It was quite a good weekend, in the end.  It had loomed as quite busy and a bit scary.  We were booked to do Bishops' House on Saturday morning, then we needed to do a bit of shopping.  Then we were booked to stay at Tabitha and Gareth's place overnight to babysit Cally while Tabitha went to a Leaving Do and Gareth went to a birthday party.  THEN I was supposed to be working on Sunday from 9 - 3:30.  Complicating all of this was the fact that if I don't do various domestic things on a Saturday morning, they don't get done until the following Saturday morning.  And next Saturday morning we are heading to Wiltshire for the weekend.

So I LEAPED out of bed bright and early and well before dawn had cracked on Saturday morning.  I flung together a batch of lemon cupcakes and put them in the oven.  I washed up Friday evening's dinner dishes.  And I made a start on the ironing, for as it stood I really didn't have any clothes that were both ironed and suitable for wearing to a Open Day at work where we want to impress the visitors.

Text message!  Nearly ignored it because it was, after all, still very early and in any case I was ironing and in a hurry. Fortunately I decided to look at it and found it was from Tabitha.  Cally had been awake pretty much since 3am and so Tabitha had decided not to go out that evening.  No need for us to babysit and stay over.  So now no need for rushing about.  Suddenly the day took on a much calmer hue.

So I slowed down with the ironing and took the cupcakes out of the oven nicely baked and we moseyed into Sheffield in a calm and orderly manner.  We did call in at Tabitha and Gareth's place on the way home - they were holding our wine to ransom.  We found that Tabitha was at work, Cally was absolutely dead to the world in her pusher and Gareth was peacefully sleeping on the couch.  We soon fixed Gareth's peaceful slumbers!!

You might wonder how long it took me to make the connection on Sunday morning between showing Stella and Tony the frost on the roof of the house across the road, and the frost on the branches of the trees and the frost in the garden - and the possibility that the car might also be just a tiny touch frosty when I left to head to the Open Day.  You might think that I would have thought that the car would need scraping down and have left extra time. But no.  The first I thought of it was when I got to the car and found it covered in thick permafrost-like freeziness.  I set to to scrape the windows.  Unsuccessfully. I put the heater on and the rear demister. Still no scraping action. Eventually, a bit of ice decided to give up.  I was making slow but steady progress when The Builder appeared to find out why I hadn't actually driven away yet.  Three scrapes from him and the ice was gone and I could make my way back into Sheffield!!

I have to say that it was definitely a grey, gloomy and chilly day. But at least it wasn't snowing.  I had a text message from Barb in Warminster at about 9:15 to say it was snowing at her place. And the lunchtime news reported quite a lot of snow across Wiltshire.

No snow for us, although I think that visitor numbers were a bit down. But the visitors who did come to see us were happy and cheery and friendly and it was a good day.  I must admit that I was really rather tired by the time it came to an end though. Went home, had dinner, had a couple of glasses of wine - and was absolutely out to it by the time Countryfile came on.  Fortunately Gareth wasn't about to disturb my sofa-y slumbers :-D

Our kitchen tap has been dripping with enthusiasm for a few weeks.  Both The Builder and I are perfectly capable of changing the washer in a tap, but ours is a combination tap so more difficult to deal with - and it is almost impossible to turn the water off in the kitchen. The tap which does that is hidden underneath and at the back of the fridge (not hidden by us, I hasten to add) and in any case doesn't work. We pondered where we might find a plumber who would be prepared to turn out just to change a washer.  And lo, in the Chesterfield Shoppers' Guide (a monthly, free publication which normally is not terribly useful) there was a plumber declaring that no job was too big and no job was too small.  So The Builder rang him and within a couple of hours he had turned up, changed the washer, discussed various other plumbing alterations we have vaguely in mind, and gone away again, leaving The Builder a mere £40 lighter in his wallet.  Excellent.  And the tap no longer drips.

It was four weeks until the start of the Grand World Tour on Saturday.  It'll be here before we know it!