This morning it was mainly paperwork. By sheer chance I received an email from the editor of a local magazine I had only been discussing this with Vanessa at the ETNA centre a week or so ago. Christiane the Editor is thinking of running an article about the new Twickenham montage - this will be excellent, very well timed and good publicity. I drafted a full email back and also one to Vanessa keeping her in the loop.
Later in the morning my Christmas and general greeting cards finally turned up from the printers in Devon. I ordered them almost a month ago but apparently the main print press had a fault and that they were unable to run the order on another press. I can now go ahead and start making up the large Christmas order that normally I have completed this by the end of July. Everything has been a little delayed this year.
We are also getting rather frustrated at not being able to travel abroad so I thought it would be easy to book a few days away using the voucher that mum had given me for my birthday. This turned out not to be so easy as the hotel or rather pub that we had identified in Derbyshire, is pretty full over the next few months. However when I mentioned I would like to book an additional two days making a total of four nights, the woman worked around her diary and we now have booked four nights at the end of September. We are staying in a place called Fenny Bentley on the edge of the Derbyshire National Park.
In the afternoon we had planned to head over to Karen and Ian's house as we have been invited out to dinner in the evening. This will be the first time we have eaten out at a restaurant since lockdown. Needless to say the weather took a turn for the worse and it was the heaviest rain I've seen for sometime. I drove and the route that the satnav took us was through Hampton Wick and Kingston which by chance also took us under the notorious bridge which always floods! The sight of a number of cars doing U-turns ahead of us was not encouraging but as we now have a car with a higher wheelbase I decided to go for it. It was quite nerve wracking to keep the speed slow enough not to cause a large wake of water but fast enough not to stall. I managed it with no problem and was feeling slightly smug when we came to the next even larger deep flood under the main bridge in Kingston. This was a challenge but we did get through. It took us over an hour and a half to do 27 miles! However it was great to see everyone.
When we eventually got to the restaurant it was very well handled with the staff all wearing PPE and there were very good controls put in place throughout the evening for our safety. To top it off at the food was excellent - much better than the Italian that we often go. I started with scallops on a pea and mint puree, followed by a chilli beef salad and finishing up with a crème brûlée and home-made shortbread biscuits. Delicious.
This is one of two dogs that for dome reason were on the roof of the pub when we arrived, there was also a large black-and-white English Setter but I missed him as he went indoors.
