Don't get me wrong, there are moments during different days when it is really quite nice, but then it changes suddenly, so it is often unreliable. The winds this week in Britain and Nederlands have been strong, to say the least. Today it has eased remarkably.
We had five young folk visit on Friday evening at 5pm, stayed for dinner and so on until midnight when they all left for a club in Centrum, returning at 5am and all bunking down in the spare room (quite large enough). Four girls (one, Rene's niece Lotte) and one bloke (from the army). Really lovely people, just boundless energy which exhausts me, especially after working five days in a row. I got home at 4:45 Friday to see them arrive at 4:55 - but they were marvellous. They left at 2pm yesterday to go home to Brabbant (their province in the south) to watch the Nederlands-Denmark Euro Cup first round match (Holland lost 0-1).
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| Nice shirt design for Oranje |
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| The bathroom cabinet was bought online - very smart! |
The final measures and quotes for the kitchen have been done, and it is still going to be the first week of September, but it will be just fantastic when it is installed. This weekend, with catering for seven, the inadequacies of our current small kitchen became very apparent. Fabulous! Can't wait! Mind you, with the weeks and months zooming by as they are, September will be upon us in no time.
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| Too dark to see any detail, but seriously blockout. |
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| You get an idea of the dinning room curtains - very smart. |
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| These curtains don't block out the light, merely filter it. Cosy! |
Had an enjoyable, if tiring, week of cover at the same school. Three days with a Reception (preschool) class, then a 4 and a 3. It is a very large school (Reception to Year 13) with 1350 students, and the facilities are very generous as well. It is lovely working in the cooperative environment, and I'm getting to know the 67 primary staff better. I'm working tomorrow (Monday) then don't have any bookings until we return from Lannion in Britanny. We'll be there for 9 days. We'll travel by train, with the Thalys to Paris first, then a TGV towards Brest.
We get off at Saint-Brieuc and change to a local train for the last hour. First class travel, except for regional trains. We go Tuesday next week after we have entertained a friend from Brisbane (Tom) who has been in Manchester and Berlin visiting his father and checking on his flat and home in Manchester and Bostock. He's here for three nights, during which time on Saturday the three of us go to Rotterdam to have a day with friends from Bribie Island who are doing two cruises on the Holland America 'Rotterdam'. They have a day in port, so the five of us will have the day together in town somewhere. Tom goes back to Manchester midday Monday, and we leave on the following day to France. In France we're meeting up with friends who have done a house swap for a month. There will also be two other couples there during our stay. They've been in Europe already for over two months. Rene and I are looking forward to the relaxation and change of scenery after a busy few months.
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| A swan and a new family of cygnets beside the lake I walked beside to the shops Wednesday. |
We're Skyping with Polly and Kit at 5pm from their home in the US, then we are walking to the beach for dinner. We haven't had a dinner out for ages. I'm getting over an annoying cold, so a bit of walking won't do me any harm. I went out shopping for fresh bread yesterday for our guests brunch and nearly got blown towards Denmark. Today ought to get better as it progresses, so here's hoping...
