Visitors

Spring blossom, looking up to Grassmoor

When people that you haven't seen for nearly 30 years get in touch some months in advance and suggest that they would like to come and visit you while they are pottering about in Western Europe,  it seems only fair that you should excavate the bed from under all the rubbish - er, I mean things that you are in the process of sorting out and then tidy and clean the house.

Glenys, Frannie and Geoff out walking the Nature Reserve

As we are all fully aware, dates on the calendar are much closer than they appear, and they have a tendency to sneak up on you and ambush you while you are paying attention to other things.

Thus it was that on Saturday morning I had to get up extra specially early for a Saturday and find the spare bed and then clean and tidy the spare room, and then clean and tidy the rest of the house.  This took rather less time than I had anticipated.  Perhaps I should do it more often!!

The Builder explaining the art of layering hedges

Anyway. By half past ten or so we were pretty much ready for the visitors, who were due late morning sometime.  We thought we might trundle out to the Chatsworth Farm Shop for dinner supplies and Sunday roast supplies and then see what the weather was doing on Sunday and how the mood took us all and plan Sunday activities later.

The morning trundled on.

The morning turned into afternoon.

The afternoon trundled on.

No sign at all of the visitors :-S

Walking up towards home

This was something of a worry.  Glenys had said they would be coming from Preston, which is only a couple of hours drive away.  They had my mobile phone number - or I assumed they did; I had given it to them several times - but I didn't have theirs.  Eventually Lindsey, who was convinced that they would turn up at some point because they sere supposed to be staying two nights and might not enjoy sleeping out in the car, suggested putting another message on Facebook.  So I did.

And shortly thereafter my phone rang - and there they were!!!!

Our house is hiding behind a large holly tree,
 more or less in the centre of the picture.
Go right from the church tower, past the house with the scaffolding,
beyond the pointy conifer and there we are!

It seems that they had decided that our house was house #20 in the street, had gone there at about 11am and found nobody home.  After waiting for a bit they tried to ring my phone but for some reason got a Service Not Available message.  So they decided to wander into Chesterfield and have a look around. They found the market and the shops and various other nice things - and also found a McDonalds. McDonalds, of course, have free wifi. So they went in and checked Facebook and found my message!  Which alerted them to the fact that we were sitting and waiting not at house #20 but at house #2.

I do hope the goslings can read!!

And 15 minutes or so later they were sitting in our loungeroom, eating a very nice round of Brie that they had brought from Bruges and eating toast and drinking wine :-)

Sunday evening - Geoff

See - I *knew* they would turn up eventually!!!!!!!!!!!!!

And we had a really lovely weekend.  I hadn't seen Glenys and Geof since they had left Jeparit in around 1984. The Builder, of course, had never met them. And we all got on famously and had loads to talk about and there was lots to eat and drink and the weekend flew past.

Sunday evening - Glenys

We didn't get to Chatsworth on Saturday afternoon, but I had some steak in the freezer and some Japanese curry paste in the cupboard and lots of vegetables and rice. We did get to Chatsworth on Sunday morning, driving there along one of the scenic routes, and then coming back along another scenic route. We went for a lovely walk around the Avenue Wetlands and then went and inspected the allotment. We had a Sunday roast and a Sunday dessert and we drank lots more wine (apart from Glenys who was much more abstemious than the rest of us). And we went to bed at very nearly getting up time (which I am definitely getting too old to do!!) and then I came to work and they went to Chesterfield to look at the church and to Bolsover Castle to look at the hippogriffs and then on to Woodseats to look at Ross and Tabitha and Cally, and The Builder stayed at home to do Useful Things :-)

It was a great weekend. The Spare Room was very happy to be used as a bedroom rather than a junk room. The spare bed was delighted to be put to its proper purpose as a bed, rather than a table. I enjoyed the opportunity to do a bit of showcase cooking. And we all enjoyed catching up, or getting to know each other.  But I really should have taken today off!!!