Grandma’s B & B.

I woke this morning to a pounding in my head. Wait a minute. Not in my head. Outside my head. Outside the house. In the area behind the house a building site has sprung up in our absence. In reality it began a few years ago and stopped, presumably because they ran out of funds. Not long before we headed off into the wide blue yonder, aka Galicia, for the summer a planning notice came through the door. The old foundations from the previous work had been removed and new work was about to begin. We were glad to escape it. Now I’m back for a couple of weeks and the pile-drivers are busy from eight in the morning. 

Somehow they plan to cram forty-six houses into what is quite a small space. Just down the road a way is an estate built some twenty-five years ago with similarly cramped houses, all carefully placed so that no-one looks straight into anyone else’s windows. Twenty-five years on, those houses look as if they belong - they are built, or at least clad, in the stone that most of the older houses around here are built in - although some of the gardens are ridiculously postage-stamp sized and there’s not much cat-swinging space between buildings. So maybe these new houses will also blend in eventually. Although quite how the cars from so many dwellings will move into and out of our already busy road at rush hour times is a different problem. 

Amazingly two of the three grandchildren - they slept in the attic last night - slept through the whole banging and clanging session. The third one had woken up some time earlier and was busy sitting up in bed with his iPod. 

So we two sneaked off and began to organise the day leaving the girls like sleeping beauties for a while longer. Pancakes were requested. Huge amounts of pancakes were eaten. Banana milkshake was drunk. 

And then the second grandchild arrived. No pancakes, thank you. Was it possible to make cheese toasties? And then more cheese toasties? Because they are so good! 

 Finally I went and opened the blinds in the attic and the third one, who is really the first as she is the oldest of the three, stirred, stretched, unplugged the headphones from her ears - is it really possible to sleep listening to i-tunes? - and sat up. Some time later she came downstairs. This time it was toasted current tea cakes, with cheese, please. Oh, and orange juice, if that could be managed? Polite at least! 

Somewhere in the midst of that I managed to make coffee and toast for me. 

 The breakfast bar is now closed! 

Now we need to decide how we are going to occupy the rest of the day, other than eating something else.