Yesterday we drove through low cloud and rain to York and back. It wasn’t really foggy; it was just that the cloud had come down really low. The spray from lorries was unbelievable but also the spray from the enormously large cars that so many people drive these day.
We were going to York, my daughter, Granddaughter Number Two and I, together with the two small people in tow, to empty out the contents of Granddaughter Number Two’s room in the university hall of residence. She’s actually been home and working part time for weeks but she was waiting to clear her stuff out until she had access to the house she and a group of friends will be sharing next academic year. Students have a lot more stuff than we ever did when we were at university. Mind you, Granddaughter Number Two has more equipment because she has a whole lot of cooking and baking equipment. I seem to remember managing with a couple of saucepans and a small frying pan. And I certainly didn’t bake cakes. Autres temps, autres moeurs, as the French say.
After we had completed the transfer of stuff from one accommodation to the other, we went off to have some lunch and to spend money at an ‘outlet’. Outlets have been around for a while but are still a fairly new invention. They certainly didn’t exist when I was an impoverished student, these places with big name shops selling their wares at sometimes sillily reduced prices. My daughter wanted shoes for the little ones. The Clarks shoe shop sold her shoes for both children for a total that came to less that £30. Quite impressive! The staff were helpful and child-friendly. Also impressive!
The small boy turned bossy (as he quite often does in his small boy confident way) and told off another child, completely unknown to him, for “breaking” the foot-measuring device. All she had done was remove it from its stand and couldn’t get it back together. Our budding engineer managed to fix it and told her not to break it again! We apologised to the mother.
I resisted the temptation to spend £50 on a leather back-back in a splendid shade of green. Genuine leather, reduced from some even sillier price, with lots of pockets to organise your stuff - I was seriously tempted but in the final analysis I don’t need another bag, not even in a delightful shade of green!
We returned home, through the continuing low cloud, in time for me to watch the summary of the day’s activity in the Tour de France. We already know that Jonas Vingegaard is the winner but it was nice to see that Tadej Pogacar had recovered from his disappointment and depression of a few days ago and managed to win a stage. He might not have beaten his rival Vingegaard to the yellow jersey but at least he had recovered his fighting spirit. Barring untoward events, first and second places will go to those two.
This morning the rain continued. The river is bouncing along at a crazy pace. We’ve had enough rain now, I feel. My Spanish sister, sweltering under the Andalusian heat suggests we send her some of our rain. If only it were that simple.
They’re evacuating people from the Greek island of Rhodes where wildfires are raging. At least two airlines are no longer flying any more tourists out there but in fact are planning to fly empty planes there so that tourists forced to cut short their holidays can manage to fly home. As some of them protest at sitting for hours on a hot beach waiting for boats to take them away, I find myself wondering if this will give them an insight into how refugees feel trapped for weeks, months, even years in makeshift camps.
Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!
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