Packing up and leaving Heronshaw, stopping off at Stanton a little late to have breakfast with Mum and then widening her mobile home doors for her wheelchair and giving her Escort a run out.
Then the dash to Bar Hill to join my family to have lunch with Di’s parents before home to unpack and catch up with mail and calls. News of the German election and a welcome for migrant birds who arrived a month early from Africa due to the warm southerly air-streams.
It was another very early start, getting up, having a light breakfast before shaving and washing. There were all the things to pack away for the journey, the boat itself to lay up and leave in a fit state to meet any eventuality. I had intended to start my journey by 8.00am but it was about 8.25am before I left. I made a point of dropping my rubbish into the skips at Horning and then going along to the Percival’s boatyard to see what they had done with the "Little Lady". It was plainly visible through the window of the workshops undergoing further work. The journey to Stanton went very well considering I had left so late. There were few vehicles due to the hour and any tourist traffic was actually going the other way.
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I made Stanton by 9.15am, but it was a shame that I was even 15 minutes late because Mum had cooked a fried breakfast for each of us to have together but had to eat hers while it was hot. She has few opportunities for social eating, as her cooked meals are brought to her from next door. Nevertheless, we had a nice couple of hours together, chatting about things for a while as I ate and then I got my tools in from the car and did some work to widen her mobile home doors by removing the door-jam strips. She had already had the doors removed for better wheel-chair access and this gave her another inch of space that made all of the difference. We also had a look around the garden, fed the fish, and then looked in the garage to see how the building repair work had been done and it looked very satisfactory to us. I left at 9.20am after running her Escort to blow its cobwebs away.
There was then the dash to Bar Hill for our family lunch appointment and I touched 90mph as the roads were very open. Duel carriageways via the A45 and A604 meant that I could speed straight there and I pulled into the Bar Hill slip-road just as Diana and Daniel were arriving in the Rolls Royce and Escort and joined them in convoy. I was therefore on time for 12.00 noon. The children were very pleased to see me, and Della could not stop giving me a cuddle. Diana was more reserved. It was a family lunch with Di's parents, brother and sister and family which started with drinks at noon and ended with coffee at 3.00pm and the temperature of the hotel was a sweltering 80degF plus. I confess, that I found the whole thing pedestrian and wearisome and, although I did my best to conceal it and be good company, three hours of sweltering was a long time to hold out and Diana told me afterwards that my boredom and disinterest showed. In fact, she upset me as well by saying that she had not even bothered to lock the house when she left, let alone alarm it, asserting that it was unnecessary. She can be so annoying and irresponsible sometimes.
It was a relief to get back to Paxton, to unload the car and to unpack my things as the beginning of trying to catch up for a week away. The girls opted to come with me, Daniel to follow in his car, leaving Di to find her own way in the Rolls Royce. I put the kettle on for afternoon tea and Di brought out a couple of cups for us to drink whilst sitting on the lawn as the girls played in the riverside garden. I waded through a mountain of mail before and after tea and then spent much of this evening, making phone calls in response to events and messages left whilst away. I went to bed on time with Diana and overcame her reticence to be affectionate. She gets used to her time alone and is quite a solitary person really. The news in East Germany, is of a landslide victory for the conservative Christian Democrats but they will still need to form a coalition with the Social Democrats to govern. Migrant birds have arrived a month early from Africa due to the warm southerly air-streams.