You find us in Cambridge. It’s Tabitha and Gareth’s wedding day.

We came down yesterday after another mammoth cooking session. Everything packed neatly into the car, although there certainly wouldn’t have been room for Freyja and Mark - unless we had invested in a roof rack and tied them on up there. Fortunately, they were coming down later with Paul, Carol and Claire. We left at about 1:00. Lunchtime. By nearly 2:00, we were definitely hungry. We diverted from the road to Newark and dropped into Southwell for lunch at the Saracen’s Head, then made our way to Tabitha and Gareth’s place.

We offloaded the food. And went to find the guest house. You may remember that there was a flurry of very confusing emails about the booking a week or so ago. You may therefore not be surprised to learn that the guest house was quite hard to find. No sign that said We are a Guest House. It’s also tucked down a little enclave. There was a hand written note on the door addressed to me. Come on in, it said. The door’s open. You have rooms 1 and 2. 1 and 2? What about 3? Where are Mark and Freyja going to sleep? Fortunately, they had also left a mobile phone number on the piece of paper. I rang it. The lady confirmed that we did indeed have rooms 1 and 2. But what about the third room? You have three rooms booked? We do indeed. Ah yes. Room number 4. Go through the kitchen. You see the white door? Go through that. That leads into the laundry. Now go through the next door. There is room number 4! So there is. Freyja and Mark can have that one. It is, mind you, an odd way to run things.

Ian’s room is actually quite nice. Light and airy and quite large. Ours is much smaller and a bit dark. Still. We’re not going to be in it much. And not at this moment, at all. We’re back to Tabitha and Gareth’s place to put up the gazebos (well, I supervised the putting up of the gazebos) and to talk to Kumiko, Tabitha’s friend, and Gareth’s mother, then Paul, Carol, Claire, Freyja and Mark rocked in. Maryck turned up. So did Batch. It turned into a veritable party.

It has to be said that I slept remarkably well last night. The bed was extremely comfortable. The Builder didn’t enjoy his shower this morning, though. The cloakroom on the ground level is extremely tiny. He hardly fits into it. Ian reports that he was very worried when he sat on the toilet this morning - it was exactly the same configuration as the bathroom in Paris last year where he severely put his back out! It seems there are larger bathrooms upstairs.

I don’t think they were actually expecting Freyja and Mark. Freyja reports that their room doesn’t actually appear to be expecting guests ever. There are dead insects on the window sill and the back of the wardrobe is falling off. As you can’t actually open the wardrobe (there’s a large chair in front of it), this may be something of a relief - at least they know there are no bodies stashed in there!! It seems that their room is the emergency room pressed into service when they miscount the number of rooms that have been booked.

Does it count as eating out when you have take away curry under the gazebos in Tabitha and Gareth’s back garden?