How lucky were we?

Anybody who watched any footage from Glastonbury 2007 will know that the conditions were horrendous. 42 people were injured due to slipping in the mud and one person died. The rain was relentless throughout the event. Even Shirley Bassey had to do an emergency landing.

I have just returned from a smashing camping holiday in Cheshire. The weather for us was also a total wash-out but, who cares? It didn't make any difference to the conditions on our site.

The holiday started with us going to Northwich to visit the Anderton Boat lift. We took a trip on a glass roofed river boat through the lift and along the river and back again. It was a faboulus trip despite the rain.

The next day we went to Joddrel Bank Communications Centre. It is somewhere we always wanted to go, but never got around to it. We booked in and Adam from the American Clubhouse shouted "Fancy seeing you here". It was amusing but somehow I managed to miss the the Brighter Futures minibus on the car park. They had taken some of the members for an outing.


The following day was spent at an Engine Rally. That was a great day browsing around 1000s of stalls and all kinds of steam engines.

At the rally we saw the biggest motorhome that could possibly run on British Roads. Obviously American, but still quite spectacular. Just check out the size in comparison to the car an caravan in front of it,

After that, we went to the famous market and car boot sale at Chelford. It was enormous. All kinds of stuff for sale, yet we didn't have the room in the car to buy much :-( .


Our last day, which we spent in Macclesfield, was very, very wet. Some of the day was spent in a fantastic, authentic Mexican restaurant that we came accross. It was quite pricey but we had a lunch-time special which was somewhat affordable. oooh, it was scrumptious though!!! Here is a sample of the menu, you'll see what I mean when I said pricey.



In between the showers, we also visited Knutsford and found this facinating cushion in the window of a shop. Can you believe it that it is all made of sheer thights, felt and wool and it cost £190.00. I'll get two of them, shall I?




On the day of leaving, we couldn't believe our luck. Glorious sunshine, warm, gentle wind and a totally dry tent and gazebo. What more could one ask for? Ou Carbon footprints for this holiday must have been quite close to zero as the car runs on cooking oil and everything else was recycled (ie bought second-hand). It is nice to know that apart from a pleasant holiday, we have done our little bit to save the world as well.

Re-take of Exam

Yesterday, was the time to re-take the exam that I failed last spring. It soon came around, didn't it? Almost half of the class failed one or the other of the two exams and sadly, some failed both. Majority of those couldn't face to re-take the exam, so there were only a handful of us who braved the task.

I suffered really badly with the nerves this time; didn't sleep all night. My colleague Carol was one of those unfortunate souls who failed both, so in order to support her, I went with her to the college and waited in the cafe whilst she did the first one.

When she returned, she and the others with her, unamously thought that the questions this time were much worse than the ones in March, which certainly didn't help me feel any better. They only had a half an hour break and then it was time to do the second one which I failed.

Something amuzing happened; I had taken my little black, nodding cat, Betty, with me to gives us luck, so I sat her on my desk, so that she could sit there nodding at me. One of the teachers got up an came along to my desk and picked up Betty and studied her as if she thought I had stuffed bits of cheating paper on her or sumat. Does a middle-aged woman really come across as a cheating sort of person?

I'm hoping that Betty brought us some luck as, in my opinion, the questions didn't seem as bad as they were before. I think I could understand what they were asking for, so that is a great help. Doesn't mean that I passed though. I now have to wait for the results, which I'm predicting to come around middle of August.

Creatures in the night

As you already know, Chris has gone to the Isle of Man TT races, so I have been on my own with the cats. Everything has been going fine without any problems....until last night.

I was up late as usual, had a couple of cans, half-watched a film on ITV4 and chatted on the net. At half past midnight, I thought it was time to go to bed, so I goes in the bathroom and started to clean my teeth. Suddenlly I turned around towards the sink, when I saw it....

A horrific, fat, hairy and very black, 8 legged creature sitting there right on top of the sink. I screamed so loud it made teazer run out of the room, with me in tow. I run outside with nothing on my feet and didn't stop until I was faced with gate. In the rush I hadn't even picked up the car keys so I had no idea what I was going to do, but I knew no way was I going back into the house.

Eventually, I noticed that Dorothy's light was on so I braved doing her special ring and got her to open the door. Luckily she only had one look at me standing there crying, so she knew what it was immediately. She grabbed a cloth and told me to stay in her house whilst she went in and got it. Apparently, the thing was so fat that it bled. Doesn't bear to think about, does it? Dorothy is a true gem throughout. X

No luck, again

Last week I had an email from Seetickets.com to say that there was a few more Glastonbury tickets for sale. I did get the impression that it were a very few as it said that they were card cancellations.

When Sunday morning came, I was really excited because, I finally got through to the website within 40 minutes. The site said that all the entrance tickets had gone but it was showing some (maybe only one) coach tickets available.

I decided that, although, we didn't really want to go by coach, I'd get them anyway because at least we will get in to the festival. I put in all our details and got to the stage where I was going to pay for them when the message "All festival tickets are now sold out" came through.

You can't believe how gutted I was, to get so close and still not end up with tickets. Chris is still at the Isle of Man, so I rang and told him and we were both almost in tears. He seemed to take it slightly better as he is convinced that we are going to win tickets instead, with a slogan competition in conjunction with Millets, that his brother John has done for us.

I ended up going to the annual canal festival with mum. She had never been before, so it was something different for her. The weather was absolutely gorgeous (as it has been all week now) so we had a fabulous time and afterwards we had tea at mum's; a lovely smoked salmon and herring salad. Scrumptious!