of the Boys Who DS posse, I lost sight of Ady and I got stuck straight into the wine :). Excellent welcome :). We had a lovely first evening with plenty of chatter, laughter, more wine, tea, baking and although there was only one new family to get to know as there were 9 of them it felt like a whole gaggle of new faces to put names to.

Lots of people drifted off throughout the evening to put children to bed in tents but at about 1am there was a sudden influx of people in sleeping bags as 2 tents came down and the lounge became a refugee from the wind and rain area completely floored out with cushions and camping mats. The Babs finally got her trousers off

and newly rechristened with our porn star names people gradually wandered off to whichever bit of floor they were sleeping on. We very gratefully had Catie and Megan’s bedroom with beds and everything :).

Sunday Was wet and windy. But there was a fab pastry based breakfast, a constant supply of tea until wine o’clock. Jan and then later Jax played the piano for us which was lovely :). Various people trailed off during the course of the day, we had a lovely walk during a rare dry patch of weather,

I impressed myself by being able to quite literally ‘whip up a quiche’ from scratch to add to the dinner food supplies

and eventually it was just us, J&J and Caroline Wellyboot left. Of course this still left 12 children but they seemed to go to bed relatively easily, I told some stories to some of the remaining small people and then had a nice evening chatting and even got to play with a cylinder dyson before a relatively early night.

Monday We left J&J’s and took the very scenic and beautiful route across to Manchester. I remember driving that road two days into starting The Atkins Diet back in 2003. We were living in Manchester and I visited the web design company in Holmfirth for a day’s training in website content management. I was only allowed decaffinated tea made with full cream so had to turn down all offers of refreshment and had to hurry home for my late lunch of ham and full fat cream cheese with a very lightheaded and slightly dizzy feeling, driving across the moors and scary roads with sheer drops both marvelling at the beauty and peace and remoteness of it whilst pondering on how long it would take to find me and my car if I swerved off the road in a hunger-related lapse of concentration!

We arrived at Lynda and Stuarts around 11am. Lynda is the woman who used to nanny for us. She looked after Davies and Scarlett for 2 mornings a week from when Scarlett was 6 weeks old and Davies was 2 years old and was with us for nearly 18 months. We all adored her and given Davies and Scarlett’s honoroury grandchildren role with both her and her husband I guess she quite liked us too :). They have been down to visit us several times, we’ve met up midway with them for a couple of weekends away and we have stayed with them several times. Stuart took (very) early retirement earlier this year and is currently still on a euphoric high (his words) at the freedom from the working week. Lynda is still working a couple of afternoons a week doing the afterschool run for a family and they have their own granddaugher twice a week too.

We had a lovely 24 hours with them – good company, lovely food and drink, so much attention for Davies and Scarlett and yet again a proper bed, a bath and a very nice evening of fish and chips from the local shop which the children stayed up to eat with us, followed by a couple of hours chatting.

Tuesday morning we all slept in and then had a nice lazy couple of hours breakfasting and chatting. Lynda has a DS lite her boys got her for Christmas for playing suduko and crosswords on so Davies and Scarlett showed her how to do pictochatting and the three of them sat for ages playing each others games and connecting. Quite surreal!

We moved on from there, as ever vowing to return, soon and for longer. We drove passed and paused awhile outside our old house, where Scarlett was born. The last time we paused outside my Mum had rung me to say she’d found Malice at the vets having been run over back on our Goddard Tour of the North (including Scotland). This time we just got to sit and look at the house before driving on to The Trafford Centre.

We parked and had a brief wander round it. We had some very exciting times there and regardless of my current feelings about shopping centres and shopping as a pasttime it is still an impressive and exciting building.

We moved on and went back up again this time passing the highest point on a motorway in England on the M62 and telling Davies and Scarlett the story about the farmer who wouldn’t sell his land for the motorway so it got built around him (Davies: ‘just like the north going Zax and the south going Zax!’). We arrived in Leeds, had a sort of team effort thing going on with the satnav again on various ring roads, new roundabout layouts and her insistance we ‘TURN LEFT’ when there was no left to turn down and finally arrived at Jay and Mark’s house. Jay is a Feminist Parent friend and was hosting this summers FP get together at her house.

With the exception of 2 male partners I’d met everyone before so was in my element with very good friends. Ady had briefly met a couple of them but very quickly was at home playing with all the children and making teas and coffees ;). Davies and Scarlett were slightly slower to warm up but we were last to arrive, most of the children already know each other well or had been there since the night before and D&S had only met most of them once, a year ago, for one day, in another house they’d never been to before so they were understandably slightly daunted. Scarlett was quicker to leap in and infact shortly after we’d arrived most of the party decided to head to the park leaving only a handful of us behind. We needed to pop back out again for various supplies and Scarlett happily stayed to play with a couple of the other girls while Davies came with Ady and I. Later in the day, and this morning, he had paired up with the younger boy of the house having bonded together over a shared love of Ben 10. Scarlett was quite happy to join in with that and the 3 of them had great times playing with various Ben 10 related toys.

I had a fab time with friends, singing, drinking, laughing, chatting and feeling very happy to be spending real life time with yet more people I spend lots of online time with but live too far away from to see often in the flesh – lovely to have had four whole days of it :).

I have photos to add in but will come back and do that later.