Alas - poor Freyja

Right. The radio’s come on. Rise and shine. Make the tea. Rush about. Get showered and dressed. Hurry, hurry …

But it’s Saturday. I’m not working. The Builder isn’t working. And even if we were working, we never need to be up and moving by 6am on a Saturday.

Today we do, however. We need to be at Freyja’s place by about 7:30 and it takes about half an hour when there is no traffic.

Mind you – there is a great deal to be said for driving through Woodseats at 7:30 in the morning. There is no traffic at all! It’s almost unheard of for us to pass through all the traffic lights without having to stop!

So, there we were, outside Freyja’s flat just after 7:30, where she was sat in the window watching out for us. Much worse for her than for us. She works 4-midnight and hadn’t been to bed until 2 am and had to be up by 7. As did Mark. They came down to the car armed with pillows!

So where were we all going at such an ungodly hour on a Saturday morning? We were off to the Crewe campus of Manchester Metropolitan University (Cheshire) where Freyja had been offered a place for September to study American Popular Culture, combined with a minor in Film and Television. We were all off to an Open Day to find out all about it. I was armed with a big, thick book, just in case it was all really dull!

It’s a lovely drive from Sheffield to Crewe. It meanders through the Peak District and then across the Derbyshire and Cheshire countryside. Lots of things for us to explore when Freyja and Mark move there in September. Hope it isn’t absolutely always as misty as it was yesterday morning!

We arrived in plenty of time for the Open Day. Even more so because the 9:30 kick off was for registration and refreshments. The main event didn’t start until 10:30. Freyja went to register, only to find that she wasn’t on the list of attendees. Which was odd, because she had confirmation details that she was on the list, plus, of course, had all the information.

Then – CALAMITY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! They told her that she should have received a letter telling her that the American Popular Culture course had been cancelled for lack of applicants. They were very sorry she hadn’t received the letter but since she was there perhaps she could consider do the Film Studies course combined with one of these other options. Abuse Studies, perhaps? Crime Studies? Oooo – Geography.

Alas, Freyja only wanted to do the American Popular Studies course. She had quite specifically applied for this course because that was entirely what it was – no history or politics or sociology attached, which is what was on offer at other Universities offering American Studies. No University course for Freyja in September :-(

Nothing for it but to turn around and go home, then. Although – they had given us vouchers for lunch. We spent them on breakfast instead. Freyja and Mark had veggie sausages, potato hash browns and toast. The Builder and I had baked beans and eggs on toast. And we all had cups of tea. If MMU (Cheshire) was going to drag us all the way over to Crewe at the crack of dawn on a Saturday morning for no obvious purpose – then we were going to have breakfast at their expense!!

Poor Freyja. This is the second time she’s been thwarted in her ambition to go and study in America. She tried before, you may remember, when she was 18 and in Australia and was applying for an exchange program and was told when the whole thing was pretty much organised that she missed the age deadline by one month.

We dropped Freyja and Mark back at their place and then made our way back to Tupton. We had lunch in the Telmere Arms – where we had last eaten on New Year's Eve and my fishy crumble was too salty. They’ve cut back on the amount of salt they put in their food since then. To practically nothing!!

I had Friday off. By ten thirty I had cleaned the house from top to bottom so that it was all squeaky, shiny clean. And I stood on the end of the vacuum cleaner and broke it. I’m beginning to think I really ought not to clean anything ever again!

Right. Off to get dressed. The Builder and I are heading to the allotment before the grey, threatening clouds actually deliver rain!