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Back at last! I actually returned on Friday and then got distracted by G staying for the weekend, who required lots of TLC due to food poisoning (contracted prior to the weekend I might add, I was not responsible for it). Apparently Billy Connolly once said something along the lines of there is no such bad thing as bad weather, only a bad choice of clothes - and those certainly were wise words while I was away, as the weather left much to be desired.

Wales was good and the house we all stayed in was lovely and much nicer than expected. It has to be said that there was not much walking by me, unless walking to my car or around a castle counts but I really enjoyed myself. Most of the people I only know because we go on holiday with each other every year, but we always have a really nice time together and new people occasionally join the group and they are made as welcome as anyone else. You have to be willing to engage in slightly obscure science type conversations on occasion – two of the people are science teachers, one is a geologist etc etc, but it is always very funny and even being as ignorant as me about science has never meant that I cannot add an ill-informed comment.

There was someone I know who came along for the first time (invited by someone else). I picked her up in Oxford on the way, which was useful as she could then navigate the last part of the journey to the obscure place we were staying. We did rather better than another friend who had not received the final part of the directions by e-mail and spent an hour and half within about a three mile radius of where we were staying but just could not locate the exact place. Fortunately she persevered and eventually located where we were staying, having asked pretty much everyone in the vicinity for directions.

Anyway, the friend I gave a lift to could be described as a bit dopey on occasion. I think she would say this herself. This was epitomised by her telling me one evening that she hadn’t noticed that the porch door was shut and only realised when she bounced off the door. Now admittedly it did have glass in the door, but it wasn’t clear glass and it also had a big wooden frame. How do you not notice a door? Anything that could be spilled, dropped, tripped over or any other possible dire circumstance my friend managed to achieve. She should have come with a health warning that she should not be left unattended at any point. She survived though, despite spilling tea on herself (twice) when we stopped at a service station on the way home.

It felt like an extended holiday coming home and knowing that G was going to be about for the weekend and we had such a nice time – even including the trip to the local dump (twice). I’m dead classy, I am. Do you think it is possible that we have already passed that point of needing to impress each other??

I’ll say a few more bits about my time away over the next few days, but now it’s back to work. Time to start planning the next holiday.