Recently ....

Our daughter L and her two children went home, back to London, last weekend.
As you can imagine, our house felt very quiet and empty without them ... so
I felt sad, but at the same time I felt somewhat liberated ~ free to catch up
on a lot of little jobs around the house, and free to catch up on some admin
work for my local U3A.

Yesterday and today, we've had some gorgeous hot weather ... glorious sunshine,
with temps around 25 deg C.. Having said that, I don't like being out in the sun
too long ~ I tend to sit in the shade, where it's a bit cooler, and then go out
for walks late afternoon / early evening. So Summer is definitely here ... it
must be, as today was the first day of summer I left my longjohns off. Tomorrow,
I will be even more daring, and get out my pair of Roman-style sandals to wear.
This event takes place most summers when the hot weather arrives.

I have to admit also that I'm one of those untrendy blokes who wears sandals
with socks on. I don't like my feet sticking to the inner soles of sandals ~ I
don't like stickiness underfoot (especially the stickiness of doggy-poo or of
chewing gum). Also my feet are somewhat unsightly, as I've had both big
toe-nails removed permanently ... not a pleasant sight.

Yesterday, Mrs C and I went across to see our daughter R and her two children,
who live on the other side of Nottingham towards the M1. The plan was that we'd
motor up the M1 to see a lovely National Trust property, Hardwick Hall, which
was owned by the Cavendish/Derbyshire family for a few centuries. We were all
set up to have a picnic there, but after driving less than a mile, we had to
turn back again as an engine warning sign appeared on the dashboard of R's car.
So we picnicked in R's back garden instead. I'll post a few photos from the
picnic onto my Flickr site fairly soon.

Today, I've just been pottering around the house and pottering around on this
computer. Mrs C made a lovely celery and onion soup for lunch (with a few bits
of Blue Stilton cheese melted in it). And for the evening meal, we both put
together a pizza, which we had with a green salad & a glass of white wine,
while watching some TV.

We've started to watch the entire second series of The Wire, which we videoed
while L was staying with us ~ so we watched the first two episodes of The Wire,
this evening together with the finals of Britain's Got Talent ~ some very
talented contestants.

Last weekend, we visited another National Trust property, near Daventry,
called Canons Ashby ... an Elizabethan pile owned by the Dryden family. We were very impressed with what we saw. One of the beds upstairs had a lovely Chinese silk bedspread on it, on par with the gorgeous one at Caulke Abbey. Well worth a visit, and the NT restaurant was excellent too.

I'll stop there, as it's my bedtime.
Talk to you soon.