What are you all up to

Well a sad farewell to Boa Vista and left at 25C and landed in Manchester to an icy blast when the door opened at 3C at 9.30 pm. Like everyone else wearing shorts perhaps wasn't a good idea.

A great interesting airport, we were the only flight that afternoon, it's all open air really as you can see.

I would definitely recommend Cape Verde, it was certainly warmer than the Canaries and the RUI  hotel fantastic. The only very slight negative is the flight time of about 5 and a half hours, it's not the time but for winter it's just a stretched 737 so an extra legroom seat would have been good.

And it's so cold here!

An unscheduled morning at DD's house, at least the sun is shining.

Yesterday we were here to look after the boys, and DD had to go into her office in town.  OH found a mountain of washing waiting to be done, so had me tidy away my grouting stuff, and requested that I remove various cardboard boxes to the garage.  Unfortunately the electrically operated garage door would not open, so I had to use the emergency release cable, which I had fitted last time this happened.  This was not easy, but brute force won through in the end.

Boxes were duly removed and then problem investigated, which turned out to be a broken wire in the unit, so I agreed to come back today to fix it.  Hopefully it will not take too long.

We were in the area anyway as we went to pick up a huge Ikea solid birch table that someone was giving away.  A basement flat with reasonable street parking, and the strong young man took one look at me and offered to carry all the bits to the car!  Being solid wood, the bits are very heavy, so I was glad of the offer.

The table will either end up being re-made into a large coffee table for DD's lounge, age, children and beer bottles have taken their toll on her present one, or the timber used to make various other smaller items.

On our way here we called in at the new Lidl store nearby which just opened yesterday.  It is HUGE!    We had a voucher for £5 off £25, so stocked up on toilet rolls, washing pods and a few items for the fridge.

Little Nathan was not well yesterday, quite pale and tired when I fetched him from nursery,  just wanting Mummy.  We went along the hall to where Mummy usually is when working from home, just to show him that she really was not there, and he promptly threw up all over me.....and the floor.......3 times.  So that was a right mess to be cleared up.  He then fell asleep and after about 20 minutes was awake again and perfectly fine.  I had to borrow some clothes to go home in.

Must have been something he had eaten that had not agreed with him as he went on later to eat dinner and is fine today.

Tonight we’re going out to celebrate. Six of us - Henry and I, and our son and family from next door, who have worked so hard whilst he was struggling before his new hip, and then during recovery.

There’s three birthdays to celebrate from the last couple of months. And today we began to use our new solar system ! The panels are up and connected to whatever it has to connect to. It’s a bit of a mystery to me, and at the moment it’s difficult to see what’s happening (a box with a display is way up high out of the way of the cows, unless you have a ladder). But by Tuesday we will have an App and it will give me something else to look at (as well as the CCTV).

A day late in going to Waitrose today as we had our Lunch Club yesterday.

Was interested to see how the salad and veg crisis had impacted but there still seemed to be enough of everything we wanted. Did see one lady with three quite large bags of tomatoes in her trolley but who am I to judge? There were however plenty of turnips if anyone was inclined to follow the advice of a certain Government Minister!!! 

David

Just slowing catching up with all things. And yes it just feels so cold. 

Thanks for all the kind comments and yes for anyone interested it was the RUI Karamboa which was refurbished last year with old pools taken out and new ones put in. It 's a wonderful place, at the moment the hotel is the resort, huge though it is, and there's a few miles of desert around it. No doubt in years times more and more hotels will be built. The whole place is very safe for tourists as we're told the government is very very keen to get tourist and keep them coming back as really that's the only source of income so any sort of anti-tourist behaviour is dealt with very 'severely' (whatever that means).

The hotel had everything, on the beach with, five pools (plus the 40 odd private ones like ours) and 7 restaurants and I didn't count the bars but there was a few including two swim up pool ones. Lots of activities and the shows were excellent at night. We stayed mainly by our pool apart from feeding times but that's what we wanted. There were trips on quad bikes (you could go all around the island on the beaches) and 4x4's into the interior, also sailing trips with beach BBQ's. A walk to the largest town is possible just by following the beach!

In fact we've booked to go back this time next year!

https://www.remodelista.com/products/norden-extendable-table/

this is the original table

Grand photos from Heddlo and CS. Both seem to have had holidays that will be hard to forget.

Glad that most of your work is now complete B2, and that you can now have the house and garden to yourselves.

Pleased to read that the antibiotics are working for those with a cough.

We were in Aldi today and there was plenty of veg and fruit, although I did see a note about restrictions on some items. We have had two fine sunny days although there was a little rain through each of the last three nights, which resulted in a sprinkling of snow on some of the Lakeland hills and Cross Fell.

A couple of photos from our day out yesterday. Low Garden Bridge and an honourable gent in his mausoleum.