Full Metal Wheelbarrow

 Mud, Sweat and Gears by Ellie Bennett. 291 pages.

Back safely from Rob's parents now - the roads were clear but it kept trying to snow on us on the way back, plus they're doing something long-winded and annoying at the A52/A46 interchange which caused large tailbacks there.

And just for giggles, someone had parked an oil tanker on one side of the road from Nottingham to the M1 roundabout, so a bit of a queue there too.

I had a lovely surprise yesterday. Rob had sent my present (which I wasn't expecting anyway, as he'd already got me a new camera) to his parents' place so I wouldn't see it, expecting to pick it up last weekend, but was prevented by the weather. So when we arrived, I found he'd bought me a canvas print of the sunrise picture I posted a couple of weeks ago - wasn't that a splendid thing to do?

Now I just have to find a spare bit of wall to hang it on :-)

( Watch the Birdie! )It seems to have thawed quite a lot here - Rob is justifiably smug because the bits where he swept the snow away thawed much faster :-)

They're threatening more snow tommorrow. We shall see.

Rob called me at about 8.30pm to tell me that the coach was about to disembark from the ferry and begin trundling across Europe :-)

Up at 7 this morning to drive Rob out to a Little Chef near Newark  to meet up with Peter and Susan who were kindly giving him a lift down to Stansted to  catch the coach (Peter is the trip organiser ).  I tend to be pathologically early for things, but in this case that wasn't so bad, as the traffic through Nottingham was dreadful. We still managed to get to the Little Chef early enough to scarf down a second breakfast though - Rob had a plate of fried stuff and I had the so-called Healthy Option breakfast which involved a bowl of fruit, yogurt and granola and some toast and jam. I'm not convinced about the Healthy part, but it was nice :-)

( Cut for longwindedness and sprouts )