Lois and I are driving from our home in Malvern to Beaconsfield today, to stay in a nice 17th century former coaching inn for 2 nights - should be great!
the Chequers Inn near Beaconsfield, a former
17th century coaching inn.
The only downside is that you can't check in till 4pm which sort of rules out chances of an afternoon nap, but I'm going to let that one slide, because it's a nice friendly pub and they're giving us a great room: it's even got a patio, which is nice.
After we check in, I take two arty pictures of the room making use of reflections in the stylish bulbous bedside lamps, the one on my side and the one on Lois's side.
arty pictures of our room, as reflected in our stylish bedside lamps
We're here to take part in a cousins' get-together at my cousin Jeannette's house in Beaconsfield, Bucks, tomorrow.
I've got about 30 cousins, you see, all in their 70's or 80's, although nobody's quite sure exactly how many there are: every time we try to count them we come up with a different total. Not only that, but a "new" cousin popped up a couple of years ago, that we didn't know about - David, adopted as a baby, who was identified as one of our cousins after a random DNA test on a family history website. What are the chances of that happening eh??!!!!
However, because we're all old codgers now, most of the 30 or so cousins aren't going to be able to make it here. It'll be a pretty small gathering, it looks like: only about a dozen or so. The cousins live all over the UK, plus there's one in Ireland, two in the US and one in Australia. Luckily one of the ones who lives in the US, Susan, is definitely going to be there tomorrow, so that's nice.
12:00 On the way from Malvern to Beaconsfield today we stop by at our daughter Sarah's house in Alcester, and, in a "mercy mission", we drop off Hoppy the Bear. Sarah and her 10-year-old twins Lily and Jessica stayed over at our house in Malvern on Friday night, and after they left us on Saturday evening, Lois and I discovered Hoppy had been left behind.
Poor Hoppy !!!!
We drop Hoppy off at the house, and later Sarah sends us a picture of Jessie and Hoppy reunited - awwwww, makes the detour seem worthwhile, doesn't it. Awwwww!!!!
our granddaughter Jessie, happy to be reunited
with her favourite soft toy, Hoppy the Bear
Jessica is 10, and it's weird, but she's really into science, and will tell us all about each of the planet: temperatures, length of the day, length of the year, number of moons, etc, but she's still young enough to talk to Hoppy the Bear as if he were real. Ten is a great age to be, isn't it - you can have a bit of both worlds, adult and child, can't you, and all at the same time
16:00 We arrive at the hotel feeling pretty exhausted from the driving and the stopping-off here and there. We've had to spin the journey out, driving well under the speed limit, so as not to arrive too early, which makes it seem like we've been driving all day, which in a way is the truth. Yikes !!!
Earlier, we made a stop on the way at Oxford Services on the M40 and had an awful cup of tea at the Starbucks to help "spin out" the afternoon - yuck !!!!
we spin out another hour at the Starbucks at Oxford
Services on the M40, and drink an awful cup of tea
So that was our day. But at least we're here and we can kick off our shoes and let our hair down, because we've got dinner booked here at the inn for 6 pm, and after that we can luxuriate for hour in our lovely room, and watch TV in bed, which is nice!
20:00 We climb into bed and watch tonight's edition of Only Connect, the TV quiz that tests lateral thinking.
We may be exhausted, but Lois isn't too tired to beat the 6 contestants to it when it comes to guessing the link between these 4 things:
Can YOU see the connection?
They're all things whose names change to something else once they're on land. Magma is called magma when it's underground, and lava when it comes out. It's called "a skein of geese" when the geese are in the air, and "a gaggle of geese" when they're on land. A meteor becomes a meteorite when it lands, and the UK flag should strictly only be called the Union Jack when it's flown at sea.
See? Simples, isn't it!!!
21:00 Exhausted by our cleverness we opt for an early night.
Zzzzzzz!!!!!!
No comments:
Post a Comment