well I’m still getting wound up to be honest but it really is the final furlong here now.
This morning Ady mowed the front garden and then I took over the mowing in the back garden while he did some ditch filling with gravel. The grass was soaking wet though and the mower really struggled with it, to the point where it has actually died now! Yet another example of people asking WWOOFers to do jobs that they don’t actually have the correct tools to do them with. We did a fair bit of the lawn before lunch though.
The best news of the day is that my boots are all but dried out – I stuffed them with newspaper last night and they spent the morning outside in the sunshine and I wore them with very thick socks this afternoon which soaked up the last little bit of water :).
I processed some laundry, which is all now sodden out on the line as it has rained loads again this evening. I am fretting slighly that we will be taking a load of wet washing away with us although the forecast is for a dry day on Sunday. Fortunately the campsite does have a washing machine and tumble drier so we will be able to deal with it even if the worst happens.
I finished off the first cut on the lawn after lunch and then handed over to Ady to do a second cut all over at a lower cut level and came back to the kitchen to start on dinner. We did chicken curry, vegetable curry, rice, bombay potatoes, home made chapatis and a toffee apple pudding for dessert. So I was chopping veg and chicken and apples and getting everything going. Davies and Scarlett did some painting and drawing which is something they definitely miss doing as much as they used to of; although they both have art stuff with them it is not the same as spreading out and being really creative doing it on a small scale in the van.
Ady came up to help with dinner and we got the curries cooking, the pudding in the oven and then Scarlett and I made the chapatis. There were some ready made bhajees, samosas and nan breads to warm up and then the rice to get on. Everything came together and despite it all being very very mild for our taste it went down very well with one of the children declaring it ‘the best meal I’ve had here!’ which made me smile but went down less well with Andy and Ruth! 😆 Even Davies and Scarlett tried the curry and said it was nice but they would not want it any spicier.
I retired to our room for a bit after dinner and went down again when it was quieter for a cup of tea. I got involved in making some apple juice with the juicer but that was a real bugger to clean out and made such a lot of noise and mess I am definitely not convinced a juicer is worth the cupboard space! Davies was desperate for me to watch a film with him so he selected Nanny McPhee and he and I went and snuggled up in the TV room to watch it. One of the girls crept in along with us and then Scarlett, Ady, Andy and the other girl came in too so we ended up a full house. It was lovely to have Davies nestled in to one side of my and Scarlett snuggled on my lap – not having a sofa means not so many snuggled up on the sofa moments this year! 🙁
The kids all went to bed and Ady and I hoped Ruth or Andy would join us for a chat but they headed off to bed so we had a quick game of drafts and then came to bed ourselves. We had been planning to have the weekend off really but Andy has given Ady some jobs for the morning. We made it clear we are going to the jumble sale tomorrow afternoon though and Ruth asked if we were having Sunday off and we said yes so aside from a couple of hours work in the morning we are finished here, which is certainly a relief to me. There have been far too few jobs that have been interesting or anything to do with the type of work we should be involved in. Interesting people, nice food, pretty part of the country but definitely not one of our favourite hosts.
Find it much harder to deal with difficult experiences if I keep finding redeeming features in the people involved. It confuses my emotions. One of those hangover from being a kid experiences. Glad you are getting a restorative night.
Comment by Joyce — 21 August 2011 @ 7:30 am