Friday, 14 August 2015

Friday 10th July, 2015

Possibly you didn’t notice, but I sneaked in a day’s holiday mid-week.  How indulgent was that?  Well the fact is I have been chained so religiously to my desk this last year that I felt I deserved it.  More to the point Mrs S landed me with a three line whip.  We have a French exchange staying with us at the moment.  A pleasant though quiet 14 year old - much different from the last exchange we hosted a few years back, also a 14 year old girl from Paris.  That one was a disaster.  I knew we were in for trouble when I read the letter of introduction that she had sent through the school.  “ I love to speak English and want to do it with my English teacher “ if I recall correctly were the words that flashed warning signals.  And indeed she proved a strange and troubled child.  My daughter point blank refused to get on the bus for the return leg and I didn’t blame her to be honest.  I digress.  

 

We had intended to go punting on the Cam on Wednesday, but the skies were grey and foreboding so instead, and I know this is a bit politically incorrect, we got in the car and drove an hour and a half to the Norfolk coast where we had lunch in a pretty wretched pub in the village of Burnham Thorpe, birthplace of Admiral Horatio Nelson, sitting under a clock which, I noted, commemorated the Battle of Trafalgar.  It wasn’t deliberate I promise you.  The point was really to go for a walk on Holkham Beach.  I suppose I was thinking I would show Juliette, who in a few weeks time will be hosting Lottie on the Ile de Re, that we’ve got beaches too.  We managed 10 minutes in torrential rain and I only stood on one dog poo, before we surrendered to the elements, sloshed our way back into the car and drove disconsolately home.

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