A day off!

I had today off, which was a lovely feeling when I woke up this morning!

After a lazyish start, we drove down into Northampton and went to B&Q to buy a gas bottle for the barbecue. As we'd never cooked with gas before we soon realised that you couldn't just pluck one off the shelf and take it to the checkout! Oh no! We had to go to a special counter and register and then pay for both the bottle and the gas. It came to almost £70! We were flabbergasted! A man then appeared and took us to a fenced off area of the car park which was padlocked and gave us a manky looking bottle!

Before leaving we went into Aldi next door and bought some bits and bobs for lunch and then we took a winding detour home as there were roadworks everywhere, and there'd been an accident by Abington Park as the traffic lights weren't working. Phew!

Back home we had lunch and at about 1pm I went with Sophie back into town as she had a meeting with a recruitment agency. She had seen some jobs on their website and they wanted to meet her and tell her about what the roles involved. When she emerged an hour later (I'd been sitting in the car watching the world go by as parking was notoriously difficult) she looked distinctly unimpressed! To cheer her up we went to Gallone's and had an ice-cream before we went home.

Today has been considerably cooler and this afternoon we even saw some spots of rain. It's been cloudy and overcast but the high temperatures have definitely abated. It's typical as tonight we barbecued and visions of us sitting in the garden in the evening sunshine were definitely put on hold!

Mike had gone into town with a friend so we had to go in and collect him which was a massive pain. The traffic was horrendous in town but luckily it had thinned out as we drove out into the countryside.

We prepared sauteed potatoes again with roasted vegetables and Keith cooked burgers, ribs and a couple of lamb steaks on the grill. The meat was delicious and very tender and juicy so maybe cooking on gas is better than over charcoals!