20 July 2022
The two days prior to today have been the hottest on record. On the Tuesday 19th July the temperature hit 40.3c. It was very hot indeed and our houses are not designed for this sort of heat. Isabel came for the afternoon to clean. I suggested that she only remain a short time, but she shrugged the idea away and did her normal job.
I picked up Alex and the two girls from Heathrow Terminal 5, but it had taken me just over 1 hour to arrive at the short term car park. It didn’t matter to them, but I could foresee that the return home would be slow progress. I checked on Waze and it predicted 1 ½ hours.
Sadie and Carrie ran over to give me a big hug and began to talking at break neck speed. I drove out of the car park into a traffic jam. The police had shut off the M25 and pushed everyone onto the perimeter road. But just as we passed the police checkpoint they opened up the bollards, however we were too late. Instead I decided to loop back through the airport. The whole airport was jammed up by now, so I thought we could nip in and out of the car park. Unfortunately the jam had spread into the car park and we made very slow progress down the spiral ramp. Eventually we arrived at the gate and explained to the attendant that we had not actually parked and he let us through free of charge.
Getting to the M25 was still slow progress, but once we arrived it was all plain sailing. At last we arrived home where Maggi waited patiently with lunch. Our journey lasted 1 hour. Better than Waze had predicted.
We all ate lunch and then Alex nipped up to bed for a sleep. When she woke up she slipped off to Alice’s house without telling the girls. They wanted to go and were very disappointed. I stayed up to wait for Alex to return at 11:30 I texted her and found out she was staying the night.
21 July 2022
Maggi and I had still plenty to do in order to prepare for the friends coming over on the Friday, in terms of shopping etc. We took the girls to a tour around Pinner Memorial Park. Carrie had found a book about wild flowers and had started reading it. She brought the book on the walk and we identified several plants with the help of my apps and the book.
Carrie and I made a detour around the pond and found a motor moorhen and her chick hiding in the bushes near the pond.
A quick trip to the swings and then lunch in Pinner’s Vegan cafe called Ahimsa, which I found deeply disappointing. I wouldn’t go there again because the food lacks any flavour. Alex joined us and eat what the kids left.
22 July 2022
People started to arrive at our house around 4:15. First of all Mel arrived with Ava, Elsie and Jake. Alex from next door seemed to have been with us for the last few days. In fact Alex and Greg had taken hime to Go Ape with the girls. After that Sheila from 38 came with her two boys so there were plenty of kids for everyone to let off steam. Mark appeared along with Lynda, Dave and Matthew, then came the Jones’s and Gill and Mark along with Pat. I think in total we had 20 adults and about 10 kids.
We had plenty of booze in store and while most people are quite moderate in their consumption it is always the usual suspects that over indulge. The main bulk of the food we had bought from FoodieWudies and I thought it was pretty poor. We had some left over which we could have eaten the following day, however a better place for it was the dustbin.
I believe people had a good time and seemed to enjoy themselves. It didn’t take too long to clear up and their wasn’t too much mess in the morning. To my mind these are 2 very important criteria when you have visitors.
The next morning I went to see mum at Tremona, Alex & Greg took the girls to Amy’s house and Maggi had her haircut and dyed.