Crowds!

We awoke to a grey day which was a bit disappointing, even though the weather forecast had predicted a bit of a wash out for the Easter weekend so it was no real surprise!

Mike had gone out last night to the village and had then texted me to say he was staying with a friend so it was a bit of a shock to take a call from him asking us to pick him up from an address in Rushden! I was very annoyed as I was just about to make myself some toast and had no idea he was there. I thought he was going to be walking home!

Keith and I sloshed our way over to get him and all I can say is...thank goodness for Google Maps on my phone. The app got us there without a wrong turning! He was due to start work at 12pm so we were cutting it very fine and had to delay my parents coming over to see us. However, when we arrived home and he disappeared to have a shower, he was told he wasn't needed at work after all.

Mum and Dad arrived bearing an Easter Egg for Mike, an Accessorize voucher for Sophie and a new garden shrub for Keith and I. It's called "Angel in the Garden" and is a Camellia, so I will look forward to finding a place to plant it and may take out some unwanted bushes that have gone a bit rampant.

After Mum and Dad had gone Sophie and I drove into town and went to Homesense on St James Retail Park. We enjoyed a drink in Starbucks first, but Sophie's attempts to re-create that Florida feeling we had at the Starbucks there didn't go too well. For a start we were sitting inside as outside was cold and rainy and everyone looked miserable! It's no wonder!

We walked to Homesense and the place was packed. The retail park is undergoing a bit of a hit at the moment as we had already lost BHS and now Toys R Us are in the process of shutting down. A new store had opened where Brantano's used to be, which was good, but the place was starting to look a bit shabby around the edges and Homesense was the only place that looked really busy. The BHS store was still vacant and looked rundown and neglected.

We had a mooch about but I wasn't in the mood to buy anything for the house or garden. If the weather had been lovely I would have been tempted but what was the point at the moment? Sophie picked out a cleanser and I picked up a twin set of soap and moisturising lotion for the cloakroom but changed my mind when I realised I was paying over the top for the two products - £7.99...really?

I was a bit fed up with the crowds of people and constantly being asked to move when I was looking at the products so we left and went to the Weston Favell Centre, as Sophie was interested in finding out the cost of a series of tanning sessions at a place called Indigo Sun. She is graduating in July and wants to look her best. With our summers she needs a little boost!

Again, the place was packed with people so we hurriedly left and decided to head home. Sophie couldn't get over how everywhere was so packed and I said that was the reason I never went anywhere while she was at work as it was so busy! She has taken today and next Saturday off work as it's her "Birthday Week"!

Bank holiday working and a blast from the past...

I could have taken today off work but I wanted to save some days for next week so I opted to go in and do the 9am until 4pm shift. The leisure centre was only open for these hours anyway so it was pretty strange to arrive and be too early to go through the public entrance! I had to go around the back, and luckily I remembered the code to get in!

I worked with Sadie until she left at 2pm and we mostly booked cinema tickets for people. Peter Rabbit must be a huge hit and we were sold out for the two screenings today! To be honest, I didn't mind being at work as the weather was atrocious and rained for the whole day. When I left at 4pm it was really coming down heavily and the roads were starting to flood.

Keith and Sophie went to get ready as tonight we were due to meet my old school friend Julia in Milton Keynes along with her family. I went to fetch Mike from work and then freshened up when we arrived back home.

The journey to Milton Keynes was horrible. It continued to rain heavily and some people carried on driving as if the weather was dry and sunny, ignoring the fact that the roads were covered in water and throwing up huge arcs of spray behind them. We managed to park easily and hurried to the restaurants using umbrellas. It was nasty!

I'd booked a table at Zizzi as they had a good vegan menu for Julia and her husband, Rob. We walked in to find we were the first to arrive and ordered some drinks. Mike and Keith had a beer each at £6.50 a bottle! Sophie and I took the waitress's advice and ordered a bottle of Pinot Grigio as it was cheaper to order that way than keep having glasses!

While we were waiting we scanned the square at the front of the restaurant and just when we were beginning to think they had been held up, we saw Julia and her children, Sasha and Evan. There was a flurry of greetings and my old school friend hadn't changed a bit! She was still slim and lovely! The children sat at the end of the table and seemed a bit quiet and reserved. I chatted away to Julia and when her husband arrived after parking the car, he was very friendly and charming. We all got on very well together and my two certainly took part in the conversation, which was great.

I hadn't been that impressed with the food when we ate at a Zizzi on New Year's Day in Stratford, but tonight I was pleasantly surprised. I chose the Chicken Prosciutto with herby potatoes and green beans and the meal was delicious. Mike and Sophie had pizzas while Keith opted for the lamb shank, which he said was good, but on the small side.

Julia and her husband shared a vegan spaghetti bolognese and a pizza and they certainly had plenty to choose from, which was a relief. They even ordered a vegan chocolate pudding and I was really impressed! As we had been drinking beer and wine and Julia's family hadn't, we made sure we had two separate bills and ours was a whacking £50 more than theirs! Blimey!

It was sad to say goodbye but it's great that I can keep up with Julia on Facebook so I wished them a safe journey home tomorrow and hoped that we'd be seeing each other again soon. We returned home on the M1 and the rain still hadn't let up!

A bit of a fright...

Today hasn't been the best of days and the stress increased as the morning wore on! I was working with Sue and we were busy with calls first thing. Sheila chose that moment to come over and ask if I wanted to do another, quite complicated, job for her. I was willing but she explained it so quickly that I lost track of what I had to do, and the phone kept ringing as she talked to me!

As tomorrow is the first day of the Easter holidays we had lots of calls from people booking cinema tickets and Peter Rabbit is what everyone wants to see! We even had a woman call who wanted to change her tickets to another day, another complicated procedure that Sue and I had to learn how to do!

Things quietened down a bit around lunchtime but I agreed with Sheila that the job she wanted me to do was too complicated to handle in between calls so we gave up. We also had to deal with orders from one of the managers and uncharacteristically, one of them was wrong so I had to wait for him to call me back with the correct information, which he did at about a minute to 2pm. I was on the brink of going home when I realised I had to go back in and finish the order off as tomorrow is a Bank Holiday.

Sue helped me, thank goodness, and I called Sophie to say I would be a little late picking her up from the pub she was having lunch at. I did the order, dashed to the car and drove to go and get Sophie, managing to call her on the hands free on the way to say I was almost there.

However, her phone went straight to voicemail, which was a little strange as I'd only spoken to her fifteen minutes before. I kept on calling her and when I arrived at the pub (opposite uni) she wasn't waiting for me. Feeling a bit annoyed as I had just minutes to pick her up and get home, I texted her and then decided to go inside to find her.

I went in and searched everywhere but there was no sign of my daughter and no sign of the friends she'd been with, either. I saw a woman who looked like her then realised the woman had a baby so that definitely wasn't her! By now I was starting to get a little worried as Sophie is 100% reliable and will always be where she says she'll be. I kept on calling, went outside to the garden area, even though it was a chilly, dreary day but I still couldn't find her.

I scanned the car park to see if she was sitting in a friend's car and even went to the entrance to see if she was waiting by the road but nothing. I went back inside in case she'd been in the loo and then called Keith in a bit of a panic as I still couldn't get hold of her on the phone and she hadn't answered my text, something that is highly unusual.

He told me to calm down but it was so uncharacteristic of Sophie to disappear like that, that I really thought something had happened to her. My last hope was to see if she was waiting for me at uni so I drove like a maniac the short distance down the road and sped into the campus, anxiously searching the students at the bus stop...and there she was. My relief was enormous, as was hers, as she'd thought I'd been in an accident as I was so late! Apparently, she'd told me she was back at uni when I called to say I'd be late but I hadn't heard her in my haste to get back to the office!

When we arrived home Keith said I was mad to worry like that and I suppose he's right, but normally she's exactly where she says she'll be which is why I was worried I couldn't contact her. Her phone had died on her minutes after I'd called her but then had miraculously come back to life as I arrived at uni. She has definitely decided to get a new phone now!

It was my last session at the after school club and thankfully we had very few children attend, and they were all gone by 5.15pm so we had a lovely early evening. Lisa was very pleased, even though she'd predicted we'd still be there at 6pm!

Rain, rain, rain...

The weather today has been really horrible with grey skies and rain. I just hope it improves over the Easter weekend!

We went to see Mum and Dad first thing for a cup of coffee and to discuss their house which is still up for sale. I urged them to take it off the market as I had visions of them being homeless because they'd received an offer for it! I still harbour hopes that the sale of next door will fall through but I won't hold my breath.

Sophie drove us to the Weston Favell Centre after we said goodbye to Mum and Dad and it was a nasty journey because the A43 was busy and the rain continued to fall, making puddles along the side of the road. It was the first time Sophie had ever really driven in such bad weather and it was a tad stressful for her and for us!

In Tesco I bought some chocolate eggs for the children at school and then we popped down to Riverside to go to Boots, to get what Sophie couldn't find yesterday. Keith treated us to a cup of coffee and a crispy cornflake cake and then it was home to catch up with jobs for a couple of hours.

Mike went to Brixworth as he was heading out to town with some mates so I wasn't expecting him back until tomorrow. Wednesday night is "Student Night" in Northampton and it's best not to ask what he gets up to or who he stays with!

Ladies who lunch...

Mike started college slightly later today, at 11.30am so Sophie and I dropped him off and drove to Market Harborough. On the way we realised we hadn't any change with us for parking so I was very glad I found a space on the street where I could leave the car for up to two hours!

Sophie wanted to take some clothes back to New Look so we went there first and she found another couple of tops that she liked. She did a swap and then we walked to Boots, popping into a delicatessen first as we were looking for a mushroom sauce to go with our breaded pork escalopes this evening. We had no luck there or in Boots, where my daughter was after some moisturiser, so we called it a day and decided to have lunch at Farndon Fields.

As expected the farm shop was packed and the restaurant busy with ladies of a certain age who obviously like to lunch. We had a short wait for a table but we didn't mind as we had plenty of time, even though both of us were hungry! I couldn't decide between a wrap or a sandwich but the waiter made up my mind when he said they'd run out of fried chicken, so the sandwich it was!

It was a delicious lunch, as ever, but the chips defeated me today! After we'd eaten we had a mooch in the shop and picked out a mushroom sauce and a packet of pine nuts for the exorbitant price of over £8 for the two items! I knew I should have bought them in Tesco! Before we went back to the car we spotted some goats and Sophie had a chat with one of them:

We splashed our way home as today has been grey and dreary with rain and the clean cars of Sunday are a distant memory! This morning, on the way to take Mike, the mud on the road was unbelievable and I met the tractor as it was coming out of the field, its huge wheels caked in thick, brown goo! It was also quite slippery and when we got home I warned Keith about it as, with the drizzle, the road had the potential to be dangerous.

After-school club was not busy and we're all winding down now for the Easter holidays which start on Friday. The children took the large, padded mat out and spent an hour jumping and somersaulting which raised quite a few eyebrows from the parents when they collected their offspring!

Sophie and I cooked dinner in the evening and I thought the breaded escalopes were delicious but Keith disagreed, which was a shame as I hoped we'd found a new family favourite. The sauce we bought in Farndon Fields was OK but we preferred the Tesco Finest one at half the price!

Feeling a bit weary!

I found it a bit hard getting up this morning as I was a wee bit tired! I drove myself into work as the car park I use has introduced ANPR cameras and you're only allowed to park there if you are attending the leisure centre, so it has emptied out dramatically! I had to email the duty managers with my car registrations so that should protect me from getting a ticket!

Work was OK and the time went by quite quickly. It was also a lot quieter! At 2pm I drove home and had a quick chat with Keith and Sophie before going to school. The previously sunny weather had turned a bit cloudy but we were still able to get out into the playground for a while. It may be the last time as rain is forecast for the rest of the week.

Unfortunately, Lisa and I were at work right until the end as we had the same little girl in who was with us on Friday and I think her mum wanted to prove a point with us, after an email had been sent asking her to be on time. She arrived with literally minutes to spare which made both of us annoyed as it's the little girl who suffers.

It was heaven to get home and I fell asleep, briefly, on the sofa before I helped Keith cook liver and bacon for dinner. The children had no intention of eating the stuff so they had ready meals. I have to say it was delicious and went very well with a nice glass of red!

Spring forward...

So, the clocks went forward last night and we almost forgot! Thank goodness for reminders from people on Facebook!

Keith went for a walk this morning and Sophie and I took Mike to work earlier than usual. We'd arranged to pick Keith up on the causeway at Pitsford reservoir but he was running a little late so we sat and read the papers for half an hour. I had a lot planned today, so the delay was a little annoying!

We dropped Keith off at home so he could get a bath and drove over to Mum and Dad's for coffee. We had a good chat but I was itching to get home and get out into the Spring sunshine as both cars were filthy and I wanted to do a bit of gardening in the front.

I washed Sophie's car inside and out and then started on mine, having a break for lunch before hoovering it out inside and giving all the trims a wash. I have never seen my car so dirty as the mud was plastered all over the back of it from one of our local roads.

I went inside to proof read Sophie's latest assignment then went back outside to tackle the front garden and do some weeding and clearing of leaves. A lot of our neighbours were out as well - it's amazing what a bit of sun can do!

While I finished off the front garden Sophie made a traybake with a whole jar of Nutella from one of the recipes in our daily newspaper. Licking out the bowl was delicious!