…or at any rate, where the washing machine is.
We are home.
We woke up this morning to our very last multiple breakfast, which was not quite as nice as the Disneyland ones, but it was almost as nice and in any case we made the absolute most of it.
Mark and I went to bed early last night. Like truly responsible parents we left the children in the bar and we went off for a shower and an early night. They could have come back every fifteen minutes to check on us but they were having too good a time, so they didn’t. The first we heard of them was when they stumbled in giggling in the middle of the night and tried to have showers without waking us up, which they couldn’t.
I love overnight boat travel, the gentle hum of the engines and the peaceful rocking, and the scary grey sea all around. The picture at the top was taken from our window at sunset, it is a rubbish picture but makes me think of travelling times.
Once we had polished scrambled eggs and sausages and bacon and mushrooms off our plates, followed by pastries, obviously, and preceded by bread and cheese, we had got to go and find our cars and disembark. We are used to travelling now, and so took the precaution of remembering where we left the car when we boarded, but not everybody had done so, and there was something of a delay whilst people rushed around in panic trying to remember what they had done with their car.
I thought we did jolly well considering we had had a glass of wine in the car park before we even boarded last night, and we found ours with ease. We had a small panic because of the previously mentioned starting difficulty and clouds of black smoke, but the staff on the Pride of Bruges are all Filipinos, and are far more laughingly tolerant than French hotel valets.
We chugged slowly home.
We knew that we had arrived in Cumbria because it was raining, and there were no leaves on the trees. This was a peculiar sensation, like going back in time, because in France the trees are in full leaf and the days are warm. Here the daffodils were still out, and it is jolly cold. Only a few days ago I was lying on a sun lounger next to a swimming pool, today I put my fur boots back on. I am trying to feel some loyalty to the iron north, with winter coming and wildlings just across the border, but actually I can’t help thinking how much nicer it would be if it stopped raining a bit more often.
It was a slow journey because by this time the car was packed as solidly as the customers at a free bar on a caravan site, and a trip to Asda on the way back meant that the children had got to sit on top of one another. There was hardly an inch of spare room anywhere.
We bought loads of things in Asda.
We had been inspired by Disney’s glorious buffet lunches and bought loads of things that we all know perfectly well we will never eat in our own home environment, like salads and fruit, and yoghurt, but just possessing such things makes me feel a little healthier, which is a start.
Unloading took ages, and then we had got to distribute everything around the house and start on the washing.
Goodness me, there was a lot of this.
Mark went off to the farm, pretending to collect the dogs, but actually to mess about with his rotary digging machine for the allotment because he has also envied Disney their gardens.
I washed and washed and washed, and to my joy it stopped raining and an icy but dry wind howled along the back alley, making it possible to get some washing dry as well.
It was a joy to see the dogs. They wagged their whole bodies and then sank into a deep sleep in front of the newly-lit fire.
We are just about unloaded and organised. We haven’t gone to work yet, so I have had a glass of wine instead of dinner, which I think will be a good start on the diet.
Work can wait until tomorrow.
The picture is Cumbria this afternoon. O to be in England…
