Saturday 27th February

Waking up in our own bed was quite a novelty. I also realise the mattress bought a couple of months prior to our going on the boat is fairly firm in comparison to the boat mattress. I may be purchasing a mattress topper on our return home! It was lovely to go for a walk locally and the spring sunshine helped. Walking back up our road I chatted to quite a few neighbours who were outside enjoying the warmer weather and it was good to be welcomed back, even if only for a few hours! I tried to accomplish a few chores but infact R’s jab was given early and he was ready to be collected sooner than I had anticipated so we were back on the road in good time to get the car back to the hire place. It meant I didn’t feel stressed and had no need to speed unnecessarily. Reminds me of a long weekend to Munich when we hired a car to pay a surprise visit to my brother in Austria for his 60th birthday. Returning to the airport, having visited the centre of Munich, we got a bit lost on the ring road, not knowing if we were heading in the right direction for the airport. In my panic I went rather fast and paid dearly for it when a large speeding fine arrived on our doorstep four months later. Luckily Rs sister lives in Germany and was not only able to translate, but she paid the fine from her euro account and we reimbursed her in sterling.

Dropping our things at the boat, before returning the car, our neighbour remarked that we seemed to be bringing back as much as we took home! Infact, it was mainly food bags but it did take a while to find homes for everything. The boat looks a bit bare without our foldable bikes and its certainly given us more room to sit in the stern. The truth was that although bikes sounded a good idea we never had need of them through the winter months and actually they need a bit of tlc before being safe to ride. Perhaps they will come in useful at home. R on a bike always fills me with slight trepidation in any case!

It was such a lovely evening that we took our foldable chairs onto the towpath and found a sunny spot to enjoy a glass of wine as the sun went down. I am always amazed by the beauty of the reflection on the still water when a mirror image appears of the boats and trees.

I decided to make an effort for our dinner as it’s our anniversary weekend so actually bought some lamb steaks and managed to cook them without turning them into old leather! The dessert was a bit of a surprise. Having thought there was a portion of gin and tonic parfait left in the freezer I instructed R where to find it and suggested he added it to some raspberries. He showed me what I thought was parfait before dividing it between our two bowls of fruit. We were both rather surprised to find that actually there was no parfait left in the freezer and what we were about to eat was frozen crumbled cheddar cheese!!

Thinking it would be nice to chat with some friends rather than watch a film we set up a last minute Zoom call that lasted nearly two hours and although it obviously would have been even better to see our friends in the flesh, we had a very lovely time catching up.

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