Tuesday 15th & Wednesday 16th June 2010

Tuesday. Back to work. Work started on the footpath that runs along the outside of the work car park. We were worried about what they were doing so Christine very bravely went out to talk to them. They are putting a proper footpath back in as was planned since Coty cut off the original one with their perimeter fence. Then they'll ask Coty to pay for it. Not quite sure how that works but that's their problem!

Wednesday. I went to Asda after getting home from work as I found that we had no milk and nothing good to eat. I was also able to change my £4 jeans for some bigger ones. Oh dear, size 10 doesn't fit! Not good! I bought some lovely lamb shanks (2 for £6), washed down with a bottle of Lidl's finest red wine! Don't knock it, it's good stuff at £3 bottle. Maybe that's why the jeans no longer fit! Too much alcohol.

We watched Stephen Hawking's Universe, tonight's episode was on Time Travel. Very interesting, if only I could remember all of the facts! Every time I see and hear Stephen Hawking I can't help but think what he would have achieved had life not dealt him a rough card with the motor neurone disease. He is a truly amazing guy. What an honour it would be to be the narrator of his TV program.

Monday 14th June 2010 - Home again

Home by 11 am and packed away and showered a couple of hours later. We went to look around Camping International. They have some lovely trailer tents and really lovely tents there. As we really only need somewhere to sleep and to be able to stand up, we don't need a big “family” tent. We found a couple there that would do the job. We called in at the Tent Show at Newnham Court on the way home but they didn't really have anything suitable for us.

Bowling in the evening, we were playing against Jose and Sara who had bowled on Sunday. We lost the first game which was Jose's brilliant game and then won the next two games and the overall points. I think we stay in 3rd place for a bit longer.

Sunday 13th June 2010

I woke feeling a little fragile but got up and joined everyone else at a reasonable time. I sat recovering with a cuppa for a little while before making breakfast. We spent a bit of time working together to do the Teston quiz (which we won), I flew my spirit kite again and also had my genki out again. Later in the afternoon, the genki came with us to the group photo. Bryan, CA, Harry and Leah visited. It was good to see them too. It seemed strange that they weren't camping with us.

After dinner, while Dave washed up, Batty and I went to the park to play. Some of the climbing things are hard work, and slide was fast and scary. Having a break with tradition, we decided to pack up most of the stuff this evening, leaving out the minimum needed for our breakfast in the morning. We even got the empties packed away ready for recycling. It might have been a better idea to take the empties to the recycling centre this evening as they did take up a lot of space in the car.

Saturday 12th June 2010

I got to fly my new kite today. It was a birthday present from Dave from a couple of years ago. We'd almost given up hope of seeing it. Glad I've got it though. It's really cool. I've wanted one for ages, since I flew one of the BKF ones. It is a blue spirit kite. We will need to get a reel of line that I can keep with it in the bag. It needed tweaking a bit but is sorted now and I love it.

We had a girly shopping trip mostly get chicken and stuff for dinner in the evening. There were 16 to cook for. Lisa was in charge and we were having chicken stir fry and noodles.

Jose, Maria and the boys came over for the afternoon. Us girls were chatting down by the lock and enjoying watching the boats coming through and decided that we'd like to do a girly cruise, seeing as our men wouldn't be interested. Maybe one day, when we can save up.

Sam, Chippy and Emily also joined us for dinner. Emily was loving playing in the park and in the rubber boat. It was like a personal trampoline for her.

Dinner went down well. We had to part cook the chicken and then cook it in batches of 4 with the stir fry. After dinner, Jose returned with Martin and Chris. The adults had a game of twister which was fun. It was soon time to go down to watched the 1812 Overture by the Grumpy Old Gits. They exploded oxy acetylene in balloons to the classic tune. I drank far too much: beer, sloe gin, port, bramble whisky.... and paid for it later.

Friday 11th June 2010

Not a good start to the weekend. It has been raining most of the night. We had an indoor paddling in the front of our tent in the early hours of the morning. One of the pegs had come undone. It looks like Dave has been mopping up with his socks. As we lay awake about 6.30 listening to the rain, Dave looked very forlorn and asked if we should go home. I figured that we would get more wet getting home than if we stayed put.

After breakfast, we stayed in the big tent most of the morning while it carried on raining. It stopped towards the end of the morning. Tony and I went shopping in Asda. Having spent ages doing the shopping, I then remembered that there was a couple of other things that I needed that were upstairs in the shop at Kings Hill. A car phone charger being one of them. I got one for £3 that has 6 different attachments. I left poor Tony downstairs with the shopping while I ran. If it wasn't bad enough that the sat nav nags, now even the travelators tell you off if you walk on them and don't stand still.

During the afternoon, friends and family turned up at different times and set up around us. We were soon tucked in and not looking so lonely. We had chicken and mince fajitas for dinner. After dinner, we all sat round together to drink until late, some drank more than others!

Thursday 10th June – Off to Teston

I knew I should have got up earlier. It took longer than I thought to get all the bits out to the car. I had done quite a bit of packing of Wednesday night but it still took a while. I was late picking Tony up, and we were a bit late to work. It also took ages at lunch time to find the rain ponchos and pack the stuff from the fridge/freezer, and then I realised that I didn't have enough petrol to get us to Teston. All was going well to be ready to leave at 5 until we received two new orders that needed to be prepared for tomorrow. We got away about quarter to 6 in the end. We had a phone call from Batty to say that he had been stuck in traffic for an hour and it would be better if we went up to Junction 4. That upset Ovi but it was only a few minutes longer and an extra mile.

After unpacking a few bits, Tony and I were given “water” duty. We drove down to make it easier. I got soaked when the bottle got too heavy for Tony. It's not very easy turning the taps on and off either with the pliers. The very nice warden man offered us space in his wheel barrow to take the bottles back as he didn't notice that we had the car. Water mission completed and cookers set up, Batty started the cooking. Sweet and sour chicken. We had found some pre-chopped, pre-cooked frozen chicken in bags in Farmfoods. We have decided that one of these bags feeds 2 hungry people. (3 if it's me, Kat and someone else with a similar light appetite). Then we need 1 jar of sauce per bag of chicken. We cooked too much rice so we're thinking about cooking some up for breakfast. We decided we'd cook up the rice pudding while it was still light and we hadn't drunk much. Usually we cook the rice pudding as a midnight feast. In the evening, I finished off a bottle of cherry Lambrini and then had a bottle of beer. We had walk down to the lock at twilight to see if we could find any bats. Dave saw a few but I missed them. The sky looked really cool with a pink tinge. “Red sky at night..... that'll be Maidstone then!” Tony/Bonefish joined us later and we stayed up chatting until midnight. At bedtime, Tony was nearly wetting himself with laughter when he saw the state of his tent. The front of it had collapsed. No harm done. We pegged it down and cojld hear Tony still giggling as we got ready for bed.

Tuesday 8th June 2010 – Unit Training Meeting

Tonight, we arranged for everyone to meet at Chris's as I wasn't going to be around for the usual meeting. Our training meetings are good and a great chance to catch up and see how everyone else is doing. We sorted out our travel details for going to Harrogate for conference and now we need to book a room somewhere for the Friday night.

After much discussion about the lovely bride and groom piece and how I don't like ornaments without faces, I then won it in the raffle. It is a beautiful piece, but it's not something I'd buy. The instructions state if using it on a cake then don't use the fragrance oil in it. Some people obviously need that spelling it out to them.

I've just seen an advert for the new Shrek film. It contains “mild fight scenes” apparently. Oh dear!