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7 June - an impromptu picnic -
At the end of yet another week of uninterrupted southern-European weather (it's apparently been the warmest spring here for 114 years, and we can well believe it),
the word went out that there was to be an informal "gathering" down by the lake.
A fire for grilling things on, and a bit of gossip about who's done what.
One of the joys of Ørsdalen life. (click photo, left, for four pictures).
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8 June - water! We arrived home from church yesterday evening to find the power was off. When we turned the main fuse back on, it tripped again immediately. We did the usual thing - turned all the individual fuses, put the main fuse back on and then turned each fuse on in turn to find the culprit - the pump that brings water up from the well. The real problem was that the well is empty. Months of heat, without so much as a drop of rain, has been very pleasant but we're now paying the price. Fortunately we've got keys to the school, so we can collect water in buckets from there. And hope for rain! There's around 1mm forecast for tomorrow afternoon.
9 June - bank holiday - 1 May is a bank holiday. So is the 17th (independence day) and (this year) the 29th (Ascension Day). At the end of April we had the Easter Monday bank holiday, and today it was Pentecost Monday (bank holiday). Because 1 and 29 May were both on Thursdays, the Fridays of those weeks were treated as extra "bank holidays", with schools closed and most people taking long weekends. At this time of year, every week seems to have one or two days off; a nice way of winding down to the end of term and summer holidays (only 10 days to go!).
Like Boxing Day and Easter Monday, Pentecost Monday counts as a holy day (or "red day", because they're coloured red on the calendar), so the police have been out and about around Norway today, telling people to shush - to stop hammering, sawing or cutting their lawns. You think I'm joking? I'm not. Norwegian law says that: "On holy days from midnight to midnight, as well as from 4pm on the day before Easter, Pentecost and Christmas Day, there is to be holy-day quiet which no-one in any place is to disturb with unnecessary noise". In Oslo, the police told several people to stop working (honestly, this is absolutely true - see news report here) but these individuals weren't fined because they came from Poland and didn't know the law (the comment adds, in tones of slight indignation, that the day after Pentecost is not a holy day over there). I suspect that no Norwegians were working in Oslo - they would all be out having a relaxing day in their cabins.
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15 June - end of term at Norkirken - Each summer, Tracy's church (Norkirken) has an end-of-session picnic, with swimming in the river and all sorts of activities. Click here for picture sequence.
23 June - After a disgraceful period of silence, this page will try for the next few days to catch up on the news of the last couple of weeks. This news covers, amongst other things: (a) Thomas Andrew has finished sixth-form (with very good grades), handed back the keys to his flat and taken a combined job/training course for two years, living at home in Ørsdalen (b) Beth is also moving, to Bergen at the end of this month (so don’t use her Ålesund address from now on if you want to write to her) (c) term has now ended. Hurrah!
Beth, who is this year's employee of the year in her company (which is a very large firm with branches all over Norway), has been asked if she will move from Ålesund to take over and turn around the Bergen branch, which has been failing. She was ready for a change and a new challenge and agreed - and is to move at the beginning of July. It will be quite a change after many years in Ålesund, but Bergen is a nice city and we're very pleased because it's only four hours or so to drive, so it'll be much easier to visit!
In connection with the end of term, Thomas Andrew pointed out the latest offering on the "things to be given away" website -- a school. "It just wouldn't be the same", says the staff in the advert, "without the current school leavers. There's no point carrying on". Needless to say, the advert was a fake, placed by the final-year students in question.
Although, as Norah points out, there’s no need to go away when the Ørsdalen weather is (still) pretending to be Mediterranean, we’ve done so.
We’ve flown south and are currently at an Ørsdalen-style farm in inland Portugal. It’s actually a little cooler than we’ve grown used to for the past few weeks in Norway, which is very welcome. Thomas Andrew is home looking after the place. Matt is flying down from Bodø, so we’re just driving down to southern Portugal to collect him from an airport there. A few photos – click picture, right. More later.
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24 June - Been down to southern Portugal (Faro) today to pick up Matt, who has flown down from Bodø to join us (he's just getting his feet on the floor in this photo). Because it's a long way we chose to drive down yesterday and stay overnight in a holiday chalet on a very up-market golf resort (though none of us play golf). We've had a good time. It was very pleasant - excellent accommodation, facilities, restaurant, shopping - but also faintly surreal. In the midst of the rather parched landscape and one of Europe's most depressed economies, the golf resort consisted of acres and acres of brilliant green, heavily-watered plantations, lightly populated with evidently wealthy and heavily-watered tourists - not at all the sort of place we usually stay. The oppulent consumption evoked some heartfelt reflections from Katie about social conscience and unfair distribution ... But as we were leaving in the morning we met a mile-long procession of workers' vans arriving for their day of tending the site, so the place obviously does do some good to the local economy!
On the whole, the weather is being rather cooler than in Ørsdalen: Tracy has put a jumper on for the first time in weeks! (Not so cool, of course, that we can't spend time lazing by the pool and enjoying the sunshine!) And on the way, we drove through a patch of rain that would be very handy at the moment in Ørsdalen; huge dollops of water hammering on the car, with visibility down to a few inches and the road turning into a river under our wheels.
25 June - real Portugal - After yesterday's visit to the affluent tourist Portugal we thought that today we would visit a "normal" little town.
We chose an attractive little white town a few miles down the road, Campo Maior.
This is a Roman town with an impressive castle, where in 1732 a large amount of gunpowder exploded, killing two-thirds of the town's inhabitants.
Wondering what to do with the abundance of human skulls and bones a few years later,
someone came up with the nice idea of arranging them attractively to form a chapel, next door to the main church.
Around the edges, collar bones have been arranged to form a text
(probably something about the wisdom of keeping gunpowder away from naked flames).
This seems to be a habit around here - there's another such establishment not far away in Évora.
We dutifully admired it, and rows of skulls grinned back at us,
before we wandered around the town, which featured a (live) grandma on every upstairs balcony (all conversing with each other) and groups of grandads on every street corner,
before heading off to the castle.
As we approached the castle, there were dogs scavenging the bins and very ragged children walking in the streets.
There were some very rough "houses" in the castle walls, and as we turned a corner we found a shanty town of the sort you associate with the third world.
A large group of families evidently living under corrigated iron roofs.
It couldn't have been a greater contrast to Faro's golf resort.
Click photo, left, for pictures.
26 June - yet another Portugal -
Today we spent the day - in sunshine and 35° - by the side of Portugal's largest lake - a reservoir that stretches between the village of St. Eulalia
(which will be of great interest to our Eulalia at home)
and yesterday's town of Campo Maior.
The reservoir was glorious.
Completely deserted (no sign that any other tourist had ever been there),
teeming in wildlife -- fish jumping by the dozen, large birds constantly circling overhead and every kind of dragonfly and other interesting creatures --
completely silent apart from the fish jumping and the bells of cattle grazing nearby,
and a vast, arid landscape that looked like something out of the heart of Africa.
As we swam (the water was very warm and inviting), Katie was singing "Never smile at a crocodile" - it was that kind of place.
(Click photo, right, for 8 pictures).
The village was enchanting, and on the way home we stopped at our closest village, Arranches, which we're looking forward to exploring next.
But just for now, the poolside is calling, before garlic prawns for tea, and the end of a perfect day beside the little lake outside the cottage.
27 June - saving the best till last -
Today we headed into the mountains along the border between Portugal and Spain.
This once-disputed territory is littered with forts and castles, of which the castle and village of Alegrete has to be the most beautiful.
Both became definately Portuguese under the Convention of Badajoz (16 February 1267), signed by Afonso III of Portugal (1248-1279) and his father, Alfonso X of Castile,
which was in any event a Jolly Good Thing.
Absolutely a place we would love to come back to.
Click photo, left, for two whole pages of photos - we just couldn't stop!.
Tomorrow, we're reluctantly leaving the farm and heading off to further experiences in inland Spain.
29 June -
Arrived arduously but safely in the mountains of southern spain.
We're staying at a farmhouse a few miles down a dirt track from a small village (click photo, right, for pictures).
Typically, the garden is full of fruit trees: oranges, plums, apricots, figs, grapes.
On arriving yesterday, we called in the village shop for some provisions and were struck by the different culture from Portugal.
The Portuguese are much quieter than the Spaniards: while in Portuguese shops, people moved around quietly as though in church and
paid at the till with no more than a smile and a quiet "thanks" (perhaps a "hallo" as well if the cashier was a very close relative),
in the Spanish shop we had to stand for half an hour while the cashier and the customer in front of us had a long and voluble discussion involving the waving of
more hands than you would credit a couple of people with having, re-calculating the bill at least ten times (almost coming to blows over it)
and a noise level that made me wonder if the rest of the village would soon be coming in to get involved.
But then I realised that they were making as much racket themselves, so they probably didn't hear.
30 June - After a couple of lazy days by the pool, we had an evening trip to the nearby town of Ronda. Sounds like it should be in the (south Wales) valleys, but is actually a medium-sized and very ancient town in the mountains, built at the top of an alarming cliff (photos here). We stood on an overhanging lookout point, throwing leaves over the edge for the pleasure of watching them shoot upwards on the upcurrant of hot air from the valley far below (something that the civil-war prisoners depicted in Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls significantly failed to achieve - they shot downwards under the same circumstances) before heading into the town's busy shopping streets in search of a fly swatter. Here, as elsewhere, this proved a surprisingly difficult quest, but our determination was considerable after nights full of buzzing and we eventually succeeded. The bullring (the largest one in regular use in Spain) was being used for an orchestral concert this evening, and as we approached it we saw several police cars and an ambulance parking outside. This led to quips from Katie and Matt that perhaps Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture was on the programme and that the ambulance was for canon casualties. As we walked past, we could hear that very piece exploding over the walls, which caused some merriment.
1 July - Still no rain at home! The drought continues in Ørsdalen (though rain is forecast for when we get home and have visitors!). Despite starting the year with Bjerkreim's river overflowing its banks when it really ought to have been freezing and snowing, here are pictures of the same river today; the second-dryest for 114 years, according to the local paper.
2 July - One-way systems - We're a little puzzled by the one-way system in the village. All roads are one way, from east to west (map here). There is a road that allows you from west to east, but only half way through the village, landing you back into the westbound one-way system again. Apart from our arrival, where we ended up driving up a hair-raising track into the mountain and then down a narrow one-in-two lane (with Tracy's eyes shut), the only time we've made it through the village was by driving with Spanish insoussiance the wrong way up the one-way street. We've wondered about this. We've also wondered why all the trains (we can see the railway line in the distance fom the farmhouse) only travel from west to east, before deciding that in the east there must be a large heap of abandonned trains, and in the west, a vast graveyard of abandonned cars (which, we now realise, is why the wise men from the east had to return a different way, by camel train). We have avoided the problem by only heading east out of the village. Today, we dared to go west. We arrived without problem at the neighbouring town: Ubrique, some twenty miles over a winding mountain road. There, we found ourselves in a new traffic system. On our way through that town to get here from Portugal last weekend, we had an Alice through the looking glass experience, in which irrespective of the road we tried we always ended up at the same petrol station at the top of the hill. Eventually we went inside and communicated by hand signals: "we've just driven all the way from Portugal and we're trying to get through this wretched town but wherever we go we just keep on ending up here, and by the way, do you sell fly swatters?" [see 30 June)]. The man at the petrol station didn't sell fly swatters (no-one does, it seems) but he did have a set of printed instructions in several languages for how to get through the town. "We get 20000 people a day asking the same question", he hand-signalled back. Approaching from the east, the problem was how to get away from Aldi. We were very systematic about it and tried every possible combination of roads in turn, which allowed us to circle Aldi in increasing circles, before finally attaining escape velocity and getting into the town centre. Here there was a one-way system of such stunning complexity and malignancy that it was nearly nightfall before we hit Aldi again, bought a pair of nutcrackers (we've been looking for them in Norway for years), and headed home again to the sanity of the pool, repeating the mountainous exploits of our arrival in order to avoid the one-way system.
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Beth's new home town of Bergen was yesterday voted number 2 (after Venice) in the list of the world's 15 best waterfront cities.
Today's news from Norway devotes a full page to a stolen car in the west-coast town of Stryn. The story goes as follows: a man was to collect a second-hand Toyota RAV that his mother had bought in Stryn. He met the owner, was given the keys and told that the car was parked half-way down the road. He found it, got in and drove off. He was a bit irritated with the seller, both because the car hadn't been cleared out properly and because the petrol tank was nearly empty, but he bought some petrol and delivered the car to his mother. She wasn't delighted either because the car looked scruffier and older than she had expected. In the meantime, back in Stryn, the police were searching for a stolen Toyota RAV. The owner had apparently left the car unlocked and the keys (which were the sort that you don't put into the ignition - just having them in the car is enough) inside (as you do in Norway) ... The story ends with everyone being reuinited with their correct cars, smiles and coffees all round, as it should be.
5 July - Safely home from Spain. All well, except that lightening has taken out the internet and killed both the modem and Tim's computer. The promised rain has arrived - though only a couple of days' worth; just enough to top up the well. We leave for Germany next weekend, but in the meantime a few days at home, together with our good friends Jon (who maintains a similar blog at his home near Tromsø), his wife Sarah and daughter Susanna.
8 July - Waterfall outing - pictures here.
9 July -
We're back to hot, dry weather - around 30° today.
A day in Egersund, rounded off by an evening on the beach down at the river.
Click picture, left, for photos.
11 July - 27th wedding anniversary! - Hot. Yes, of course I mean Tracy, but the weather as well. Some 30° again, and a funeral in Ørsdalen. A valley man - the father, in fact, of the man we bought this house from - so the little chapel was packed. 175 people pressed themselves into the little room and adjacent corridors. Jugs of iced water were provided and plans were made for dealing with people who passed out through the heat (they were to be dragged out by the feet and dumped in the river).
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After weeks of empty well we've at last got a little water underground, but now the pump has gone, so whatever water there is, is staying there for the time being. A new pump is on order and hopefully by the time we get back from Germany we might actually have hot and cold running water on tap - an almost forgotten luxury!
A new plague is making itself felt in the hot weather - flying ants. This is the roof of Tim's car this evening.
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17 July - in Germany We're back in mid-Germany and have started this summer's concert-and-fun tour. Our route was the same as the previous two years - we drove here, stopping overnight with our old friends just outside Kristiansand, then taking the early-morning ferry to Denmark, staying overnight at our regular hotel in Egerstorf, just south of Hamburg, then on to mid-Germany.
The first concert was at Erfurt's 13th-century Predigerkirche. (A on the map). The organist terrified Tim by asking him to "say a few words" about the music before playing - in German, of course. Despite studies on the internet-based German course for the past few months (the lessons mostly concerned with owls and invisible elves), this seemed rather a big challenge. But it was done, and people evidently understood because they laughed in the right places. At least, we think they were laughing at the jokes, not at the German ... The concert was a great success: large audience and good comments (including some emails received afterwards from people in the audience).
We're staying at lovely hotels and enjoying excellent food and drink - so these trips are certainly no hardship. Lots of swimming and other fun activities as well.
Today and tomorrow there are concerts in Eisenberg. (B on the map). Today's concert was to be a lunchtime event at the town-centre church of St Peter, and tomorrow's concert is to be on the Baroque organ at the 17th-century palace church. We arrived this morning and Tim asked to be let into St Peter's, and got on with practicing. Tracy and Katie arrived at 10 to 12 for the concert at 12; at this point they were the only people there. As the clock was striking 12 there was still no-one there and we were all getting a bit worried. To cut a long and anxious story mercifully short, today's concert was also supposed to be at the palace (wires had got crossed at the church office), and people were waiting anxiously there. Luckily it's only a two-minute walk, or one-minute sprint, from the one to the other - but it meant Tim playing a concert on a tricky and querky 18th-century organ that he'd never touched before playing the first note. Hopefully things will go better there tomorrow, with some proper preparation! Here is more information than you want to know about Eisenberg's churches and their history.
It occurs to me that so far on this trip we've only taken one photograph - and that was of the dustbins at the church office in Eisenberg (photo, right - click for enlargement).
Norwegian speakers will particularly enjoy the picture, since one of the bins is labelled "Gud" ["God" in Norwegian].
Of course, it's only right that at the church office, God should get his own private bin.
Sadly, though, "Gud" does not mean God in German.
So what does it mean?
According to the dictionary on the internet, it means "Caucasian snow vole".
Though why such a creature would have its own bin at the church office is anyone's guess.
20 July -
It's so much easier when you know which church you're supposed to be playing in.
The concert in Eisenberg went fine.
Eisenberg is a little town - one shopping street, a church and a little museum - but in the way of these German towns was once its own little state,
complete with a Ducal ruler and his palace, complete with a splendid semi-detached Baroque church - possibly the most heavily-decorated church I've ever seen.
The organ dates from Bach's time and is pretty much unchanged since then.
A challenge to play, but it apparently sounded OK down in the church.
(Click photo, left, for pictures of Eisenberg and its palace church).
Last night's concert was in Ponitz, where we stayed with our good friends there. (C on the map). Ponitz is a tiny village, famous for its Renaissance manor house with wonky windows and for its Silbermann organ (also from Bach's time). The concert was tricky because, due to heat and low humidity, there was a fault on the organ which meant that a note sounded continuously throughout the concert. Unfortunately, the press reviwer was (according to the organist Christoph) a "spiteful devil", so Christoph was not looking forward to reading the review, which would be bound to make comments. And so it did. Today we're going to the morning service at Ponitz church, where Tim and Christoph are playing organ duets and Tracy only narrowly escaped taking the service (the vicar is away).
21 July - We left Ponitz this morning - at least Tracy and Tim did. Katie got left behind. She's staying for the week to take part in a youth choir production, who next Sunday are putting on a musical (in German, of course) about Joseph. She will hopefully enjoy the week, and her German will certainly be vastly improved (with a special focus on vocabulary about dreams, cows and years of plenty). The group is staying in tents in the church grounds (photo of the group here) and we were impressed. Bedtime is 9pm and everyone up early. Lots of rehearsal time, but some outings such as the open-air pool in the village. We joined in the evening meal - wonderfully-full-corn bread, cheese, salami and raw vegetables, with a choice of "garden water" (water boiled up with herbs from the garden) or cold rose-hip tea to drink. This wasn't in any way self-consciously health food - it was normal fare and all the children were obviously used to it and devoured it, small fingers reaching eagerly for the next chunk of cucumber.
We've come to the little town of Neuruppin (30000 inhabitants) some miles north-west of Berlin.
(D on the map).
The town is built along the side of a vast lake (the Brandenburg region is famous for its lakes),
on which a fine collection of boat-hire companies are letting out everything from pedal boats and canoes to floating party rafts sporting water slides and other attractions.
The town is full of interesting half-timbered houses (click photo, right for pictures).
Most of the town dates from just after 1787, when it was re-built by Friedrich Wilhelm II (to whom the grateful inhabitants have put up a statue in the town centre)
following a catastrophic fire. The new town included a famous fire-extinguisher factory.
The streets are extremely broad, with everything classically proportioned.
Huge double-spired church just by the lakeside, with a large, modern organ.
23 July - Last night's concert went fine, with a large and enthusiastic audience, one of whom came up afterwards and presented Tim with a book (in German) on the 18th-century organ builder Joachim Wagner, who (amongst other things) built the organ at Trondheim cathedral. We became quite fond of the town and its lake. The lake is well used, rather in the manner of the Norfolk broads (photo), including holiday boats, but is clean and pleasant enough to swim in or just to relax by. Along the banks just outside the town are beautiful houses paths and fields, and in some places beautiful homes or (in some cases) holiday homes. We explored the market stalls on the main square. We stopped to look at a stall selling hats (the absent Katie wants one) and asked the man if he had a smaller one. He didn't, but he did pick up that our German had a distinct non-German accent, and asked whether we were Danish. As soon as we mentioned Norway he launched into a vivid account of his travels in Norway, describing how Kaiser Wilhelm had rebuilt Ålesund after the great fire of 1904 (which we knew all about, of course) and the hat man's passion for Grieg (who after all had, as he pointed out, studied in Leipzig) - he'd visited Grieg's home/museum in Bergen - and many aspects of Norwegian, Danish and Swedish history. It was very impressive!
26 July - Tracy and Tim, child-free for the first time for years, have spent three days working on some projects - while relaxing in a 4-star spa hotel on the outskirts of Berlin. (E on the map). Swimming, saunas and jacuzzis several times a day, very luxurious breakfasts and evening meals either in the hotel or at a very presentable Indian restaurant nearby. This is the life! But on to the next concert venue today.
Isn't it irritating when you've filled the car with petrol at a petrol station and then can't remember where you put the filler cap? An old friend (who Tim taught the organ to in Lurøy when she was 7 or 8 years old) reports that she was supposed to be flying home from Bergen yesterday, but ended up spending the night in a hotel at the airline's expense. They'd mislaid the filler cap for the plane.
Arrived at Loburg - a village in the depths of the former East Germany that makes Ørsdalen look busy and stressful.
(F on the map).
Set in miles of completely flat farmland, crossed by narrow roads, the village is a hodgepodge of styles (click photo, left, for pictures).
About one house in ten is for sale.
The first thing that struck us when we walked down the street was that the place was utterly deserted.
Eventually we came across two children, playing. They stopped what they were doing and stared.
I waved. One of them waved back.
I said "Hallo" (it's the same in German).
One of them said "Hallo" back.
Then we walked on, conscious that they were staring at us: "what on earth are people doing here?".
We found the village shop, but it was completely dark and deserted.
We tried the door, just on impulse, and were amazed to find that it opened.
The shop was actually open - just unnaturally quiet and unlit.
We bought a bottle of wonderful cherry wine and some provisions.
As we came out, a car had appeared and was parked over the road - and it was a Trabi! (Trabant).
We began to feel as though we'd been dropped into the Twilight Zone.
As we were coming back we actually met another person - a large, tatooed man wheeling a small girl on his bike.
We exchanged "good evening"s and a yard or so later heard a small girl's voice: "Daddy - who was that?".
The church organised our accommodation, which is perhaps a good thing because there isn't a large selection of hotels in the village. None, in fact. We've found ourselves at a private bed-and-breakfast establishment, run by a very nice, if slightly bemused, old lady who has promised to bring our breakfast up to our room at 8.30. The place is bang up to date - assuming the year really is 1970. There is - for 1970 - quite a modern wireless in the kitchen. Had we turned it on I'm sure that the announcer would be saying: "so here's what you've all been waiting for - the latest release by Elvis". But now I look more closely he probably wouldn't - the range of channels it offers includes no less than 5 frequencies for Radio DDR (the DDR was the old East Germany), as well as Moscow, Prague, Budapest, Warsaw - and Göteborg (Sweden was a neutral country) (photo of wireless here - note lacey doily under and plastic orchid on top). There's an overpowering smell of pine-fresh dettol on the wood-effect lino. Plastic orchids adorn every window ledge. Looking out of the window (at nearly 10 o'clock on Saturday night), the street below is deserted and silent - and not one single house on the entire street has a light showing in the window (photo here).
27 July -
The church, though, was wonderful.
A huge place (with arrow slits in the tower) but inside an inspiring atmosphere - and, of course, a beautiful organ on the gallery,
built in 1705 by an organ builder called Kahrling -- his only surviving instrument (must have been Kahrling's black-label model).
Click photo, right, for pictures of inside the church here.
The concert - the final one in this tour - went well and was well attended (where all those people came from we're not sure). The reviewer seemed to like it - Read review here. The only incident occured when the organist demonstrated to Tim how to lock the church door from the inside. "You just slip this catch, like so, then slam the door. Then to open it, you do this ... err, this ... oh dear: we seem to be stuck! It's OK- there's an emergency exit!" A caretaker arrived and spent an hour dismantling and re-assembling the lock.
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Katie's week in Thüringen came to an end today, with a concert to which she contributed, including some solos in German. It's gone really well - and it's striking how confident her German has become! She's got on well with the others and is already talking about going back next year. Having decided that 1970 and the Twilight Zone was fun in small doses we opted to drive a couple of hours northwards after the concert to give ourselves a head start for tomorrow's journey home. We stayed in a pleasant and thoroughly 2014 family-run hotel north of Braunschweig, complete with a small swimming pool, of which we made good use.
28 July - Now (10 at night, after driving through Germany and Denmark today) sitting on the ferry from Denmark to Norway: we'll be home in Ørsdalen sometime in the not-very-early hours of tomorrow.
29 July - Home at 5am. Zzzzzzzzz.
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While we were away, Norway has been hotter and dryer than - for instance - Rome, so water is still in short supply. As pointed out on 11 July above, the pump in the well has also gone on strike and needs replacing. This is the reason that there is now an open well cover, with 300 feet of rubber tubing (up which the water is normally pumped) stretched out across the lawn and down around the first bend in the drive (photo, right - click for enlargement). The pump has been ordered from Denmark and should be in Sandnes by tomorrow; we may have water in the tap by (or at worst immediately after) the weekend. What luxury that will be! At the weekend it will be 8 weeks since the well went dry; even though we've been away for 5 of those weeks it still feels like an age!
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