Friday June 26th
It's over. The longest two weeks of my life ended today. (Actually we had a hiatus at the end of the final semester last year too, and that seemed equally as long! I suppose my gorgeous one does need time with her Mum & Dad once in a while...) I snuck off from Uni before lunch, collected the woofie from her palace and was in Cumbria by 2.30pm.
I texted Loll from Scotch Corner so she had an idea of the time I was arriving and I arrived at Dad's to find a naked, slender, blonde waiting in my bed! After three hours my fingers, tongue and important little places ached! (So did hers!)
As I knew Dad would be home at about 6 pm I set to and made the evening meal from stuff I'd found in my fridge, back in Sheffield, I even located some apple cake in the freezer (one of mine from March) so I defrosted that. Aren't cool boxes wonderful things?
When they arrived I helped take care of Chloé whilst Dad & Louisa unpacked and got themselves sorted after a week in Lancaster. I changed her, and then took her for a stroll in the baby sling round the village circuit, accompanied by Laura. She is still so cute and loves being bounced up and down in the sling. She's started to giggle when I do it. [Not broody, not!]
Back at the ranch the meal was cooked, laid out and ready when we got back so we tucked in whilst Chloé had a nap. (Oh - it was spicy home-made burgers, double fried chips and salad BTW, plus the apple cake.)
We went down to the pub at about 8 pm and were greeted as long lost strangers by the people we know in there. They all thought Laura had been in Sheffield too, she must've kept a really low profile all fortnight. The number of younger people in the pub varies, I assume it is because most of them have now grown up and left home. Some of them are still living at home but they tend to head for the bright lights of Cockermouth on a Friday night instead of a sleepy old village! LOL
Dad is finished for the year (academic) now, too, and when we got back, over a mug of hot chocolate each, the focus of discussion was the occupancy of the caravan on Arran over the summer. We don't want to give my big brother the opportunity to use it as he refused point blank to join us in the venture but feels he has a right to ask to use it in the school holidays. Well, bugger that!
We arranged that Loll and I would go up on the second Saturday in August and that we'd stay until Tuesday 25th or Wednesday 26th depending on how we felt. Dad, Louisa and Chloé will be going up on the 9th of July for a month. We will have an overlap on the weekend when we arrive which will be nice. I foresee a delicious meal out together...
By filling up the van's usage over the summer we can claim, quite justifiably, that there won't be space for my sodding brother to freeload. Is that wicked of us? Maybe. But what the hell.
Saturday 27th June.
It was Laura's cousin's 21st party today. A weird affair which was a barbeque party starting about 5 pm and ending when the last guests departed. Helen is a student at Newcastle University, or I should say was, as she is now in the limbo period too, waiting for her result. I think it is a sign of how accepting some elements of Laura's family are that we were invited as a couple. Not everyone is as Caveman-like as Loll's Dad!
We bought her a Tassimo coffee maker for her pressie and she was overjoyed with it. (I mean we had asked what she'd like and then we bought what we thought would be best.) In order to let her use it immediately we had also bought her a double set of the disc things so she could make everyone a coffee if they wanted.
I actually drank a coffee for the first time in years. It was quite nice although I needed to add my daily allowance of sugar to make it so! Loll has wondered if we should get one too. I think we could as it does hot chocolate and tea as well, so she could have the foul coffee and I could have hot choc. Win win situation.
Helen's Dad thinks he is a barbeque expert, sadly he is mistaken - to a very large degree. He had this f*ck off big gas monster barbie in the corner of the garden and spent from about 5.30 to 7.30 incinerating anything he put on it. We were told if we wanted to bring any speciality meat instead of burgers, sausage, kebabs and chicken we were free to do so. I decided to bring some of Mr Thompson's steak (it is wonderful) to eat instead of mechanically recovered meat products (or chicken), Laura concurred.
This almost caused a rumpus as I wouldn't let Davy cook it for me. he asked why not and I, unthinkingly, said, "...I don't want it crozzled to a crisp..." He got most offended by that and called Charlie over (his wife) to help intercede. I explained that I wanted the steak 'blue'. He didn't know what that was (neither did she). I explained that if I was frying it, I would place it in the pan for between 30 seconds to a minute on each side.
They both baulked at that and said it would be uncooked. When I told them that was exactly what I wanted they couldn't believe it. I said that I needed to be the one to cook it so it wouldn't get over cooked and spoiled. Davy was not a happy bunny but Charlie couldn't see the problem, in her words, 'if I wanted to give myself food poisoning then I ought to be allowed to do it' . What a fuss over such trivia.
I cooked my steak, and Laura's (although hers had two minutes each side) and we went away pleased with our meat. Charlie came over after a while and asked what it was like and we explained that it made it much nicer than an over cooked piece which became as tough as old boots. To her great credit she saw how much we were enjoying it and asked if she could try some. Laura gave her aunt a small sample from hers which was not as bloody as mine and she actually thought it was lovely! It was like a revelation to her that steak could be so tender and so tasty!
She did say that I had broken the cardinal rule of barbequing by insisting on taking over from the man doing the cooking (burning). I told her I knew it was a 'man-thing' in Australia, I hadn't realised it was the same over here too. She asked what my Dad was like over barbie-ing and I told her he was such a lazy git he didn't mind who cooked the food as long as it wasn't him. We had a good chuckle about that.
The one fortunate thing about the incident was that Laura's Dad (Davy's brother) didn't witness what had transpired. he could easily have used it as further evidence of my corrupting influence on his daughter - denying a man his right to turn perfectly good food into charcoal! LOL
Another brother, Tom, had brought along a 'Splat the Rat' game. (I digress here to enquire what sort of parent, whose surname is Thomas calls their son Thomas? I mean Thomas Thomas? Get real. [This is not the silliest Thomas I have heard of though. I visited a friend from Uni once who lived near Sleaford in Lincolnshire. They took me to see a gravestone in a churchyard of what had been a Gilbertine Abbey at Sempringham; the Thomas there had the surname Ato! Thomas Ato! Tomato? I mean, what were they thinking?]
Back to Splat the Rat. Tom had brought a drain-pipe attached to a pole, a small stick and a furry rat. The idea is he let go of the rat at the top of the drainpipe and you had to whack it as it appeared at the bottom. Simple? Erm... Not so simple after all.
We each had ten goes and there were prizes for the winners. I thought it would be fairly easy to allow for the speed that everything falls, a swift swipe with the stick on a count of one after Tom had released the rat should be enough to splat it. Mmm.... the best laid plans etc. After three hopeless missed I just decided to swing as soon as he let go of the rat. This proved a bit more successful and out of the remaining seven tries I splatted it three times.
My feeble score was recorded and we went round everyone at the party, there must have been almost 40 people there altogether. When we'd all had a go, including Tom himself, we had a three way tie for the winner: Laura, Lorraine and Lucy (quite a coincidence that, we all thought). They had to have a splat-off to see who won the big prize. Best of Five. Sadly the Lollster bombed out with only two splats. Lucy and Lorraine tied again on three each. This meant a sudden death decider. I don't know what had happened to their hand eye co-ordination but after five goes each, neither had hit the damned rat. Eventually Lorraine missed and Lucy splatted it to win the prize. It was a tin of Minions chocolates. 2nd Prize were Minions Chocolate bars and third a Minions stationary set.
Despite being very childish and silly, it was great fun. Tom has been invited to three other parties if he'll bring his "Splat the Rat" game!
We drank an absolute swimming pool's worth of booze and as a result we were a little the worse for wear by about 11pm. It was still quite light but a bit chilly so the remainder of the group decamped into Davy's large summer house and squabbled for the few seats. Loll and I squeezed our torsos into a wicker chair and just snuggled. She sat half on my lap and half on the seat and we were thrown a blanket to wrap ourselves in against the chill. We gossiped for about a hour being silly and teasing and rude and annoying. At about 12.15 our taxi arrived and we bade our farewells and head back to Tallentire.
Imagine our surprise when on arriving the Aged-parent and his younger bride were sat up watching the Women's World Cup quarter final. It had just started. Dad asked us if we'd like a cuppa. We agreed and ended up watching the match all the way through. I had two mugs of hot chocolate and Loll had a couple of coffees.
England won; rah, rah and indeed rah! I was quite impressed, to be honest. It was just as quick as the men's game but there was none of that crappy prima donna-ism that those overpaid male footballer twats perform almost all the time.
I was pleased England had won. Which surprised me.
We were really late hitting the charp and because of the hour, the booze and the hot drinks swirling around in our tummies, we sensibly decided we could forego sex tonight.
That lasted until about 3am when a little voice said, "Vic... You awake?" I mumbled assent. "Oh good..." I was subjected to a ferocious assault on my important little places which meant I simply had to retaliate.
Sunday 28th June
Had a bit of a lie in today. I didn't appear from the pit until about 7.30! Callie seemed resigned to the fact her mistress was an immobile hulk in the bed and didn't even bother with the wet nose in the ear routine or, if she did, I was too soundly asleep to be cognisant of the fact.
As a penance for my over indulgence of the previous evening I took all four dogs for their first walk up Tallentire Hill - all the way to the Trig point. (Usually I get to the bench round the corner and stop for a rest then turn back.)
The Lakes looked wonderful and I determined to go to Smithy's Fell before lunch.
When I got back down there was the wonderful smell of cooking bacon wafting through the house and a surprised parent being the chef. I mentioned the idea of hitting Crummock and he was all for it to. So after a heap of bacon butties we trooped down to the Lanthwaite Wood car park in Dad's Land Rover.
It was idyllic. The woods were speckled with dappled sunlight, piercing through the leaves, there was a coolish breeze and hardly any people about at all. We looked for red squirrels but spotted nary a one. We were surprised it was so quiet for 10 am! There were jut five cars in the car park when we arrived.
At the fish ladder we hit the water, with Loll and I wading out to throw sticks for the dogs to retrieve from the lake. Dad looked quite comical standing in his shorts and water shoes up to his knees in the Lake with his little daughter strapped to his chest in the baby sling.
I could tell he was aching to play with the dogs so I did a swap with Chloé and let him throw sticks and have a serious paddle about. I kept the bebé as we continued on round the shore, past the draw off tower and the fallen trees to the secret bay. Here we had more throwing of sticks and splashing about in the shallows for the humans.
Even Louisa joined in the stick throwing, which is something she doesn't often do. It was she who suggested we walked on round to the Kirkstile so we sallied forth to find the centre of the West Cumbrian Universe. It opens at 11 as usual on a Sunday but doesn't serve food until 12. We rolled up at about 11.25.
Louisa's rucksack was filled with the baby stuff, so I went and changed Chloé, then handed her back to her doting mother so I could settle down with a glass of red wine.
We ordered the Sunday roasts all round, except for the little one, of course. Yummy in our Tummy.
A leisurely stroll back to the tower and then round by the lake side again saw us arrive at a heaving car park at about 2pm. According to Dad he was the only one still awake by the time he'd gone under the A66 at Cockermouth!
At home we all joined baby Chloé for an afternoon nap (not literally, obviously - the cot's too small).
We zoomed back to Sheffield at about 7 pm.
Laura insisted on driving as I had seemed so sleep, I let her and guess what? I slept again!
At home, we did the usual trick of Loll dropping Callie and me off in Wharncliffe Side and then we walked back home giving the woofter her last walk of the day. I was expecting to just flop into bed but it seemed my wicked woman partner had other, more intimate ideas. Who was I to argue?
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