Nail-Biting Time.

The latest granddaughter is nearly with us, nine days after her due date. Very early morning text messages have been received advising us of mum’s hospitalization and therefore imminent addition to the human race. It’s very exciting.

Wiltshire Winkers

We have just had a memorable time with our great friends, the WWs. The weather really cheered up for their stay which was fantastic. They took us for a beautiful meal at a restaurant called Da Rosa in the grounds of an Abbey. We had tried it before back in March to see if it was up to the required standard of our illustrious guests. It didn’t disappoint. There was also a huge sort of artisan and produce fair that was being held over four days. It was tremendous.

I think the highlight of their stay though was the afternoon and early evening spent playing a game called Cranium. If you don’t know it, it is an amalgam of Trivial Pursuits, Pictionary, Charades and a few others thrown in. It involves, miming, drawing things with your eyes closed, whistling or humming tunes, moulding plasticine shapes, all so that your team members have to guess what it is.

There are three levels of the game:

• Standard: comprises board, questions, paper, pencils,, plasticine, as well as one glass and one bottle of wine per player.
• Deluxe: same as standard but with two bottles of wine per player.
• Platinum: I’m not sure anyone has ever played at this level and lived!

The Deluxe version takes longer to play than the Standard for fairly obvious reasons. This is the one we played. Men versus women.

We started at about 14:30 and continued to play, disturbing the flora and fauna all around us with a serious amount of noise, or din, if you want, until about 20:00.

I don’t think I have enjoyed myself and laughed so much as the last time I played this game, with, funnily enough, the same friends, on a cold February week-end in Lee, North Devon about five years ago.

What an afternoon. By the way, the women won ……. just.

The evening prior to their departure, we had a game of scrabble. Same pairings, but the women were very cocky and decided to give their team the name “Bellisime Bitches” – I think it was La D’s idea. Tacky I thought. Particularly as they won again. Bah.

Sadly their visit was fairly fleeting and they have now flown home. We are so looking forward to their company again, when ever that will be.

Bertie’s Sister

We’ve got Jess staying with us whilst her owners whizzed off to North Cyprus and Istanbul to watch the Turkish GP this week-end. Hope it is a good race. I did say I would probably see them in the stands. The GP is so under-audienced (is that a real term? I somehow doubt it) that they will be easy to spot as they will probably have a stand all to themselves.

Jess and Bertie just chase each other round and round till they conk out, sleep for a bit, they start all over again. Still it keeps them busy.

The World Traveller

Got news a couple of days ago that my son had managed to meet up with his uncle, my brother, in Seattle. He is having a whale of a time. He and his friends bought a car for US$1200 in Los Angeles and travelled almost 2000 miles up the east coast of the USA to Seattle. What a great thing to do. He’s off to Chicago for a few days, then on to New York before coming home.

Ciao, mantenere la fede