So. The Builder and I came into Sheffield on Saturday morning, dropping Bea and Steve off in Woodseats as we passed through. Parked in the nearby car park, for which I have an evening and weekend parking permit. The Builder went off into town in search of some breakfast. I came into the Adsetts Centre to go to work. The Builder, suitably breakfasted, came back to the car – to find a parking ticket on it complaining that we had not paid and displayed. Well of course we didn’t. I have a parking permit! I have passed this to the powers that be at the University to sort out!

The day passed by, as days are wont to do. I finished work, and took myself to Freyja and Mark’s place where they and The Builder were packing the van preparatory to their move to Meersbrook. We all crammed ourselves into the cab of the van. Four of us. All sardined in together. So it was not, perhaps, an absolutely top notch idea for The Builder almost to run a stop sign – and almost to collide with a police car!!! Fortunately, he did stop before the stop sign and the police officer didn’t seem interested in how many people were in the van. He seemed more surprised that the van had actually stopped!!

Freyja and Mark’s new flat is a ground floor flat in a mid-Victorian villa. Well, I say ground floor. And strictly speaking, it is the ground floor. It’s just that it’s half way up a massive hill, which has 22 ½ steps to get to the front door! Still, that’s an improvement on the 80 odd steps it takes to get to their old flat. And the new one is lovely. It has a sizable bedroom, a lovely bathroom with a free standing bath with feet, a frantaniastic kitchen with a double kitchen range to die for and a very large lounge room with a huge bay window with beautiful views up to Meersbrook Park. An excellent choice. And it’s nice and close to Chesterfield Road which boasts some nice coffee shops and cafes, a whole food store, a greengrocers and Rails of Sheffield, in case we develop a sudden need for model railways. Oh – and a dolls house shop. Just in case!

On Sunday, The Builder went to Leeds to pick up a 1k litre water butt. I pottered in the garden, weeded the bed with the baby blackcurrant bushes, cleared most of the blanket weed out of the pond, sowed seeds and generally gently gardened. Freyja caught a train to Chesterfield, where The Builder picked her up on his way back from Leeds. And we all had Sunday lunch together and watched the DVD of Pirates of the Caribbean 2. A bit long, if you ask me. And very confused in parts. I was just thinking to myself that I might not bother with PotC 3 when the DVD came to an end. Bugger. It’s a cliff hanger ending. Now I’ll have to watch part 3. Sigh.

In the meantime, The Builder had a dilemma. This 1k litre water butt, which he had intended to put down in the kitchen garden by the “chook” shed, was tooooooo wide to fit through the gate. “Hmm,” said he. “I may have to put it on the allotment and get smaller water butts for the kitchen garden. Bother.”. But can’t we lift it over the top of the gate and next door’s fence? “Good plan,” said The Builder. “But I can’t do it on my own. I’ll need to someone here to help.” But Freyja and I are here. “You’ll never manage,” he said. Well, we certainly won’t manage if we don’t try. Being realistic here, there is no chance we’re going to get the metal frame over the gate. It’s too heavy and too bulky. But we can get have a go at getting the butt itself over. So. We balanced it on the rubbish bins. Hoiked it up. Balanced it on top of the fence and the gate post, where it wobbled alarmingly. And bumped it over into the back garden. At the point where we were bumping, Freyja was just this much too short to be able to reach, even on her tippy toes with fingers outstretched! But it was very useful to have her for all of the rest of it. We’ve taken it down to the orchard for the moment. We can’t take it to its final resting place - there’s a volcano in the way.

Oh. And reports of the death of the volcano proved to have been premature. It might have looked extinct on the outside, but that concealed a smoking, red hot heart, which we discovered when The Builder poked it with a garden fork! It is now, though, pretty much dead.

We took Freyja back to Sheffield, collected Mark from the old flat, loaded more boxes into the van, squished the four of us back in the cab, drove to the new flat, avoiding running through stop signs and stray passing police cars, off-loaded the boxes and came back home to spend the evening in the garden, potting on seedlings and drinking wine and admiring the surroundings. It’s not dark until after half past nine now, so it was a very pleasant time out in the garden.

We were coming in to work today, in the van. The Builder is still working at the BT building near The Moor. As we were driving along, we passed the turn off to Freyja’s new place. I looked to see if she was at the bus stop or walking along but there was no sign of her. We turned off the road and I forgot about her. Suddenly The Builder exclaimed: That’s Freyja! And stopped the van. As long as The Builder is working at BT, we’ll be passing by at around that time most mornings. He’ll look out for her tomorrow at the bottom of her road. I’m on an evening shift, so will be loitering at home.

The Cutty Sark is on fire :-(