Caravan Diary, Day 23

Picnic with toys

A bank holiday weekend characterised by good intentions, zero follow through, fabulous weather (against the odds!) and sheer indulgence. All's well in the Schäfer household :-)

I can report that the loft is now empty. Cleared by two nice young blokes; one quiet and one trendy, who went about their business efficiently and still spent a good two hours until the job was done! Both seemed as bewildered by the large selection of beheaded Barbie dolls as we had been.

I got five whole hours of child-free bliss on Friday night when I went to the Stratford Comedy Festival with Kedi. I haven't laughed as much since we saw Dave Gorman at the Warwick Arts Centre yonks ago. It was brilliant! The evening was gilded with nice dinner afterwards. What else can a girl ask for?

The highlight on Saturday must have been the SKY engineer's visit. Not only can we now enjoy an unbelievable choice of channels (which I am sure we will never fully explore. I am usually happy enough with BBC1 and 2 and Channel 4...) and have a clever SKY box thingamejiggy, no: bribed by constant supply of chilled apple juice, he also ran what feels like several hundred yards of extra cable into the bedroom, which means my planned sewing/craft corner will have entertainment of the audio visual kind. The guy was also super-good with Willem and involved him in the setup by letting him terminate cables etc. He felt like a proper grown-up :-)

This is the life!

Sunday was spent almost entirely in our garden enjoying the unexpected sunshine. We must have left the house for something, but it's just a very hazy memory which must have got wiped by the copious amounts of Pimm's and lemonade that accompanied our barbecue in the evening.

Mats - very happy with his ball

And then there was today, which was under the zodiac of boys' toys: Hendrik went out and bought us a lawn mower, which was duly tested and deemed more than adequate. And then we scoured Coventry's shops for football goals for Willem, which we were just about able to try out before the weather turned chilly. We are all fantasizing about a summer party now, at which we can have an inaugural little tournament. Does anyone know when the weather's going to be good in July/August?

The list of things we DIDN'T do this weekend, despite best intentions, is long and includes stripping the wallpaper in the staircase and hallway and fitting the newly procured carpet in our caravan (I decided to give the local economy a boost on Friday by buying an offcut at the little carpet store round the corner. £30 to do the whole camper. I say!).

Whatever! There's a whole week without tradesmen ahead of us, who have all disappeared since it's half-term. Surely Mats will sleep at some point so I can get on with yet more wallpaper stripping?...