October 2

<Entry by Sean> <Entry by Matthew - nice yummy colour>

The background is still grey, so guess what that means ... yep, still in England, and the weather definitely matches the colour.  The first thing to report is that while showing off our website to Matthew's Mum, she was horrified that there was only a picture of the front of the house, and not the garden.  So.... here we present The Garden!!

Here is a wide-angle view of the garden.   The flowers are really beautiful, and just behind that blooming bush in the center is a small pond.

The pond has two amphibious residents.   I guess the French are taking over England, one pond at a time... Mum mentioned that earlier this Summer she saw one of the larger, obviously more cannibalistic, frogs eye one of the smaller ones and then in an instan take a swipe at it. All that she saw was a tiny little leg haning from out of the corner of it's mouth. Kermit doesn't know how good he's got it.

And then there are currently a whole school of fish.  The surface of the pond can freeze during the winter, but it is deep enough that the fish survive.

Matthew took us out to dinner, and here is the whole family.  Clockwise from me is: Mum (Jenny), Brian, Matthew's sister Sarah, Sarah's Really Nice Guy Andy.  The dinner was long and extremely filling.

Apparently the camera knew we'd had a few -- and compensated by blurring the photo :-)  This is Jenny (Mum), Brian and Sarah. Andy took the photo and he'd just finished a Bitter shandy (*), a 'weak' shandy as the barmaid politely put it. He's a nice guy so the fact that he can't take his beer I won't hold against him. The food was great. We've been in a butt-load of pubs so far.

* 'Shandy' - A mixture of beer and 7-Up (Lemonade) so as to reduce the alcohol content.

WE BOUGHT THE CARAVAN TODAY - YAH! We went back down the M25 courtesy of Brian and ponied up the cash. For the past few days Le Banque de Tebbs has been hearing the constant sounds 'Cha Ching .. Cha Ching'. Sean informs me that he's loaded with cash so I'm looking forward to a really expensive meal in Paris. They fitted the caravan out with a new battery for the internal lights, connected up the natural gas for the stove and gave us a cute little cooler that runs off of the battery. We'll have running water as well, the sink drains out through the bottom of the vehicle, at least we hope it's from the sink ;-) Drove back tonight and parked out in front. We leave for France in the morning (Sat.) I'm sure Sean will change the color scheme to reflect the hopefully sunny skies.

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