The Importance of Being Idle

It's A Mini Adventure!

Wow, so much to say! As ever, I'll try to be chronological, but I can't guarantee anything...
So, Thursday I went off to meet Ronnie for our camping holiday! I got to the campsite a few minutes before her as she'd gone to a local chippie to get dinner. We checked ourselves in, ate our lunch, and then assembled our tent! It took a while; we were in a nicely sheltered area but the ground was knotty with the roots of the leilandii that we were sheltering behind, so it took a good bit of effort to get the pegs into the ground. Nonetheless, we got it all sorted, and our little home from home took shape! That night we went out to HGs for karaoke night, but there was nobody there for AGES so I ended up doing about half a dozen songs (some of them Eurovision duets! hehe) to fill in the time until the rest of the crowd finally got there. We weren't out terribly late 'cos Ronnie had work the next day. Sleeping in the tent was cool, not that I slept much I seemed too fascinated by all the sounds of wildlife around us! I'm convinced there was a small family of ducks that spent the night circling us, although they probably had better things to do with their time...
Friday morning Ronnie left early for work, so I had a bit of a lie in, then a shower, then went on a mad mission to meet her for lunch! I'd only ever been to the place where she worked once before, and I didn't have a map on me, so it took me a while to piece it together, but I got there in time to surprise her, which was nice. After lunch I took my Ronnie-map (she draws excellent little maps) and went and explored town for a while, before going back to the campsite to sunbathe for the rest of the afternoon! We went out on a bit of a pubcrawl with some of her mates Friday night, Ronnie was drinking and I was driving! It was another good night, and we retired to our tent tired but happy!
Saturday we went to look at another house (the one with the brown windows and door here) which we liked. To be honest this one is a little bigger and roomier than the other one, and has a bit more garden to it, all for the same money. We liked this one straight away, it's nice and modern and I think we were both imagining living there! So we put in our application for it Monday morning... but that's skipping ahead. We went to lunch in Frankie and Benny's, then went to see Mission Impossible III, before hitting the pubs and clubs again! I was well hammered by the time we got to the Met Lounge that night, and apparently I alternated between dancing about like a lunatic and sitting in the corner complaining that I felt sick! All I remember was having a good time!
Sunday was the Dragon Boat race! Ronnie was crew in one of the boats. Her first race was at an ungodly hour, so we had to get up about 7.30 to make it there in time! It rained non-stop ALL day, but we still had a great time! We bumped into a mate and ended up hanging out with him for most of the afternoon, visiting the beer tent, watching the juggler, and playing laser tag, amongst other things! By four o'clock that afternoon Ronnie's team had been knocked out of the competition, and it'd stopped raining, so we figured it was time to go and pack up the campsite... After that we nipped back to her parents house to change into dry clothes, and then we went out for a lovely meal at the Peking Grain Barge, a floating chinese restaurant just a little up the river from where the Dragon Boat racing had been. I didn't really know what to order, so Ronnie picked a selection of dishes and we shared. It was a great meal, and I even learned how to eat with chopsticks! It was a perfect end to our little adventure, peaceful and romantic. It really had been like a little holiday, even though we were camped all of two miles from Ronnie's parents house! I'd almost forgotten that I didn't live in a tent in Peterborough, it seemed so strange to be back here again...
Not that I was for long. Monday was spent largely sleeping and doing tons of washing of all the things that'd got shockingly muddy over the course of our weekend away!
Tuesday was my Grans funeral. That wasn't as bad as I expected, perhaps because it'd been two weeks by then, and we'd all kinda got used to the idea that she was gone. That said it obviously wasn't a bundle of laughs. I'm glad Ronnie was there, it was nice to have her brightness around. I was surprised by how religious the service was, given that we're not a family of God, but I guess it's what she would've wanted. I didn't listen to the vicar anyway, I spent the time thinking about Grandma (and Grandad) and what they'd meant to me, things they'd done during their lives. Later, back at the house, going through old things Dad showed me Grandads citation for the Military Medal back when he was an ambulance driver during WWII. When he was stationed on Sicily, he apparently made eleven seperate runs under heavy shelling, bringing back a total of sixty-three casualties in that one day alone. That's something pretty incredible to think about, sixty-three lives saved because of him. I doubt that I'll do anything of such worth in my lifetime. Stu found a pic of them together and sent me a copy. It's how I always remember them, smiling.

posted by BadMonkey @ 6:36 PM