Holidays over for another year

I have a reader! Hi, Sam - I hope you are having a good rest and are recuperating from the two years of hectic SU work and a year of living with C and Andy.

They say it has been raining over the last couple of weeks, but don't believe them. That rumour is put about by people who have been sitting inside looking out, and they ignored the sun they saw. We used our gazebo while on the boat, but only used it to keep rain off a couple of times. We all got a bit of colour, though we're a bit ashamed of C's half-arm tan....

Ian has gone off to Norway and should have arrived there about now. I drove him to Dublin this morning, encountering major floods in small regions of Dublin. Maybe it did rain yesterday up there, or overnight, or something.

Poor Goldie has a very sore paw so we have to bring him to a vet tomorrow. C and Andy have bandaged up the paw and he hasn't even tried to take the bandage off, so it must be very sore. He has been dragging his paw and this has resulted in him wearing away the ends of his nails. I'm not sure what can be done to ensure it doesn't happen again, but no doubt the vet will have ideas.

We'll have to find recipes for using up tomatoes soon. Lots of red ones greeted us on our return from holidays. I've a feeling we'll never want to see another tomato again in a while. There are even some yellow ones, which are slightly sharper in taste. I'm not going back to work until Tuesday and I'm going to have to do some gardening tomorrow. Weeds have grown ten times as fast as everything else while we've been away and I'd hate the neighbours to think that we are messy!

Anyway, the change has been good over the last couple of weeks. It was also lovely to have all the family on the holiday, and the boat working well. Let's hope we get a few more weekends on it before the season ends.