Oh yeah. On holiday. Then at Towersey (we made Zombies), then, rather coming down from the whole entire “oooh, I seem to have been away for much of August” and thus fed up, back at work, failing to really sleep properly for a couple of nights (on what planet is it easier to sleep on a leaking air mattress in a tent while the rain falls and the wind blows, but far harder to sleep in a bed with sheets, blankets, pillows, and windows that don’t rattle?).

And then it’s the weekend, and the football season. This means that N is off at football, and I am faffing about (score is currently 1-all, and they are playing Norwich. I shall be astounded if Norwich actually win. Fond as I am of my old stomping ground, I’m not sure football is its strongest point). I am definitely faffing. I am on the verge of cutting out a clothkits skirt, but I thought that, maybe, I could check in here first.

I achieved uploading some photos. My holiday snaps are up in the appropriately named album “We’ve gone on Holiday By Mistake“. For some odd reason, they are in No Particular order, so you’ll just have to guess if you’re outside Uncle Monty’s Cottage, Chatsworth or the bizarre little mill museum we detoured round on the way back from Derbyshire. Oooh. Point. I didn’t say where we were going. We spent two days near Penrith, looking at Withnail & I locations (go and watch that film if you haven’t seen it. Not an awful lot happens, but it’s done beautifully). Then we bounced up to Fort William, and climbed Ben Nevis. My asthma behaved, there was mist but it was blowy rather than damp and in one place, and I was no longer recovering from bronchitis well over a month earlier, so I didn’t have any repeat of the issues that marred our trip to Wales last year. I have now climbed the three tallest peaks in the UK. N & I will go back to do Scafell Pike next year, as he’s not done that one (and I’d rather like to climb both it, and Snowdon, without The Welshman. I am now of the opinion that The Welshman was charming, but treated me fairly appallingly in an intermittent manner over the space of 18 months, and I have unfriended him on Facebook. I note that we have approximately 30 friends in common. The vast majority of them are MINE). So. Anyhow. We climbed Ben Nevis, we went past Glencoe, and recalled Adrian Mole’s trip there, and how he met Hamish, and the otter stone that he bought for Pandora, and then we came back via Derbyshire, simply so I could visit Chatsworth rather than drive past it yet again.  Oh. On the way down we bounced round New Lanark, but didn’t spend long there. Well. Long enough to buy yarn for a sweater for N.

Chatsworth was glorious. Apart from the bit where I whacked my head on a sculpture of a horse, which was rather hard, nearly had me in tears and I swear has knocked out some brain cells. I keep muddling my words more than normal, and coming out with complete garbage. I am pretty sure that neuroplasticity will sort this out in due course, once everything’s had a chance to pull itself back together and create some new pathways. We stayed at Chatsworth from opening time to closing time, didn’t manage to see all of it, and could happily have spent a second day there (there’s a behind the scenes tour that you have to book online, which would have been super to go on). 

Most of my photos are from Richard Arkwright’s Masson Mills. Ridiculously cheap to enter, you can just poke about the place to your heart’s content. We tried on gas masks (what were they doing there?) resisted taking home tuffs of cotton for spinning, poked at machinery, prodded, spun bobbins about, touched absolutely EVERYTHING we could. Because there was no-one standing about, no CCTV. Just stuff. I like museums that are Just Stuff.

And then we were home. And there was a spot of work, and then there was Towersey, with dancing, and felt zombies, and some extremely good tomatoes (Purple Calabash), and beading, and I learned how to make shambala bracelets from Fiona, and I have PLANS involving Christmas and such things, and yes, it was far nicer than last year. Being able to stand up in the tent for the first time since about 1998 was also rather fabulous. Yes. That’s the last time I went to Towersey with someone who had a large tent. And it was a much smaller festival then. Honestly. It’s grown massively since then. Still has its charm, though. Just with more things to do.

So, that brings us to Tuesday. Then there was work, then there was morris dancing, then one of the morris dancers has lung cancer with secondary brain tumours (but is going to plough on with RT etc), and two other friends have tumours (one melanoma, one brain – but that one might be benign), and then there was much working late, and the weekend happened. And here I am.

Weird. Actually sitting on the bed and writing a blog. I ought to be doing something useful about Brownie sixes, but given that half the parents haven’t confirmed that their little darlings are going to show up, I’m not going to. I do need some inspiration about what to do with them on Friday night, though. First week back, we can’t plunge into First Aid without giving people some warning. I need a nice craft for them, and some games. Dr Google may come to my aid after N’s gone to see whatever horror film is on at the Prince of Wales Theatre tonight (it starts at 11.30pm, I have no interest in going – I’m not a horror film sort of person). Oh yes. Videodrome.

Tomorrow we have a 10km race, part of the kilomathon (26.2km race) training that we’re doing. Yes. A kilomathon. I needed a challenge, and the half marathons are at difficult times. So why not simply run further. No I’m not entirely sure what came over me either. 

So. A list.

• laundry
• Henry Smith Charity Report
• Brownies Sixes
• Knit hat for H 
• Knit Hug for C
• Knit Baby Shawl for J
• Make skirt
• Tidy bedroom a bit more
• Put stuff away from Towersey
• Consider looking at Commissioner Resource Pack
• Pack up F’s baby restrainer to mail
• Work out craft for Brownies on Friday. Make example.
• Put CDs onto iPod

Ye Gods. One of my friend’s daughters now has her own twitter feed… and that’s just totally derailed me. I think I should just get on with things now. Really.