Home again! Home again!

Here we are: Wednesday already!! Time seems to have flown since we returned from Spain last Thursday. We arrived late in the evening to find that obras had followed us home and were making progress slow on the motorway homewards. We made it eventually, of course, and woke next morning to rain, slow and steady to start with and then torrential with quiet bits in between downpours. And the gallegos say it rains a lot in Galicia. They don’t know the half of it.

We were back home with a vengeance: rain AND babysitting!!

On Saturday, after the rain stopped, I went exploring old haunts to see that all was well. For several months now I have been getting up and jogging along the Delph Donkey Line. This used to be a branch line of a rail system going through Uppermill on its way from Manchester to Yorkshire. Some time in the fifties the line fell out of use and was eventually closed, along with many others throughout the country. I suppose that back then no-one could have foreseen that now it would be an ideal commuter line from here to Manchester. So it goes; what we have instead is a very pleasant leafy walk along the former railway track. Anyway, some time in May a notice appeared warning of an imminent temporary closure of a central stretch of the walk so that they could do some repairs to the dry stone walls. Of course the work was late starting because the rain got in the way. So they began a couple of weeks before I went away and on my return the path is now a muddy mess with mounds of earth, muddy puddles and messy machinery all over the place.

Sunday came along and Grandma’s Girls set off in the sunshine to do the Race for Life in Heaton Park, a huge park in another part of Greater Manchester. By the time we were half way there, the heavens opened. We sat for about a quarter of an hour before we left the car in the car park. It stopped raining pretty well for the waiting – and there was quite a lot of it with ladies in crazy pink wigs – and the warm-up, which was quite a sight to see with masses of pink clad ladies jumping up and down in unison. Anyway, we did the race: 5 kilometres in around 45 minutes, a mix of fast walking and jogging. And it rained on us. But between us we raised some £500.

On Monday I did the “Ladies Who Lunch” thing with a couple of old friends, managing to sit outside in the sunshine after lunch and after a walk round the sales. In the middle of all this I had a text message saying that grandchild number three had been delivered to our house as had been sick at school. What a lucky escape I had, especially as I was not going straight home. After my day out I was going to watch grandchild number two in her school play. This was an entertaining look at education called School Daze. Grandchild number two was in the chorus as the main roles go to the children about to leave primary school to go to high school.

To follow this Tuesday morning saw me babysitting grandchild number two who was not allowed back to school until he had gone 24 hours without sickness.

And finally, today, Wednesday, I was out for a run when my phone rang. It was my daughter once again, telling me she was on the way to my house with grandchild number one who had clearly caught the summer vomiting bug from her small brother and was on the way to my house so that mummy could go back to work.

Maybe it’s time to run away to Spain again before they give it to me!