A Right Washout

Mike was lucky enough to celebrate his birthday twice over last week. The first time was dinner with friends in the best restaurant in Whiststable, namely Wheelers. This place has been in situ for over a century and the decor certainly relects that. Inside is a tiny little dining area, which vaguely resembles Ena Sharples back room, complete with gaudy and tasteless china and artifacts adorning the shelves and mantlepiece.

They certainly don't stand on ceremony here as it is paper napkins and glasses that look like they came from a petrol station in the 70's. Luckily it is a BYO, which is great, so we went armed with 2 lovely bottles of champers. Despite the low key atmosphere, the food really is to die for and its sumptuous menu always pleases. So we tucked into beautiful crab cakes, home made smoked salmon, lobster and baked cod, yummy scrummy.

Three days later on Mikes actual birthday, I had planned a wonderful surprise which consisted of a luxury picnic followed by an outside production of the Taming of the Shrew set in the grounds of St Augustines Abbey. I booked this up in July when we were having a heat wave knowing (how stupidly) that the weather would just as amazing in August. So the evening arrived and it was a bit chilly so I abandoned the picnic and we settled for a rather hot and spicy noodle soup in Wagamamas before we set off for the play.

The production was amazing, a modern day setting with the original Shakespearean script, great actors, very funny and an extra helping of some rain. It was okay though and we sat through the first half thinking oh it will be all right. Yeah right, the skies opened up and before long we had trousers soaked up to the knee and water running down the backs of our necks. So we had to call it a day, along with most of the audience and packed up. This was our second attempt to see the play, having got rained off last time, so third time lucky and I will be looking for an indoor production.

Back home we consoled our disappointment with a large chunk of chocolate birthday cake and a roaring fire, in August.....

Re-kindling Old Passions

If you are thinking that this is an entry about Mike's eternal love for me you will be sorely mistaken (that goes without saying). It is however about the other love of his life, scooters.

After a long time searching websites and ringing round every single ad, Mike finally has got his hands on a couple of vespas in need of some restoration and TLC. So armed with the Haynes Manuel on how to maintain and repair your scooter he has set to on the rebuild of his beloved
machine. For any of you out there who have knowledge of the mechanics and workings of the noisy beasts, the first project is his Vespa 90, an import from Italy which I am told will be up and running in a couple of weeks.

The second, a Primavera which is looking a bit sorry for itself and needs to be completely rebuilt will be the longer of the two projects, but guanteed to be stunning when complete.


Mike is so excited and is eagerly waiting for completion date so he can once again experience that wind through your hair feeling of the open road and the familiar sound of the vespa engine as he manovers himself around the country roads on his way to work. A much better way to commute.

So here are a few pictures to illustrate the stages of work so far for those of you wishing to re-kindle the same passions.

There will of course be many more installments to this project to come.

A Weekend Apart

This weekend was the first time that Mike and I had spent time away from each other since Ruby left us. Mike had a stag weekend to go to, so Friday morning he dragged himself out of bed at 3.30am to drive to his friend Marks house so they could leave early for the 6 hour drive to Newquay, Cornwall. That weekend, Newquay was hosting the female surfing competition so Mike had packed his trunks hoping to ride the waves with the same ease and panache that he rides the snow on his board. hmmm....

However, as stag weekends are traditionally known for their alcoholic tendancies, the drinking started early and the hope of ever getting into the sea was fading fast. Having spoken to a rather hungover husband the following morning it seemed that surfing was the furthest from his mind and a good english fry up seemed the much preferred option. Further drinking and prancing about in some cheesy club ensued the following night and the stag weekend had come to a very inebriated end.

I, on the other hand spent a much more sedate weekend in the beautiful town of Ludlow on the borders of Wales. After a stupidly long drive sitting in road works on every motorway I eventually made it to my old friend Ingas. I had a lovely time with her and her family and we spent the day in Hereford where they were having an arts festival. We had lunch in one of the venues and listened to a local band, who were quite good despite far too much dialogue going on from the front man. We wandered around the rest of the city, looked around the cathedral and stopped in the town square for a smoothie and a bit of people watching.

I returned home on Sunday and couldnt wait to see Mike, I had missed him terribly and not long after I had arrived he walked through the front door looking rather jaded and tired but so glad to be home. Home really is our favourite place, so we ordered a curry and curled up on the sofa for a lovely night in, the perfect end to our weekend.

Grand Designs

Over the past few months Mike and I have been transforming our garden in the most radical of styles. What started off as a fairly boring rectangular lawn (and I use that word loosely) it has now been chopped and hacked and weeded on a pretty hefty scale.


Add to that a few rather enormous brick borders, shortly to be rendered and painted, a beautiful wooden beach shack at the end and a brand new funky fence, we are feeling rather pleased with ourselves.




Stage two of our grand design will be a concrete semi-circular low level seating area in the shack, complete with BBQ, electrics for lights and music and of course a water feature. The final stage will be the shipping in and planting of a variety of tropical and sculptural plants for the borders.




But I think my favourite bit will be the little border we have left, next to the wooden shack which will be our Ruby border and it will be filled with all kinds of red shrubs, plants and flowers and surrounded by pebbles, especially for our beautiful girl.

Ruby's Sunflowers

Along with all the vegetable seeds that I planted in the spring, I also found some amazing sunflowers that were called Ruby Red. They all opened out a while ago and were the perfect view out of our kitchen window when we were washing up.

So you see our little girl is everywhere we look.