The plan for the morning was to get the canvas of “Brown and Smelly” spread across the lawn and dried in the sunshine. And then I was going to rummage through the lock-up to sort out the gazebos. A few weeks ago I gave out spare gazebos to anyone who wanted one, only to find that I was actually distributing bags of poles with no gazebo material. The material must be in the lock-up somewhere. But I woke to find it was raining, so I went shopping instead.
First of all to the fishing tackle shop. Last week I’d ordered a spring balance, and had agreed to pay eighteen quid for it when the shop got one in. Today it had arrived, and I bought the thing together with some floats, weights and hooks, and paid ten quid for the lot. I’m not complaining (!) And then to Timpsons for some engraving. I now have the two trophies which will be awarded for the Pooh-Sticks contest we’re planning for the kite festival in Teston. The contest will be on the Saturday afternoon and will be quite straightforward. More details are on Facebook (because their software is there, and saves me having to re-invent it on other web space), or here. There’s already eleven people who are interested in the thing, and fifteen quid has already been promised for the charity we’re supporting.
Home to find the rain had stopped, so I spread the canvas of “Brown and Smelly” across the lawn to get it dried. I then started a bit of tidying up around the house. It’s amazing what rubbish I found; so many copies of the same book, so many copies of the same DVD. With no re-sale value at all on eBay, they all got chucked. I managed to get four bin bags full of tat and rubbish. After all, the bin men are coming tomorrow.
By late afternoon “Brown and Smelly” had dried out, and with a rain shower forecast for the evening, we got the canvas packed away. With the camping gear away for another month, I’m wondering if we might be able to make our camping trips somewhat more streamlined. In the first instance we need to get rid of the cardboard boxes and foldable boxes and get some stacking boxes which would pack into the car better.
Also I can’t help but feel we take too many chairs. Over the years we seem to have accumulated loads of camping chairs, and we drag the lot along every time. At least half of them stay in their bags, and then go home unused. I’ve half a plan to find out who all the chairs belong to, give them back and instead take half a dozen camping benches like the one we got from camping international the other week. Each bench seats two people and when packed takes up half the space of a camping chair.
Despite the filler cap of our new three litre kettle breaking within minutes of being taken out of the box, it still worked fine. Its larger volume was useful: we need another of those. And our water containers need new taps. I wonder if we can get new taps, or if we have to buy whole new containers?
The kite buggy needs some attention, having had two separate accidents over the last weekend. Not only has it lost a foot peg, one of the foot rests has been forced into the socket so firmly it won’t come out. I told the child who did it that the foot peg was fine as it was, but he smiled at me as he ignored me and wedged it in place. I then challenged him to get it out, and it was at that point he realised what I’d been saying to him for the last five minutes. Whilst the thing is still perfectly useable as a buggy, it’s now rather more difficult to transport, seeing as it doesn’t come apart as completely as it once did. Perhaps I might squirt it with some WD40….
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