One word? When seven would do…

But first of all, some photos – for those of you who are after the brief version of my life here is the last few days in pictures instead of words!

My Melrose
Ady’s Melrose

although in fairness Ady actually took all of the photos but he gets to flickr the arty ones and I get the ones with all the people in them!

So what have we been up to since I last blogged threatening death by battery to my eldest offspring then? Friday morning saw us up off and away pretty early on the way to Manchester – well Hale actually which is posher than Manchester being in Cheshire and all but less familiar to the world at large than simply Manchester! 😉 We arrived around lunchtime at Lynda and Stuarts (for background Lynda was the lady who looked after D&S while I worked when we lived up there. She started with us when S was just 6 weeks old and D was 2.5years and was with us until we left well over a year later. We have stayed in touch since coming home and she and her husband are now more part of our family as an additional set of grandparents it is hard to believe we once used to pay her to look after the children). It was probably one of the nicest weekend stays with friends we’ve ever had. We were taken out for dinner and they utterly refused to let us pay (and they don’t even know how dire our finances are!), fed us and fed us and fed us for the duration of our visit with all of the favourite foods that we have ever mentioned, drip fed us wine and guinness, totally took over all childcare (I don’t think we saw our children at all for most of Saturday). We also managed two nostalgic trips to The Trafford Centre where we mooned about remembering how I used to spend money there and Ady used to love working there. We also drove past our old house to show Tarly the place she was born (in the dining room of that house there Darling. No, I don’t think the people who live there now would let us in to have a look at it!) and fed the geese and ducks at our old usual Sunday afternoon haunt. Oh it was lovely!

Lynda and Stuart’s oldest son has just had a baby girl so she was brought over to meet us on Saturday too – very possibly the quietest two week old child I’ve ever met – mine were certainly never that peaceful for that long!

In the middle of Friday night / early hours of Saturday morning Tarly was awake and vomiting which was concerning – and not so good for a decent night’s sleep. It led us to debate the wisdom of bringing her to Melrose the following day but as her last bout was at about 5am and she went on to make a dramatic recovery with no one else going down with it we put it down to travelling / excitement / over indulgence of chocolate cakes and left Manchester far later than planned at about 3.30pm having been ‘forced’ to eat cooked brunch before we left! 😉

The combination of two four hour journeys within 48 hours, confused days and nights with daytime sleeping and the overwhelmingness of all those people did seem to take it’s toll however and she decreed herself unable to walk for the first two days at Melrose and took dramatically to her bed every afternoon for restorative naps! Given the outbreak of v&d we seem to have left behind I am now wondering if it was a bug but given me, Ady and even Davies remain uneffected I am fairly convinced we didn’t bring an infectious small person to the mix. Hope not 🙁

Melrose was the same full on experience it was for us last year. There are highs and lows of such intense circumstances but in the main we enjoyed being with friends and participating in the whole communal living thing. We missed the absent friends terribly although I did text all of them at some point, but I felt definite Layla, Ros and Sarah shaped gaps in the week which no one else could quite fill for me. 🙁 Which is not to say I spent all week aimlessly wandering the corridors clutching three empty wine glasses in their honour (well two wine glasses and a tumbler for alcohpops!) with my own overfilled one slopping over the carpet singing Grease songs on my own doing all the parts by myself in their honour – I did manage to participate in the rest of the socialising! 😉

Highlights which stick out for me are:

Joyce reappearing with a genuine real live cushion after leaving the room muttering about ‘needing a cushion’

Sitting with Alison on the balcony sofa with a bottle of fizz and a five a day vitamin juice carton!

Chopping veg for Kath and Andrews Pizzeria with Alison, Barbara and Helen while we all sang along to ‘I’ve got Tourettes!’

Chris F’s alien abduction theory – all the funnier retrospectively really eh Chris! 😉

Pretty much anything Leandra said!

The dynamics of the little girls – Lulah, Amelie, Robyn, Piglet and occasionally Scarlett – wonder if they are the princess outfit wearing posse of tomorrow, somehow I suspect not!

Joyce and Katy’s baking – Muffins indeed! 🙂

Bob’s valentine surprise – which almost surprised Ady who bumped into him in the town and came back utterly shocked more than it surprised Joyce!

Nic’s Nails – the impromptu salon for little girls set up in the common room one afternoon – wish I’d brought a wider selection, I could have happily sat all day painting small children’s nails and giving them advice on base coat, ridge filler and the importance of a good quality top coat! 🙂

Merry’s poem re: washing up and the whole Merry / Nic washing up double act (Don’t you worry Merry, I’ll come and dry up for yooooo!)

Seeing Kirsty 🙂

Helen and I deciding that we really might be some sort of Satan, Antichrist duo and realising that if only Layla were there we could have formed a trinity! We even had a song of sorts based on the hymn Make me a channel of your peace. (sorry!)

And probably loads more!

We are attending a wedding on Saturday (the male half of the couple who split up last year is marrying his new lady) and Ady particularly has always been twitchy about leaving on Friday – indeed prior to Kirsty inconsiderately ( 😉 ) getting a whole new life and moving further away than even Melrose is we had planned an overnight stay with them on Thursday / Friday to break the journey home or even make it an earlier get away, but when a last night talent show was proposed I decided we’d stay on and offered to cook stew for last night dinner. However with Joyce and Alison heading off early and Karen and Stella already having gone any sort of last night event was rapidly looking unlikely, which made my justification for not leaving early to Ady all the more shaky so having found a very willing volunteer to take over my dinner cooking duty (and showed her where all the ingredients were stashed having been purchased earlier that day) in Kris we did indeed pack up this morning and hit the road around 10.30am.

It proved to be very much the right decision as the journey did indeed take all day and then some (arrived home around 8pm) – the children slept in the car after lunch meaning it was gone 10pm before they slept in their beds, the house is a shambles having had one room already redecorated and the other due to be done in the morning and the thought of having not done this with a full day and two full nights in our own bed before expecting the children to pull off best wedding behaviour for the day on Saturday is very scary indeed. I have promised Ady to listen to him in future on all such important decisions! 😉 I think we probably had an even better journey (and it was by no means great believe me!) today than we would have had on a Friday too, so much though I feel bad for abandoning ship (although I do have more than a twinge of jealousy having spoken to Barbara who was in the process of clearing up all of the remaining food and drink with the other last ones standing! 😉 ) it was definitely the right decision.

And now, probably around the same time as the rest of the week – I’m off to bed 🙂