Miles for Tiles

I awoke at 6.30 a.m. making English tea for me and fruit tea for Sara. I hoisted the French flag to mark Bastille Day. It was a bit of a manic morning as Sara had to get off to the doctor's for 8.30 a.m., Molly was arriving at 7.30 a.m. , Mary announced that she was feeling poorly and Tom was rushing around and needed to get off for the bus, with his PE kit for Sports Day. In the end Sara took Mary with her to the doctors and I took Molly to school. I had a meeting at 9.30 a.m. (or so I thought) and was lucky to get a parking space at the office in Salisbury. My meeting at 9.30 a.m. I soon discovered had been cancelled. I still had plenty of work to do and another lengthy meeting to look forward to in the afternoon. I lunched with Andy P on mackerel salad. I was very pleased with all the work I managed to get through today. I also briefly met Sara's "replacement", Ann. I arrived home at around 5.45 p.m. after having to stop twice to take phone calls from the office. Once home I had a quick cup of tea and a home-made burger before setting off for Basingstoke on a 66-miles round trip! Why Basingstoke? Well we are currently completely modernising the children's bathroom by moving and installing a new bath and shower and after a lot of discussions Sara had decided upon a grey and white tiling regime. Sara bought them today but the proposed border tiles had been wrongly sized in their box at Homebase and so she had bought insufficient to complete the job. The tiles were also discontinued and stock had only be tracked down to Basingstoke - hence the drive over there to pick up the additional tiles needed before Homebase closed at 8 p.m. I had intended to mow the lawn and hoped I might be be able to do that on my return before it got dark. I had no difficulty in finding Homebase as it is on Winchester Road and I have passed it many times on my way to and from Basingstoke Station. How many assistants does it take to change a table lamp? Apparently four as I was kept waiting to pick up the tiles by a long discussion surrounding another customer who wanted to change one! Eventually I got served, checked the tiles were the correct ones (they were) and left - my transaction taking about 2 minutes in total. On the way back I phoned Mum as I had been unable to get through on Monday evening. We had a brief chat as she was in the process of cooking herself some gammon for her tea. Shortly after the call the heavens opened and I was caught in torrential rain as I drove along the A303. Back home, we checked that the tiles matched the others - they did - and I read Mary the next instalment of "Five have an Adventure" by Enid Blyton complete with pony and trap, ginger beer, buns and ginger cake for tea, dinner gongs and grumpy Uncle Quentin. Tomorrow another day in Salisbury. Only another four left for Sara.