It's All Go Retirement Isn't It?

It's a good job that we like St Andrews as, after last week's flying visit, we're off there again tomorrow for another day or so. At this rate the Prius will soon find it's way there on it's own. Regular blog readers will know that we left Sarah and Duncan to settle in with their brand new baby on Thursday but, unfortunately, baby decided to hardly bother waking up or feeding for the next forty eight hours and she and Sarah ended up back in the maternity ward where, I am pleased to say, she has decided to wake up at last and has also started to feed properly. This has disrupted Duncan's paternity leave somewhat as there was no point taking leave whilst nobody was at home so he decided to go back into work and we are going up to help Sarah by picking her up from the hospital and doing a bit of running around for a couple of days until Wednesday evening when Duncan is able to get back on leave.

Here's the cause of all the trouble and already responsible for God knows how much greenhouse gas emission - good job the car's a hybrid. I'm looking forward to seeing our beautiful little grandchild with her eyes open this time. She's got a name now. It's Rose Mhairi (that's a Scottish name by the way). I think it's a bit better than Harper Seven which I hear is the latest addition to the Beckham family and sounds like the time we tend to get up in the morning. 

While the mini drama was playing out at St Andrews we were, somewhat distractedly, attending the wedding of our friends Dave and Jane Haworth's daughter Katie to her lovely partner Adam. It was a fabulous do held in a grand and palatial house near Lichfield and everything went perfectly for the couple. The sun shone, the food and wine were fabulous and the setting was outstanding.

The Lichfield festival is on at the moment and, as we had booked a long weekend, we went to one of the events yesterday. It was a performance of As You Like It in the grounds of a large house just down the road from our hotel. Again the weather held out and we were able to enjoy a picnic and an entertaining performance of a play that contains some of Shakespeare's very best speeches "All the world's a stage" the seven ages of man and the excellent repartee between Touchstone and Jacques. It wasn't the RSC but it was a nice way to spend a Sunday afternoon.  

Before heading back to Southport we had a look around Lichfeld Cathedral this morning before making a very short visit to the National Trust and Staffordshire Council's joint venture at Shugborough. The cathedral has some great relics and Shugborough's grounds and gardens were lovely.We didn't have time to go into the house as we needed to get back to Southport in time to buy a baby seat for the car for picking up Rose tomorrow.


On Thursday we're back to Liverpool to buy all the stuff we need for the new caravan - fridge, microwave, TV, bedding, kettle, crockery, cutlery and that sort of thing and hopefully we will find time to visit FACT to see The Tree Of Life. And then on Friday I'm off for a day metal detecting. 


It's all go retirement isn't it!