Well what a busy few weeks I have had! I feel like I’ve barely stopped for the last month, and in a way I haven’t. Most of my time has been taken up with preparations for Hannah’s hen which was two weeks ago, the rest of my time has been spent either training or seeing family and friends in the endless stream of events and merriment that comes with Summer.
Nick’s mum’s birthday was earlier in June and we were thrilled to be able to give her a really wonderful painting by the brilliant Paul Jackson – you will have heard me talk about him before as we are both HUGE fans! This particular painting is one I have loved for a long time so it was an especially exciting present to give and of course she loved it.
When the painting arrived lo and behold we discovered a present for ourselves too – Paul had included for us this gorgeous watercolour which I absolutely adore! What a wonderful friend he is, we are so incredibly lucky. I can’t wait to get it up on the wall!
For Sue’s Birthday we went for a lovely family meal at The Chequers at Well, it is a fantastic little pub with really delicious food – Well worth a visit (hoho). We all dressed up in our finery and had a brilliant evening only slightly marred by the fact that the poor Birthday girl had a nasty cold! Not good timing at all.
The next weekend was the hen do of one of my favourite people in the whole wide world – the wonderful Miss Hannah Wood, soon to be Mrs Hannah Rowley! I had been organising it along with her two other very lovely bridesmaids for months and the week before was packed full of final preparations including scrapbook making and a bit of papier mache. I barely slept the night before from sheer over-excitement! The weekend involved 17 of us taking two canal boats from Sally Narrowboats in Bradford on Avon along the Avon canal to Bath and back again, staying on the boats for two nights. Along the way we had plentiful delicious food brought along by Hannah’s lovely friends (who unsurprisingly are all fantastic!), pirate shenanigans including an attack from a trio of Hannah’s male friends who we had roped in to surprise her, and a meal out with the best surprise of all – Hannah’s lovely mum and dad. Cue instant tears around the table.
Anyone wanting to organise a group holiday of any sort should definitely look into it, all of the staff at Sally Narrowboats were so friendly and helpful and it was easily one of the best weekends of my life – such fun. Though of course that was a lot to do with the amazing bunch of people we had with us.
We also recently went to a great Private View of a collective of artists called Exhibition Collective. A very good friend of ours Rob Ellis is part of the collective and so we were completely delighted to discover that our favourite work in the exhibition was by him! Not only that but it looked like it had been made for us what with our (my) slight bird obsession, so of course we snapped it up. Another one waiting for me to get it framed and up; we are running out of wall space!
Our last excitement came when my cousin Jenny and her family came over from sunny South Africa! Living so far away we have only met a few times through my life and it was so wonderful to see everyone. We went for a meal along with Bruno and Julia and Michael (our other cousin) and his family and had a very entertaining Sunday with them. We MUST visit them soon!
So much fun, and it never ends! This weekend we are heading back to Wales for a monumentous gathering of my family, Nick’s family and Ben’s family – guaranteed to be constant fun and games, and next weekend is Hannah’s Wedding! My god I’m excited.
Flora Nancy Paterson 