A holiday and a surprisingly acceptable new form of bathing

Salut chaps! Am back in the Bath after a trip to France. The place we stayed is called Seche Boue, which translates as Dry Mud. It lived up to its name despite MASSIVE thunderstorms pretty much every night. Lovely sunshine and lots of cheese and wine and bike rides.

It doesn't look sunny, but it WAS!

 Bf’s parents have a house there and it is pleasingly French. The thing is, what with me being a creature who loves baths, I am put off visiting because it has no bath. And no swimming pool. And no jaccuzi. And is far from the sea. Pas de plage, or whatever. Basically, no way to submerge oneself in water. Submersion in water is totally necessary to enjoy the day and in my opinion, an absolute must-have on holiday.

Bf has tried for some time to convince me that there is no problem, because there is a swimming lake near to the house. The thing is that like many other people, I am a bit wary of swimming in lakes.  They are murky and muddy and gloopy and occasionally a little smelly, but the thing that really gets me is the presence of FISH. And really of any other living creature.  Absolutely can’t stand the thought of them swimming around and brushing against me. EEegh. It was so hot, however, and I had eaten so much cheese, that the thought of exercising somewhere cooler than the land made me venture into the lake. And do you know what? I am quite the convert. For about half an hour I was very wary, especially as my anxieties were compounded by the fact that about a quarter of the lake was for swimming, and the rest for FISHING. Gah. However, apart from some massive scary bubbles in the middle of a calm bit of water, which I gave a wide berth to, had no fishy problems.

A corner of the garden. Isn't it just CRYING OUT for a hot tub/ jaccuzi/ plunge pool?!

 I would like to go back, and take the rubber dinghy and the big rubber rings. And my friend Jason. Jason once lead several of us on a rubber dinghy expedition down a mighty river near Tilford. He always blows up our inflatables with his tenacious lips. He is generally King of all things Joyous on Water, so he must come too.

Whilst we were away, I discovered the most adorable thing about bf. He still has his duvet cover from when he was a little boy! It’s in the house in France. I went into the bedroom after he’d made the bed and he was all tucked up under this:

Red lorry, yellow lorry.. :)

Lots of other things to tell you about France but I will wait til I’ve managed to upload some more photos (these are from my phone – the proper camera requires a cable – needy!).

So for now, we are back to life, back to reality. I took my work to France and got a lot done. However, still have about another fifteen pages of very dense text to write in an unfeasibly short amount of time. Must find myself a warm body of water to make things more bearable.. happily, I live rather close to this place!

Bath Time

Being in Bath (as opposed to the bath) is a new thing. Bf and I moved down from London last year and it has required more adjustment than I expected. Lots of things have happened since we moved, some wonderful and some very sad, and along with the new house, new jobs, new people and new city it has been a lot to take in. HOWEVER one brilliant thing about living here is that we have a LOT more space (to have people to stay and to store both 1. fun stuff and 2. bf's collection of ever so learned and ever so important and cannot under any circumstances be chucked out or accidently ruined and therefore oh dear might as well be got rid of  papers). Also, and even more brilliantly, we have a garden!

If you are in the UK you will know that we are currently experiencing an unseasonal mini summer (hopefully this is a taster of what's to come and not our actual summer, that would be +++ sad!). Sunglasses, flipflops and flowing skirts have been broken out and today there was a girl on my very humid train in denim hotpants so short that you could see her bum. The train was full and she was rubbing her bum against the back of my seat as the train swayed. The man opposite had to suddenly read this morning's Metro. I alternated between terrible jealousy and mild disapproval (I am nearly 30 after all. Everyone should shop at White Stuff, no? ;o) )

Anyway, back to the domestic side of things. We ignored the garden when we first moved in and got a bit of a shock when spring came, it defrosted and turned itself into the South West's answer to Wisley. It is quite nice out there and although I still view gardening as being almost as bad as housework we have had a lovely time out there over the last few days. Lots of flash BBQs, plus bf has been enjoying lazing around in a hammock that I bought from a pirate museum when I was 12. Massive bargain! Here's a pic of the hammock, plus BBQ which I think looks a bit like it's plotting to scuttle off somewhere. It actually belongs to the landlord so perhaps it wants to follow him to France for the summer (having wintered here in the shed hanging with the hoes; not much fun to be had for BBQs in the Alps over winter I would imagine).

Now we have a garden, we have done the predictable late 20's thing of trying to grow something useful in it. Here are our courgettes and butternut squi. They are babies here; they have gone supermegagiant in the three weeks since this was taken! Oh how quickly they grow up! Am so glad I have been here for this important time! Enjoy them whilst they're small, they'll never be that little again! Boil them and eat them! Hehehe!!

The kids on holiday at my mum and dad's house. Courgettes on the right, squi on the left. The courgs grew faster than the squash. That monster one started growing about 4 days after we planted it!

Age 14 days. He has definitely regained his birth weight!