Go West!

This Easter weekend, we 'av mostly been visiting Zomerzet.

There was a big old family reunion in Somerset this weekend, so we toddled down on Friday evening to join the festivities.

Saturday was spent careering around the South West in search of fine walks, ice cream and fish and chips on a beach. All were totally successful, and for once the weather at the bank holiday was wonderful.

We spent a couple of lazy hours wandering around Golden Cap and sitting on the cliffs enjoying the sun followed by a drive into Weymouth and dinner on the beach.

It's good to get together and do stuff like this.

Sunday was more zooming around - this time between different courses of our lunch. It was all good fun too, and kept us amused for most of the day. Far too many Easter eggs were exchanged and quite a few eaten by the end of the day too!

Monday consisted of some wandering around Yeovil, again enjoying the sunshine, and after a quick lunch, the trip home - which wasn't as bad as we expected. We even had time to sit out in the garden when we got home.

Another highly successful and most enjoyable weekend.

Munchkins and Mushroom Stroganoff

Another very enjoyable weekend was had. This time with Munchkins and Mushroom Strogonoff.

The weeks seem to be flying by at the moment - with looking for jobs plus studying for my dreaded Prince 2 exam (another time). The weekends also fly by but luckily because we're doing nice things.

Friends over for dinner on Saturday followed by entertaining them plus 2 small ones on Sunday. Enjoyable but exhausting.

We also saw the first ducklings of the year on Sunday - it must be Spring!

Pub

The Frog came to visit this weekend.

This entailed hurtling in Herman (q.v), drinking and and eating sausages (although no sausages for me ... being a poncey veggie I had frittata).

We had a fine time, visited a pub I'd not been to, visited a couple of pubs I had been to, was treated like a long lost friend in one of them (having not been in for ages due to my continuing work situation) and generally had a jolly spiffing time.

The next day was spent in quiet contemplation of the cosmos and muted conversation of many things (if you know what I mean). We also went on a walk and went past a pub, but not into it.

Soup was then consumed and we all went home for tea.

It's dark and we're wearing sunglasses

This weekend saw us visiting friends.

First a get-together in Reading, which was great fun. Especially trailing around umpteen shops beforehand to try and find some sour cream – which was a vital ingredient we’d been asked to bring. Stress levels were brilliantly low, even when the dinner did get slightly singed – but it tasted great in the end.

We then had to get up especially early to drive up to Penrith for a 40th birthday party. These were friends I’d not seen in over a year, so even though it was a long way for a pretty short visit, it seemed worth it. The journey up was the usual tedium with lots of traffic and road works, but we did it pretty much right to schedule and arrived at the appointed pub in time to surprise the birthday boy, who knew nothing about his visitors.

Even a pub with a replacement chef, a limited menu (half of which wasn’t actually available) and slow service due to the barmaid having to do basically everything, couldn’t dampen our spirits. We drove back to their cottage and did some chilling out and chatting and the time since we’d last met up just slipped away.

Being 40, he’d been given a Wii by his wife (a fine 40th birthday present if you ask me) – although, I discovered it is referred to as a Wye-eye in Northern climbs. After the obligatory box opening, peering at cables and controllers and eventually the manual and a bit of trial and error, he had the thing up and running and we were soon involved in delights such as 4 player tennis (which I’d never played before and is totally chaotic).

Despite dubious looking weather, the barbeque was lit and we soon had the usual bucket-loads of burgers and sausages. Staunchly sitting outside, even though it was threatening to rain, it was rather pleasant (other than the wasps, who seemed to have come out of hibernation especially for the event). Lots of catching up and chatting about trivial and non-trivial things and doing all the normal stuff that friends do, it was most agreeable.

It did eventually start to rain, but for some reason we got into some kind of competition about who could stay out in the rain for the longest. We got away with this a couple of times when we just had brief showers, but once the rain got more determined, most people gave up and went inside. Except for 3 of us. I soon realised that there was no way the other two were going to give up, and so retired to the garage where I could continue chatting, but not get soaked. They chatted and got soaked. It got dark. We were still out there.

I don’t know if sanity returned or not, but eventually we gave up and went in. The two guys were wet through. It was just silly, but for some reason it just had to be done.

The next day saw large amounts of rain and so there was lots of playing of the Wye-eye and a very fine pub lunch before braving the M6 to head home. It was generally rather rubbish but pretty much as expected.

All in all a hectic, but excellent, weekend. It's always great to visit really good friends who you can completely relax with and just have fun (and be rather silly). I always think that we must visit more often, but it never seems to quite work like that.