Last week...

I didn’t tell you, did I, that we went away last week? Well, we did, hubby, me and the cats took a short break away with friends, A&T^*1 in order to get some R& R after hubby’s party.

We piled into the car (hubby’s new big and boring one that I gave him ) with the cats ‘basketed’ on the back seat. It wasn’t too long before we were on to unfamiliar roads and ‘Bugalugs’^*2 started to chirrup, burble and miaow.
Me: “Can you see, why’s he making such a fuss? Is he OK?”
Hubby: (turning round to check and seeing said cat sat up in basket apparently unworried) “He’s fine – I suspect he’s trying to help me navigate by sonar!”

Well, navigating goes on for a while and finally hubby says those words that no driver likes to hear from their navigator^*3 – “I don’t know where we are...”
“OK”, says I, “We just came through Tincling, there’s a signpost to Rincling off to the left and Crincling off to the right (or something like that, all these weird local names confuse me) and there’s a yellow car ahead in the distance.” “Well, that yellow car pins it down,” says hubby, “we are currently 12 miles from our destination^*4 and by the time you catch up with the yellow car, we will be 8 miles away!”. D’you know, I have no idea how he does it, but with directions like these we still managed to find our cottage just fine. (Well we managed to find a country cottage and they gave us the key so I’m assuming it was the right one!)

So, there we were in an idyllic country setting in exactly the kind of place where (as hubby says) you might expect the boon to keep his docks. The cottage was several hundred years old (and with several hundred years worth of woodworm damage too) and was very ‘chocolate box’ even down to the ancient open hearth and range with bread oven. The lure of an open chimney was just too much for one of our cats who went up it to investigate and came down in a cloud of soot! I wouldn’t have minded, but then, finding the taste of soot far too distasteful to clean off her paws, tramped through the whole cottage marking every white surface including (horror of horrors) a white duvet cover. I just hope the cottage owner doesn’t read this blog – I was going to blame it on mice, or a visiting rabbit or something (or even A&T) ^*5

^*1 No they do not own two thirds of a major phone company, so its not worth asking them for a loan.
^*2 this is not hubby – this is hubby’s pet name for one of the cats.
^*3 there are people out there who should be really horrified at this….
^*4 I don’t call him Tom-tom either…
^*5 OJ guys – I have to pay you back for making me lose my cherry after all!