We arrived in Penkridge to greet Simon who had kindly waited for us to arrive before driving up to Scotland and then off to Switzerland! After barely saying hello to Pamela, John and Rachel, we abruptly jumped into their car to have a bite of lunch. Rachel’s fiancé, Paul, was still back at their house in Gloucester, but would be coming up tomorrow night.
We drove back down the road we came in on to ‘The Turf’, a Toby Carvery pub that served up a lovely lunch of freshly sliced roast meat, buffet vegetables and massive Yorkshire puddings! The chap who served us looked as “camp as a row of tents” with his mascara, makeup and windswept hairstyle, but he was friendly, cheerful and served us well. The pub used to have some rather risqué postcards all over the walls, but these had been taken down during recent renovations and dumped – much to John’s horror!
On the way back home, Rachel wanted to stop off at the card shop to buy a birthday card for her friend. I went with her and was surprised at how cheap the cards were. After she had made her choice, I suggested we walk home with a minor detour – via the Old Confectionary Shop! I bought a bag of bon-bons to share around, which didn’t last long.
Later on in the evening, Rachel and I popped over to Jim and Carole’s house (Paul’s mother and step-father). The house is just a short walk away across the bridge over the canal, and it is faster to walk than to drive due to the indirect route (three sides of a square). Carole met us at the door with her apron on and apologised for the box in the hallway. We had a coffee and a chat and dropped off Rachel’s bags. Just as we were leaving, Carole gave Rachel a tutorial on how to use the alarm system which was complicated (the only part I remember is pushing A if you are leaving the house or pushing B if you are going to bed, but there was much more to it than that).
Given the late lunch we had, we didn’t feel very hungry, so we only had a light sandwich for dinner. After dinner, we all walked Rachel home. Pamela jokingly suggested we all go in and say hi to Carole, the thought of which embarrassed Rachel no end.
After watching a bit of TV, John dug up a few quizzes for us - there was one very good one where we had to fill in the gaps of a long story using types or models of cars for the missing words - and we spent the rest of the night doing those followed by a few more from the internet. We ended up going to bed quite late, as John and I stayed up chatting until after midnight.
