Saturday: Weary after a week of toiling over hot phones and gridded spreadsheets the wrong shape for my eyes I took the George Bush approach to therapy. Spent the morning sawing down some very tall woody plants at Clare's direction (they have a name but it escapes me) before transporting half a car's load of foliage to the dump.
What did we do in the afternoon? Read a bit from our new Amazon Vine books (hers: the romantic inside-story of Bletchley Park; his: the collapse of Rome in 410 AD) then we drove down to Morrisons, Glastonbury to buy provisions. Triumphant purchases included a plum and apple lattice pie and a blackcurrent cheesecake. Thanks God the weekends are a refuge from healthy eating!
Sunday: For the last time this year I accompanied Clare to 9 a.m. Mass clad in those just-past-the-knee trousers and a tee-shirt. This is a clothing point, not an accompanying point. The wind was arctic, gusting from the north and we shiveringly returned home from whence we did not stir.
Monday: The sun was out and soon so were we. Uniquely in our neighbouring cluster of villages and small market towns we hadn't explored Pilton (think Worthy Farm, Glastonbury Festival). Drove the 5 or 6 miles but there's nothing really there apart from strip-developed mediaeval prettiness. Drove on to Shepton Mallet and discovered some charming old byways and paths to the north-west of the town ending up in a walk through the Cemetery. In the sunshine it was as nice as a park.
In the afternoon we walked down to the Bishop's Palace in Wells and watched a very low-key Moat Race between teams on rafts made of painted oil drums. Lots of tourists and the nearby recreation field was full of inconsequential stalls.
Then we came home and I hovered the lawn while Clare prepared crumpets with jam and tea.
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Looking back to this time last year (end of August 2009) we had just engaged estate agents to pop round and value the house in Andover. So there you are: one year on and we are still relieved and delighted to have finally got the house in Wells where we wanted it.
