Three whole weeks at home during the lovely British summertime in between trips.
What could be better?
Long, lazy days and evenings in the garden.
The smell of the BBQ cooking.
Popping wine corks.
All whilst sitting around a beautifully coiffured lawn surrounded by lovely summer blooms and plants.
Except – it was just too bloody hot to do most of that.
When we got back from California, our lawn was badly scorched, bare in parts and dead in others. Patrick just sat there sadly idle in his mowing house, wondering if he would ever be called upon again.
All the lovely plants we had put in this year were like a stuffed parrot – dead and shrivelled.
Half of our plants in pots were in the same sorry state, including my Orange Tree, which I had carefully nurtured through the last four winters.
As for sitting outside, most of the time it was just too darn hot. So, we retreated indoors, curtains drawn, windows shut and the Dyson Air Blade on, trying to keep the heat out of our obviously too-well-insulated house.
So, what did we do? With the indomitable British spirit, we carried on with our unbelievably busy social life. Of course, we only have ourselves to blame, but at times even we felt exhausted just reading our schedule.
Over one period of 13 days, just in the evenings, we attended Latitude to see Lewis Capaldi; went to the Maddermarket to see Breaking the Code; went to the cinema to see Odyssey – my one-word review: rubbish; watched the Common Lot perform On the Huh; saw Charlie Higson being interviewed at the UEA; saw Gary Delaney at the Playhouse; saw Daliso Chaponda at the Playhouse; had the boys over for a BBQ; had the neighbours round for several drinks; went to the RHS Sandringham Flower Show – loved it (OK, it was during the day, but it was early evening when we got home); and finally, I went to Barry’s Stag Day, which was just lovely and I really enjoyed.
The one evening at home was spent watching one episode of Clarkson’s Farm.
I really do not have the energy to write about what our daytime schedule was like.
We love it though and believe in trying to live life to the full whilst we still can.
Of course, the World Cup concluded during this period. For me, it was rather a damp squib. England were simply not good enough on the day in their semi-final match. They knew what they were going to be facing but were not capable of finding a way of dealing with it.
We loved catching up with as many of our friends and family whenever we could.
Just going back to Latitude, we enjoyed our first experience. We would go back if we liked the acts performing and the weather was good. We didn’t enjoy the long walk, but that is a sad necessity.
The best act we saw was not the headliner but Alex James’s Classical Britpop set, which was better than we could ever have hoped. Even I was up and dancing with Karen through most of it.
There was the annual Lanza mini golf tournament which I threw away at the last hole and ended up as a joint winner with Glenn.
The most annoying thing though during this period was the attempt to scam us by the management company of the apartment we stayed in in Anaheim, who claimed we had damaged a cupboard hinge. The photo evidence they sent had the metadata removed howing the date and location of where it was taken. When I pointed this out, they simply resent the same photo with a date pasted onto the front! I replied that we totally reputed that we had either caused or even seen the alleged damage.
I suspect it was because we were from outside the USA, and I wonder how many times they have got away with it in the past. They had said they would keep the security deposit and charge us whatever the cost of the repair came to over and above this.
However, I immediately put the deposit amount I had paid via Amex into dispute, and Amex have already refunded that to me.
Funnily enough, it has all gone quiet for now. I do intend to leave it for another couple of weeks, but once I am certain that the Amex investigation is complete, I will launch into pursuing the matter further with whatever options I have – be it reviews on Booking.com and elsewhere, along with contacting the relevant USA authorities.
Never mess with a retiree with the time and inclination to fight back.
And so, this trip. A short break in Belfast, taking Kevin with us. We had hoped Neil would come with us, but he simply did not have enough holiday left for the year.
This is our second visit to Northern Ireland – (see the 2021 blog). We just hope that one of us doesn’t go down with Covid on the way there this time.
