We had a lovely time in Salisbury at the weekend. We had primarily gone to visit The Builder's mother but left a little earlier on Saturday than is our usual habit, largely because I wanted to have a prowl in the cook shops in Salisbury and they, oddly for a tourist city, are not open on Sunday mornings.

We had a very pleasant lunch in the Air Balloon en route.

Pottered about in Lakeland and in Dingham's (which is a tardis of a cook shop - it goes on for ever!!) and bought a lovely Le Crueset pie/lasagne dish which was £14 instead of nearly £30. Alas, Dingham's didn't have any of the bench top pizza ovens they had had when last I was in there. But that's OK. I'm sure I can get one of those from somewhere. We pottered about in town and then made our way out to The Swan @ Stoford, where we were given a warm welcome and a magnificent dinner, not to mention a wonderful Sunday breakfast.

Sunday was a lovely day so after breakfast we went and collected Gwen and took her for a drive out in the New Forest. We went to lots of places where she had lived when her boys were lads. A real memory trip. And we saw pigs and cows and ponies roaming around in the forest. But npot many deer. Don't know where they were. We headed back to The Swan for Sunday lunch and then took Gwen home again and made our way in an orderly manner back to Tupton.

So really it was a very quiet weekend. Except it was a quiet Salisbury weekend, rather than a quiet At Home weekend. Which is fine by me. I like Salisbury almost as much as I like Home.

For the last few weeks I have had a low level, persistent and irritating cold. This was made all the more irritating at the weekend by the sudden onset of out-of-season hayfever :-( My eyes itched, my nose ran and I sneezed and sneezed and sneezed and sneezed. I think it might have been caused by dust and seeds. Our local farmers are still harvesting something and it is certainly very dusty. But I wish the irritating cold would go away!!

Time for coffee and then make a proper start to the week. It's not a bad week in prospect, this one. Not too many teaching sessions, some quite interesting things in the diary (like interviewing for a research project I seem to have become involved in, employing students to create a web resource for first years), general pleasantness. And I am getting used to bringing myself in and out of work. It allows for rather more flexibility than I had when The Builder was coming too. I might not come in until late on Wednesday!!