Phil's Catch Up

 First of all a few pictures from the last day of our holiday.  We had such a good time the previous day on Lido Island and Sue and Ian didn't manage to get there, we all decided to spend our last day in Venice back there again.  Its so peaceful and chilling compared to the main island.

We found a place on the beach that served their drinks in huge glasses.  Claire almost drowned drinking hers.

 On the way back we stopped for a bottle of Prosecco outside the main Casino for our last drink before catching the bus back to our hotel.

Next thing we know we are home and at the caravan with John and Marie before they go to La Manga for the next 6 months.  Sue and Ian stopped at their caravan next door and we all played cards.  Claire was losing so she spilt her glass of red wine all over the carpet.  Incidentally, Sue has just bought another caravan at Overstone that has central heating and double glazing so they can live in it.  It has a lake view and is near the club house but I haven't seen it yet so photo's next time.

 Next stop Melv’s 60th Birthday in Loughborough.  Melv has gone down hill fast in the last few years since he was made redundant from the Brush where Steve and I used to work as well.

He seemed to be enjoying his party though.

 Here we all are in the day.  I haven't changed at all!

We went down to stay at Ian’s bungalow with Ian and Sue for the weekend in Southampton.  We had great weather and a great time.

 Claire tried to leave some chicken out for the birds and squirrels.

But it attracted Mr Fox.  I thought that he must be a regular visitor to Ian’s garden but he says that this was the first time he had come.  He made himself at home chewing on one of Claire’s shoes.

Next stop LSE in London for Georgina’s graduation.  She didn’t get her results until 5pm the night before so it was a bit tight.  She got a 2:1 which is great.

Here she is with her boyfriend Alex who got a first and his parents live in Great Brickhill.

Here she is with her friend Nushka who has already flown to Canada.  She is staying there to get her Canadian citizenship.  Georgina shared her flat with her and Beth for the last two years.  They have just secured another flat and Georgina will be sharing with Beth from last year and Nushkaz’s friend from Indonesia.  Its just off the Edgeware Road near Little Venice.  I went down to help her clear her old flat out and bring her stuff back.  She has been working in Shrewsbury again for 3 weeks.  She has a week away with Alex in Bruges than starts work in early August as a Civil Servant.  She will have 3 weeks training in Coventry then move to the London office.

Georgina has managed to get a new car through her mum’s work scheme.  It great, less than £90 a month for this car and it includes, road tax, insurance and MOT.  Not that it needs an MOT because they change it for a new one as soon as it has done 7500 miles.

This weekend it was Steve’s 60th Birthday so we went with Jim and Shirley and Ian and Sue.

They did a this is your life type intro with Steve’s ex-friend Philip presenting it.  He may have gone a little far.

We all enjoyed it and the food was lovely.  It was nice to catch up with their kids, Charlotte and Dan.  Dan is finishing his PHd in about 6 weeks and will move to Frankfurt with his girlfriend.

Its a shame that the other Wednesday night boys didn't manage to make it on the night.  We will be keeping our eye out for written excuses from their Mum’s this Wednesday.

I also got my degree certificate from the OU and my ceremony is in September.  I haven't done enough third level courses to get my honors degree but I have enough second level’s for about three Open degree’s.

Once I agreed to accept a degree, the OU started emailing me post graduate stuff and I got interested in an MSc run from Cranfield University that you can do part time so I applied.  They have a great library.  I think I blogged about going to their Open day.

It looks like they also have a pub with a beer garden.  No better place to study.  Rexam have agreed to keep me on for at least the next year part time so I can study there.  The course starts at the end of September so I need to get my finger out.

Wednesday night has changed again.  We have stopped going to the Nags Head because since Dan left the service has gone right down hill.  They keep forgetting to reserve us a table, the toilets have been broken for weeks so you have to go the the one in the bar.  We thought we would try the Marle Inn opposite the Black Horse.  Its such a lovely setting and Alfi liked it.

I think this is the only picture we have of all of us together.  Dr George is second to right who did a reference for me for Cranfield.  Cheers George it must have been a corker because they emailed me to say that I had been accepted 30 minutes after they received it.  All I have to do is the hard work now.

Birthday fun in sunny Southampton

Many thanks to every one for all my lovely birthday messages on FB and email. I had a great  birthday.  I got lots of cards and was very spoilt with gifts.  Phil got me a Champneys spa break for 2 which included lunch, dinner and bed and breakfast along with a treatment.  Harriet got me a twilight spa break for 2 at Whittlebury Hall.  I have 3 parties plus a hen night coming up so I can get well and truly pampered beforehand.  Mum gave me money which paid for my hair with some left over for a party dress.  Sue treated me to Ladies Day at Ascot plus she got me my favourite face cream and a new handbag plus some lanterns which I will put up at the caravan.  Turning 49 wasn’t too painful but I am dreading the big 50.  Still that’s another 12 months away so will worry about that nearer the time.

Harriet came over after work on Thursday which was the first time I’d seen her in almost 6 weeks.  We are not joined at the hip but we generally see each other about once a week normally.  Still no exchange on the flat buy the buyer now has their mortgage offer so we are hoping for exchange of contracts tomorrow.  Fingers crossed.

Ian & Sue had invited us to Southampton for the weekend so we packed a bag and set off from the flat around quarter to two on Friday.  We had a nightmare of a journey; there were delays on the M1, the M25 and the M3, even the M27 was stop start.  We finally got to Locks Heath at quarter to six.   Ian’s bungalow was delightful, nice sized rooms and a fairly private garden.  It had a really nice feel to it.  Sue and Ian did us a BBQ birthday dinner which was lovely and the weather was perfect.  We stayed in the garden all evening right up until we went to bed.

We had a gentle Saturday morning, showers, a bit of clearing up and then we looked at all the photographs from the Costa cruise.  This took a while because collectively we had around 600 pics to look at.  Sue tried to share her photos in Drop Box but for some reason Phil couldn’t pick them up.

It was another bright sunny day and at midday we all climbed into Ian’s jeep and drove down to the sea where we had a beer outside a pub by the port watching the boats sail in and out.  It was boiling hot and the beer went down very well.  Too well in fact.  Afterwards Ian drove us to lunch.  We were expecting a pub but in actual fact, we had lunch on a moored boat.  Our booking was for half twelve but the boat was quite busy when we got there.  We actually had lunch inside the boat and very nice it was too. The boys had beer and Sue and I had red wine.  Ian drove us back to the bungalow and we sat outside and drank more wine in the sunshine.  Early evening a fox came into the garden.  It wasn’t timed whatsoever.  We gave it bread and it amused us for quite a while.

It was a little cloudy with a spot of rain on Sunday morning but then the sky cleared.  We packed all our stuff and then loaded Sue’s new table in the back of Phil’s car.  It wouldn’t have fitted in the jeep and as we were passing through Newport on the way home it made sense to drop it off at Sue’s house.  Thankfully the drive home was fine, it took us 2 hours and we were back at the flat by midday.

I did contemplate going to the gym when we got back but I was suffering from Birthday indulgences so decided on having a duvet afternoon. Phil cooked us spaghetti with chillies and garlic for lunch, I’d like to say that I enjoyed it but I didn’t, it was way too hot for comfort. We caught up with telly recordings and then ended up eating an Indian takeaway which was a bit naughty.

Yesterday Phil worked on Daphne estate paperwork all day never leaving the flat.  I spent the afternoon in the gym keeping out of his way.  This morning I got up early and went to the market to stock up and fruit and veg.  I have been catching up with housework this morning and am just waiting for Danielle to come and do my hair. It is dry and stringy and way too blonde.  I am contemplating having something different but I will probably bottle out and go for the same old. It is way too hot having to sit for 2 hours in the flat having my hair cooked but needs must. I look a right 49 year old mess. 

Claire's Costa Experience

I can’t believe its been a week since we got back from holiday, it’s been life in the fast lane ever since and I don’t seem to have stopped.  It was exhausting fun on the holiday but I actually feel like I need another holiday to recover!  It didn’t help that when we landed I developed a horrible cold, which although much better, still hasn’t fully shifted.

So did I enjoy our holiday, well that would have to be a yes and a no but mostly a yes. It had its challenges but we had fun and made the most of it.  The easyjet flight to Venice was fine, we got a taxi to the port no problem but I was not impressed with the embarkation.  Queuing after check in to get on board in the heat of the sun was not much fun especially as poor Ian needed the loo badly.  When we eventually got on board we checked out our rooms and then headed for the outside bar on deck 9 feeling much in need of a cold beer.  We ordered 1 drink per card which was a fag only to be told that we didn’t have the all inclusive drinks package.  We ended up signing on a tab deciding to argue the odds with customer services once we had drank our beer.

The next stop after beer was the maitre de to see if we could change our table at dinner.  We’d asked for first sitting together which we got but Sue and Ian were in a different restaurant on a different table.  We got that sorted and then spent the next 2 hours arguing with customer services which ended up with Sue asking to see the manager. An early start and a long day and we were exhausted by the time we met up for dinner after unpacking our cases.

Phil’s probably said all this so sorry for repeating but I can’t be arsed to re-read his entries.  Our first dinner was a nightmare, 40 minutes and no drinks order or food order had been taken, in fact we hadn’t even seen the menus.  We complained like crazy and eventually the restaurant manager was sent to our table to pacify us.  The second night was much better but unfortunately the food wasn’t the best, several courses all of which were a bit hit and miss.  There was lots of fish and pasta which I suppose is atypical for an Italian cruise liner but Ian didn’t like any of these dishes so he really struggled.

The Italian kids must have been on school holidays because there were loads of them along with their rude, ignorant parents.  It was unfortunate that the boat was packed and one had to struggle for a sun bed.  After a call to Cruise Nation in the UK on the second day we ended up having to pay again for the drinks package but at the end of the day it was worth it.   The boat was difficult to navigate, we were on floor 1, we would meet up on floor 3 for a pre-dinner drink then take the lift to floor 5 and then we would have to take another lift back to floor 3 and walk through the casino to get to our restaurant. 

On the positive side, the inside cabins were fine and we were looked after great by our room boy Sammy, of course, tipping in advance always helps!  It was sunny every day and I personally enjoyed the ports we stopped in especially as there were no tenders so you could get straight off.  I did make it to the gym twice but the air conditioning was turned off so it was really sweaty. One day I decided to try out the outside Jacuzzi (in the gym) and the steam room but the Jacuzzi was being cleaned.  Bad planning really by management as it was a day when the boat was at sea for the whole day and night.

Phil spent a lot of his time in the room either writing his book or writing posts for the blog so I was quite glad of being able to sit with Ian and Sue on a sun bed on deck 9.  Beds were scarce though but Sue got wise to this and got into the habit of putting towels on beds before 8 am.  I must say well done to Phil for keeping up with the blog, it’s always a challenge getting wi-fi on a cruise because it is so expensive.  He/we spent a lot of our time on shore searching for an internet connection so Phil could upload.  Well done again to that boy.  With soaring temperatures it was all too much for me, it didn’t help that I didn’t take my laptop so blogging really was out of the question.  Besides I feel Phil was much more entertaining, if you’d have had my reflections I am sure in the heat of the day, it would have been fairly negative. 

We gave Sue and Ian the whole day to themselves on our 2^nd day in Venice; we checked in to our hotel and had lunch in Venice on our first day and dinner in Maestro in a restaurant which was near to our hotel. Sue had never been to Venice before so we thought new love and all that, that they needed time together to explore by themselves.  This worked out well and they had a great day. I’m not going to reveal much because I have asked Sue to do a guest blog which she has promised to do when she gets a window of time.  I figured it would be interesting to get another take on a Costa cruise with the Krause’s and I know she will be honest!

On our last day in Venice we checked out of the hotel, left our cases in the storage cupboard and caught the bus into Venice.  From there, we caught the water shuttle to Lido Island which took over an hour but it was worth it.  Once on the island we walked to the beach and ordered a very large beer, Ian had to have a paddle and we debated whether to have lunch on the beach but it was boiling hot.  On the way back to the water ferry we stopped for a very nice 2 course lunch and then went by water back to Venice where we shared a bottle of Prosecco.  Taxi back to the airport and then the BA flight was delayed.  Shame really but luckily Sue had booked a Gatwick hotel so heads on pillows and a good British fry up the following morning.

Phil drove home, he dropped off Sue and Ian at Newport and I guess we got home at half eleven (am).  I was feeling so awful, full of cold and snot and zero energy levels. I washed and dried and ironed for 5 hours but I was dead on my feet.  Absolutely exhausted. I had given my bottle of Obas oil to Harriet some time ago but I couldn’t be arsed to go to the chemist for more, being bunged up and a head full of cotton wool so no surprise that I didn’t sleep too good.  Neither did Phil mind you, which was even worse because he had to go to work the following day.

Number 2 step dad wanted an invite to the caravan on Friday and I arranged this before we went away, seemed like a good idea at the time especially as I hadn’t seen him since last September. I felt really shit on Thursday but I had to shop for England and cook in readiness to take to the van on Friday.  I did it but it felt like hard work, I did a luck lustre workout at the gym on Friday morning then me and Phil got to the van around 2.30 pm in the afternoon. I’d left the key in the barbeque so John and Marie were able to let themselves in. Luckily for me, Sue and Ian arrived at their van around 5 pm so that took some of the lime light off me. Phil cooked a lovely barbeque which we managed to eat outside before the rain started.  When it did, we went inside and played cards, Splodge to be precise; it wasn’t a late night and we were in bed before 11 pm.

Nobody rushed up on Saturday morning and I guess it was half ten by the time everyone was up and in the land of the living.  I took Marie into Weston Favell to do some trivial shopping leaving the others to chill out.  Phil cooked a mini BBQ for lunch, just hamburgers and hotdogs, sort of a mini brunch.  This was meant to be easy but it was not to be because the gas bottle run out and the top had gone to rust and so we had to ask Dennis next door. Bless him, he is a good neighbour, I guess sometimes he wishes we weren’t so needy but then again we pay him well for the jobs that he does.  I digress, once the new gas bottle was up and running lunch was good, simple I guess but it filled a hole.

Phil and I left for Loughborough via Melton to see mum as we had been invited to Mel’s 60^th birthday party.  It wasn’t the best timing but Phil was absolutely gutted that he’d missed Steve’s 60^th and good friend that Sue is, she agreed to entertain the step dad.  I felt guilty and full of cold but in my defence, I had made a homemade lasagne for all of them to eat in the evening.

We got to mum’s in Melton at half three, she wasn’t really amused because I had promised we’d be there for half two.  What is it with old folk, they like their routine and got cross if you don’t get there when you say you will. But she was fine when we did finally arrive, although saying that, she pushed us straight in the garden to mow the lawn without even the offer of a cup of tea!  Bless her. Phil pots did the grass and I did the paperwork and then, and only then, were we offered tea and biscuits.

I am trying not to start every paragraph with ‘We’ because to me it comes across as ‘I, I, I’ but sometimes with a blog which is parallel to a diary then there is no other option.  We arrived at Steve’s house in Loughborough not much after 6pm.  OMG, he was very organised; Steve had got us a lovely newly made up bed with clean towels, unfortunately for me the old sinuses kicked in around this time and I was all filling up with snot.  Steve had to go round to deliver food to the Brush Clubhouse leaving Phil and me to get dolled up for the party.  Well, I say we, but I really mean me, because I had forgotten Phil’s trousers. Thankfully he didn’t kick off much (not really) although he had every right too, Steve is about 6 or 7 stone lighter than Phil so there was no way he could lend him some kecks.  I had brought Phil’s new navy no collar light cheesecloth shirt and his M&S blue shorts so he looked quite acceptable especially as it was such a hot night.  

I wasn’t really looking forward to Mel’s party, mainly because I had never met Mel and also aside from Phil and Steve I didn’t know anyone else at the party.  But it was fine, they were a really friendly bunch, the snot problem calmed down, I danced all night and actually had a good time.  I slept like a baby and was reluctant to climb out of Steve’s spare comfy bed on Sunday morning but we had to get back to the caravan.  There was just time for a couple of cups of tea and a visit to Steve’s new house and then it was straight on the M1 back to Overstone.

Step dad and Marie and Ian and Sue were all sitting out under the gazebo when we got back to the van, it was such a lovely day.  Sue made us tea and then she and Ian left to go back to MK.  

Phil started watching the Silverstone Grand Prix and the plan was to go to The Manor for lunch but everyone bar me was reluctant. I was disappointed because I was looking forward to a roast dinner. Never mind, I ended up doing cheese and onion quiche with new potatoes and salad with strawberries and cream for dessert.  It was a quiet afternoon and not a late night.

Phil had to go on a speed awareness course in Northampton so had to be up early on Monday morning as the course started at half eight.  Step dad and Marie left to go back to Suffolk at 10 am leaving me to change beds and clean and pack up.  I managed to get 2 loads of washing done and dried but decided to take the rest back home to sort.  Phil got back to the van at quarter to one and I half expecting him to be grumpy but in fact he actually said he really enjoyed the course and was even considering doing the advanced driving course!  Even more surprising was the drive from Overstone back to MK, for the first time ever in the whole 30 years that I have known him, Phil actually adhered to all the speed limits.  Shock, horror!  I do wonder whether it will last though, the test will come when he drives us to Southampton on Friday.

Phil is officially on a diet; he weighed himself when we got back from the cruise and he weighed in the most he has ever weighed.  I have stocked the fridge with fresh fruit, salad and cold meats and so far and so good, he has already lost half a stone which is great considering we entertained at the weekend.   I too need to loose a few pounds so it will help me too. 

I had a very productive day yesterday; I finally sorted out a window cleaner for the flat, I have organised Will Tricks to come and cut the hedge downstairs and for first time in weeks I am finally on top of my paperwork.  Yesterday afternoon I had the best workout in the gym that I have had in weeks finishing up with a half an hour in the steam room which seems to have helped blast my cold. Last night I caught up with unreturned phone calls and also managed to catch up with all my TV recordings from holiday.  As I approach my 49^th birthday I am turning over a new leaf.  Its never too late to change right?