Andy has done his sputum samples and delivered them for incubation. I received a nice email from CHC saying that because of this further medical request we wouldn't be able to land in the summer as hoped for. How surprising to receive an email from a real person in CHC! I now know that I have contact with our case officer if I have any queries, which is useful.
I spent a lovely half-term week with Gadgetgirlie in Cornwall. We stayed with Ian and Clare, in Snozzle, (St. Austel), and then spent a few days in a B & B in Falmouth.
GG & I visited the old harbour of Charlestown and went aboard a brigantine....
and another day we had a walk through a different seaside town called Polperro....
Ian took us for a fab walk up on Bodmin Moor where there were these weird giant skimming-type stones on top of each other on top of a tor.
Then we met a lovely couple at a market one day, a wood turner and his wife and we spent ages at their stall. She saw that GG was fascinated with the different items on the stall that her husband Pete had made, and invited her to have a go at making something at their place near Truro, so on our way to Falmouth we spent lunch and a sunny afternoon at their remote home. GG made a hawthorn bowl.
Falmouth was a great town for us to base in. We spent most of one day at the National Maritime Museum and as we wandered outside I spotted a familiar boat there called ‘Curlew’. She belonged to a couple called Tim & Pauline Carr, who Mum & Dad were friends with in Malta back in 1969. They went on to travel all over the world, ending up in South Georgia where they wrote a book called ‘Antarctic Oasis’. I believe that they donated their boat to the museum and now live somewhere in Devon.
We rented a 14’ dinghy called a ‘Bosun’ one evening. GG hadn’t been in a boat of such a small size before and I put her in charge of the jib and the camera. We had fun sailing around the huge harbour and fortunately for GG there wasn’t much wind. I would have liked a bit more wind.
Another day we drove over to Perrenporth on the north coast of Cornwall, picturesque drive and view but the beach was just too crowded and windy for our liking. We went shopping in the town instead…
Neither of us wanted the week to end because we had settled into enjoying each other’s company and found our time so easy and fun together. I don’t think I’d ever spent a week with just GG before and I will always treasure the closeness that we found, laughing at the same things till we cried…
Gadgeteen is struggling through the final weeks of assignments at college and I hope he has done enough to return for the 2nd year. We have all been quite stressed about his work load because he’s left so much to the last knockings. Still, I think he’s done them all now. He breaks up next week so I hope so.
Since I last wrote he has passed his ‘Passplus’ course, which should make car insurance cheaper, though we were quoted £3,400 for him to be insured on a Fiat Cinquento before the course and still wouldn’t be able to afford to insure him. We’ll have to look again when he is 18 in November.
