On Duty

 Ellie slept well overnight. It was about 7:00 before she came in to us.

G-Force were on duty today - not just overnight. This meant that the Gorse Fox cancelled his football so he could tag-team with the Silver Vixen. To start with Ellie and Grandpa were playing with her imaginary friends in an imaginary restaurant - followed by a trip to an imaginary supermarket around which he had to push and imaginary trolley and pay the imaginary bill. She clearly has a view of his place in the pecking order.

From the imaginary games, she flipped over to the Silver Vixen and between them the baked a very nice (and real) cake. Then she decided on her face paints. The Gorse Fox was conscripted to be her canvas and sat there quietly with his eyes closed as she daubed various coloured paints and sparkles over his face.

The park was next on the agenda. The Gorse Fox and Ellie walked round to the nearest playground. A small kitten guarded the entrance and ran away as we approached. Ellie went straight to the slide and from the top she spotted where the kitten was hiding. She went over to stroke it and got a swipe for her troubles.  She had a minuscule scratch on her wrist - but that was it. She wanted to go home to Nana. So it was, five minutes after leaving home, we were back again.

Urban-Cub picked her up about 15:30 and took her home for dinner. She has just dropped her back with us  for another sleep-over.

Every day...

 When you are retired, every day is a Bank Holiday. 

We had a quiet start to day (other than Jasper trying to pass on the News headlines). The morning was taken up with some reading and then some domestic chores before the Gorse Fox returned to Condor and re-installed a couple more applications.

After lunch the Gorse Fox popped round to Urban-Cub's. She had a wall heater that needed installing in the garden. Can honestly say that the mounting instructions were along the worst that the Gorse Fox has ever come across. In fact, in the end, we ditched their diagram and did it our own way. Once that was done, a small corner shelf needed installation for her security system's hub. This was a very neat little corner shelf with very solid invisible fixings. Once this was done, the ribbon Ethernet cable needed to be run neatly round the room and tacked in place. It all took a couple of hours, but at least we got it done.

Back home, the nice man from Amazon had deliver a new 1TB SSD. This will be connected to the Thunderbird port and provide a target for MAC OS's TimeMachine backup.

Urban-Cub arrived about 17:30. Ellie had insisted that she wanted noodles for dinner and wanted to eat them at our house. As she was due to sleep overnight anyway, it made no difference.

Leonardo

 The Gorse Fox woke early. He was wide awake and any idea of drifting back off into the arms of Morpheus was clearly stupid. He got up. It was cool to start with and somewhat grey. It did, however, brighten up and turned into a lovely late Summer day.

The Gorse Fox returned to the nurturing of the fledgling Condor. Music was set up by connecting the default system to his existing music library. Whilst this took quite a while, it worked rather well and meant that he didn't have to waste space on Condor to re-host the library. Then he re-installed Da Vinci Resolve (the video editing program). It was a gentle day of installing and testing, and also of looking on Amazon for a suitable hub to provide USB Type A connections. This latter exercise proved rather fruitless... but fortunately, this is not something that is needed in a panic.

The Gorse Fox would just like to go on record to say that in terms of the Universal Truths, the Premiership Table this weekend is as close to perfect as it could be. Spurs are top.... 3 wins, no goals conceded; and Arsenal (the forces of doom) are bottom with no wins and no goals. This shows an agreeable balance in the Universe between good and evil. Long may it continue.

Normality

 A degree of normality has returned. By this, the Gorse Fox is referring to his weekly calls call with the cousins (having missed the last two weeks while travelling). It was nice to see them and have a quick catch-up and gossip. This was also the first time that the Gorse Fox had tried to use Zoom on the fledgling Condor. He's pleased to report that it went without a hitch.

Phone call complete, the Gorse Fox returned to his gradual rebuild of said Condor. The key items today were the addition of ooRexx and GoodSync. The discussion group for the former implied that the Gorse Fox would not be able to get it installed. He, however, had other ideas. With a bit of research, the alteration of a a couple of settings, and the correct responses to a couple of warning messages, it is now running rather well. The Discussion group has been updated with the correct incantations to help others with a similar problem.

As for GoodSync, the Gorse Fox was in two minds whether to continue with its use. It had been the heart of his old backup system but had been superceded during the interregnum. The Gorse Fox decided he would install it and take the opportunity for a free upgrade. At the moment there is no plan to use it for the major backups, but it will be used to synchronise between Condor and the NAS devices. (The backup between the NAS devices will continue to be managed by BarnOwl - a Raspberry Pi).

Just in case you thought the Gorse Fox was inside all day, he did in fact go out to clean the paths and patio.

This photo may give you a clue as to how much they had discoloured. A quick pass with the jet wash brought them up nicely - and left the Gorse Fox with very wet shoes and socks.

Bossing It

Ellie slept well overnight and came in to see us soon after seven. That is perfectly acceptable. We got going, rather slowly, as Ellie needed a shower and hair wash. The Gorse Fox was clear an out of the way long before all the splashing started!

The Gorse Fox, while listening to the chaos, was working on the next stage of Condor rebuild. This was the management of photos and was the responsibility of Lightroom Classic. This installed without issue, but the problem was how to get the old catalogues to point to a new location. Seeing Lightroom open with some 40,000 images missing is a little daunting. Eventually, with the help of Google, the Gorse Fox found the correct incantation and redirected the catalogue to a different root directory (on the NAS). There seems to be a little tidying up to do but it all worked a lot better than he had expected.

This afternoon, we took Ellie along to Lidl in Chichester to see Urban-Cub finish her first shift as the boss. As it happens she was two staff down all day and will have to go back into work later to try and get things straight, but that's what comes with responsibility and pride in your work.

Late afternoon we heard that Cousteau-Cub had managed to get an interview for the Coventry Hobbit with another supermarket and also get him a chance to go to the Rolls Royce assessment centre to see if there was an opportunity there. She is also looking for a new opportunity, so it is (potentially) all change.

Hatching

Soon after eight o'clock this morning the nice man from DPD started the process of hatching the new Condor by delivering its cardboard egg. As usual there was exquisite packaging and the Gorse Fox soon had the new iMac on the desk, plugged in, and glowing. It took two or three minutes to complete the set up and then it was a matter of deciding whether to restore the backup from the old Condor, or rebuilding. The Gorse Fox chose the latter. That way he gets the chance to clean things up as he goes along. He had planned this a few weeks back and had a list of the applications that needed to be re-established. This will be a careful process that he will complete over a few days.

First observations are very favourable. It is incredibly quick, and the screen, though smaller than the old one, is wonderfully clear and crisp.

The doorbell rang. It was Ocado and therefore time to stop and get on with the shopping and when that was done the Gorse Fox had to head for Chichester to leave his car for its annual service and MOT. The Silver Vixen had driven in separately and we met up for a bit of Anniversary shopping and while we were in the town we popped in to Trents for lunch. They were very busy and warned us that the food would be at least 40 minutes. We were in no hurry so settled down The food, as forecast, turned up in almost exactly 40 minutes.

We went back along East Street to meet with Urban-Cub and Ellie. The Silver Vixen was going to take Ellie back in her car while Urban-Cub was getting her hair done. The Gorse Fox had to get back to the dealership to collect his car.

The good news for the day was that Urban-Cub got a phone call to confirm that she is now, officially, the Store Manager for Lidl in Chichester. She would have liked more that 13 hours notice, but is absolutely delighted.

On the pitch

Again, the day started bright, warm, and sunny. It remained pleasantly warm and almost cloudless for the whole day.

The Silver Vixen had a phone call scheduled with Betty Rubble during the morning. The Gorse Fox had football. He made his way across to the leisure centre and met up with the rest of the lads. He was playing in orange today but could see it would be a tough game. Yellows had three very mobile strikers. Our striker hadn't turned up so we had to make do. The Gorse Fox tried to help by roaming forward whenever he got the chance. On one occasion, with a slick interchange of passes, he broke through the middle. There was only the keeper to beat. He tried to slide it past him, and in so doing slid it past the post as well. He had several further shots, all of which were so high they were a danger to the International Space Station. Finally, with the score 4-0 against us, the Gorse Fox had one last attempt and managed to duck behind the referee and then drill the ball low and hard into the bottom corner. Very satisfying... but too late for a come-back. Final score 4-1.

Lady Penelope popped in this afternoon. She wanted to find out about last night's drama and hear about our holiday. It was nice to see her as we haven't managed to touch base with any of our neighbours since getting back. 

Drama

 There was a bit of a drama last night. Urban-cub's pregnant neighbour texted her to say she was being harrassed by young lads throwing things at the house. Urban-cub went out to remonstrate. This disturbed Ellie, so Cousteau-cub (who happened to be staying overnight) sent U-c in and took over. She tried to march them back to the home of one of the lads, but ended up in a strangle hold with her hands pinned behind her back. She persevered and got them back to the home of one of them only to be greeted by a very defensive mother. Neighbours, however, had observed and filmed the whole incident and she had to back down. C-c headed back to U-c. The police had been called and the evening was spent giving statements.

Not sure where things are going from here, but at least C-c was completely unfazed by the whole farce (and, as she said, perfectly capable of breaking free had she wanted so to do).

Coming along

 It has been a lovely warm and sunny day. Temperatures were in the low 20s making it immensely comfortable. The Gorse Fox's hay fever seems to have settled overnight and a tablet was taken as soon as he was up this morning.

He drove across to Worthing for Tuesday's football. The slight pull he experienced last week seems to have gone and gave him no problems today. We only had 26 players today, so it was easy enough to split into teams without requiring some to peel off and play in the cages. The Gorse Fox took up his usual position and in a hard-fought first game, we came out on top with a 1-0 win. The second game was destined to be hard. In the first half, the Gorse Fox managed to marshal the main threat and keep him quiet. In the second half, the Gorse Fox had to take his turn in goal. Though he made a couple of saves, the guy he had been marshalling (now running free) managed to score twice. A 2-0 loss. The final game saw the Gorse Fox back on the pitch. This was less tense. We scored early. In fact, we scored often. The final score was a 7-0 win.

Back home, the Gorse Fox returned to the work he was doing yesterday on the backup strategy. The script he had been working upon now works and is easily amended to add further directories. The next task will be to see how it can be automatically launched. The Gorse Fox knows the theory but now needs to put it into practice. 

Pouring

 A nice gentle start to the day, or so he thought. The Gorse Fox hadn't been up long before there was an immense explosion. He had clearly woken up with a severe bought of hay fever. The sneezing had started with a vengeance, and when he wasn't sneezing he was trying to control his nose which was running like Usain Bolt chased by a cheetah on steroids. This has continued throughout the day; brief periods of peace followed by storm-force sneezing and then the pouring returns.

The Gorse Fox tried to make a start on the ironing. That didn't work. He was more likely to drip all over it than press it.

He returned to the study. Today's focus has been on automating a push mechanism for critical folders to be backed up to the NAS. This is going moderately well but full automation is still proving elusive. The backups themselves are working but the automatic mount process for the target is still throwing up the occasional error.

If his nose stops pouring, the Gorse Fox is hoping to play football tomorrow.

Catching Up

 Gosh, we slept well last night. There's nothing quite like your own bed. The Gorse Fox finally dragged himself into the day as the clock approached eight. A very leisurely breakfast ensued, then, when the Silver Vixen had had her shower, we pottered across to Sidlesham to collect Jasper. The Gorse Fox had checked, in advance, whether he had used the minbar overnight. He hadn't, so the Gorse Fox settled the bill.

Back home, with Jasper roaming around the house to reacquaint himself with the layout, the Gorse Fox hot the study. It was time to catch up on a couple of weeks of accounts. This took a lot longer than expected because the Gorse Fox hadn't been his usual organised self in terms of which cards to use for which payments, while on holiday. Never mind, it all balanced out in the end.

His replacement for Condor is due to arrive this week.  As you know, the Gorse Fox has developed a substitute backup system while Condor was unavailable. His 40+ years of working in IT kicked in and he has started to revise his data backup strategy and update the documentation he had developed. This has taken much of the afternoon and he would guess there is at least another half-day required to finish it. Like so many things to do with computing, documentation is essential but is so often ignored for home computing setups.

Plan comes together

 We were up about 6-ish. Urban-Cub packed her car and did a final sweep of the house for anything that had been missed. She woke Ellie and took her down to the car and was on her way well before 7. We were a bit more leisurely but by 7:15 we were on our way. It had been a good week.

The early start was a masterstroke. Ellie had fallen back to sleep and Urban-Cub was able to push right on through, getting home in under three hours. The Gorse Fox and Silver Vixen stopped at Rownham Services for a coffee and a roll but even still managed the the journey in 3hours and 10 minutes. There were no hold-ups, no delays, no traffic queues, not even any traffic lights against us. (Traffic in the other direction was not so lucky!)

By midday, we were unpacked, the washing was on, and the Gorse Fox had been to Sainsbury’s for the weekend shopping. Now for a quiet afternoon.

Last day

It’s the last day of the holiday. The day started very grey and threatening. By the time the Gorse Fox had had his breakfast, a fine rain had started. He had to pop round to fill the car with petrol but it didn’t relent.

Urban-Cub started to pack and clear her stuff and Ellie’s. Her plan is to leave early in the morning but she knew there would be no chance to clear things this evening.

The rain relented and the forecast for the rest of the day was dry. We decided to walk down to the beach and stroll along the Esplanade for as far as we could. Apparently, nobody had told the weather that it wasn’t meant to rain any more. By the time we approached the town, a fine drizzle had restarted. By the time we got to the seafront it had intensified. We stuck with it as far as the Ocean Centre. There Urban-Cub and Ellie peeled off with a view to going to the soft play again. The Silver Vixen and Gorse Fox continued to the new water sports centre which included a nice cafe and a restaurant run by Michael Caine (the chef, not the actor). We stopped for a coffee. The rain took this as a hint. It too, stopped.

The phone rang. It was Urban-Cub. There were no slots for the soft play session at 1 o’clock, so she had booked for three-thirty. She was hungry and decided she wanted lunch. We said we would join them. The first choice was Prezzo (one of Urban-Cub’s favourites) but they didn’t have any availability. Then we tried a Mediterranean restaurant called “Spoken” which is essentially tapas. We sat down, we checked the menu. We decided there was nothing that Ellie would eat. We gave our apologies and left. We walked up the hill and went back to The Heavitree. Ellie had a burger with chips, Urban-Cub had about two metric tonnes of mussels, and the Silver Vixen and Gorse Fox both had fish and chips. The portions were huge and certainly saved us from preparing dinner this evening.

Urban-Cub and Ellie headed back to the Ocean Centre. Meanwhile the Silver Vixen and Gorse Fox headed back into town to hit the Library. Were there any books or maps that would shed more light on the Silver Vixen’s old home? Well, we found the odd snippet of commentary but struck gold with the map cabinet. (We had to request that this was opened for us). We finally found a map from 1972 showing the locations of the individual chalets at the old docks. Her number was there and exactly in the place she had described on Wednesday. The only outstanding issue is to find a photo of the old chalets. We looked through various archives, but didn’t really find anything of the right era. This will take some more thought and more research.

Back at the house this evening we have all been trundling around packing and generally tidying up ready to leave in the morning.

Celebration Day

Well it has been 48 years since the Silver Vixen was daft enough to walk down the aisle and not run the other way. The Gorse Fox still finds new things to love about her every day.

Urban-Cub and Ellie presented us with some cards (including one from Cousteau-Cub ) this morning. We were all getting ready to go out. Urban-Cub and Ellie were heading for Crealy Theme Park. The Gorse Fox and Silver Vixen were heading for the train station to go into Exeter for a day of shopping. The trains here really are excellent. They are old rolling stock but run every 30 minutes from dawn until late at night. To get to Exeter takes only 30 minutes, and a return ticket for the two of us came to the grand total of £6.90. Why would anyone choose to drive when it is so convenient?

Exeter Station is only 3 minutes walk from the centre of the shopping district. We wandered around, zigging here and zagging there. Popping into this shop or that shop but not finding much that floated our boats. We did spend some time in Pandora and saw a necklace the the Silver Vixen liked but as there was only one assistant and a queue of people before us, we resolved to return later.

We wandered up to and through John Lewis then spun back. We made our way to Pandora - it had closed for the day and it was only about 2 o’clock. Not impressed. We will have to try the outlet in Chichester.

We stopped for a snack in M&S then moved on. A couple of bits were picked up, but little really grabbed us. We headed back to the station and Exmouth for a quiet hour or so.

This evening we went to little restaurant called Saveur. It really was very quaint and welcoming. The food was essentially European, and absolutely delicious. The Silver Vixen started with a roasted pepper out followed by a lovely ribeye steak. The Gorse Fox had some venison koftas followed by hake. Everything was cooked beautifully and served with quip and smile. A restaurant to recommend.

Back home, Urban-Cub had ordered a curry that turned out to be a bit too hot for her, and Ellie decided she wasn’t going to bed. As it is, and it is 9:15, she is still holding court (in fact the Gorse Fox has donned his headphones and switched on some Gregorian Chant so that he can concentrate).

Memories from the corners of her mind

Nostalgia isn’t what it’s cracked up to be. We decided to try some archeological exploration with a view to finding traces of the Silver Vixen’s memories of living in Exmouth. Meanwhile, Urban-Cub and Ellie went across to Newton Abbot for some shopping.

The Gorse Fox and Silver Vixen started off be walking down to what used to be called The Docks, and is now The Marina. It has clearly gone upmarket. We wandered around looking for landmarks by which should could recognise where she had lived. The old chalets are long-since gone and replaced by the plush marina development. We found where the swing-bridge had been, and we found the slipway from where she would drop down to the sheltered beach.

From there we walked along the front and then looped back into town. We headed for the museum. We were greeted at the door and introduced to what was covered in the museum. We explained what were were looking for and, as we started to look around, she went ferreting through her books and papers to see if there was anything that would help us find pictures of the old dockside chalets. As small town museums go, it was quite interesting, though some of the stewards were a little boring. By the time we had completed our circuit, there seemed to be several people researching on our behalf. We found some material, but nothing that could be considered a breakthrough.

From the museum we continued to the school and took some photos before heading back into town to see if there were any books in W.H.Smith that covered what we wanted. (The library was closed, by the way). No luck, again.

Back at the house Urban-Cub and Ellie had been struggling with a kite. They had almost got it right, but the tether and string was on the wrong side. The Gorse Fox sorted it out and took Ellie back out to try and fly it in the park. We did manage to get it airborne, but it just went into a spin and nose-dived each time it caught the wind. We gave it a number of tries and then mutually decided to go back to the house.

You can come too, too, too

We were all up fairly early. We had a train to catch. The weather was not looking promising, so we loaded up with sweaters and jackets, just in case. There is a great advantage to having a buggy with us. It can be used to transport all of our stuff. We arrived at Exmouth Station with time to spare and plonked ourselves down in an almost empty carriage. Ellie was very excited. This was the first time she had been on a train (that she remembers).

The train chugged up the east side of the estuary and into Exeter, there the driver changed ends and we swept down the west side of the estuary passing Dawlish Warren, Teignmouth, Torre, and Torquay before arriving at Paignton. The trip was about 90 minutes but was a lot more relaxing than it would have been, had we gone by car.

At Paignton, we waited for a bus. (It’s nice that the Silver Vixen and Gorse Fox’s bus passes work all over the country as the trip was free for us - and for Ellie, only Urban-Cub had to pay £2).  We had clearly just missed one and had a 25 minutes wait. The sun was still hiding and it was a bit chilly. When the bus finally arrived we hopped on and settled down for the 10 minute ride to the Zoo. The first stop was a medical centre where an old bloke got on and proceeded to explain to the Silver Vixen that he had had a pain in his testicle. (These locals do like to share).

It was coming up to midday by the time we arrived at the Zoo. The sun had broken through and it looked as if we would have a lovely afternoon. The first order of the trip was to wander past the the flamingoes,  find the restrooms and grab a drink. 

Then we were off on our adventures. In no particular order we visited the crocodile swamp, where the specimens seemed particularly unimpressed by the public and just dozed in their enclosures. We passed various exotic birds, including peacocks, rheas, and most impressively some huge spectacled owls. There were several aviaries that appeared empty, but we suspect the birds were just well camouflaged or in the nests.

Next on the agenda was a diversion to see the spider monkeys. They were quite amazing and really amused Ellie. One (grandpa, as she called it) just sat there on a branch observing the world, yawning, and having a scratch. The other was far more boisterous and charged around the enclosure, throwing itself across branches and ropes, and even climbing a brick wall. Just behind the monkeys was an enclose for red panda. This was causing a frisson of excitement as there had recently been some babies. One family claimed they could see them way up in a tree. Nobody else seemed to manage, so we wandered away.

There was a brief diversion into the soft play area before we resumed the visit. We went to find the big cats. Again, the lion was feeling shy and was a no-show, but the tigers were wandering about in their enclosure. One decided to grace the visitors by wandering right up to the viewing Perspex, turning round, and defecating (to the amusement of all the children).

The great apes were next on our tour. As we approached a young couple warned us that the queue was very long and that we would be better finding a viewing spot where we could see the gorillas when they were let out onto the island at 2:30. This seemed like good advice. The Silver Vixen and Gorse Fox settled by a viewing platform with the buggy to wait for 25 minutes, while Urban-Cub and Ellie went off for a wander to find another play area. After about 10 minutes the viewing spot was beginning to fill up fast. The Gorse Fox messaged Urban-Cub to return and they got back just in time. Three 18-year-old gorillas were released onto the island to forage for food (that had been spread out by the keepers), exercise, and generally look very impressive. After a while the Silver Vixen and Gorse Fox backed out to let some others get a better view. Urban-Cub and Ellie followed after a few more minutes when Ellie started to get bored.

We headed for a large play area. Ellie could let off more steam and we could sit down for a cup of tea and a bite to eat (though, as they only sold pizza at this cafe, the Silver Vixen and Urban-Cub had to walk back to another cafe to get the food). We must have stayed at this spot for a good 45 minutes or more. When we left there, we visited the rhinos (who were indoors and particularly smelly) then on to find the giraffes. There were several enclosures on the way with various hogs and some more exotic birds. The giraffes were in their giraffe house which was closed, but we were able, from a distance, to see through the door and see one of the giraffes as he passed the open the door.

Last stop was to see if could find the cheetah. This, again, proved fruitless as he was obviously hiding or relaxing far from the various viewing areas. We headed back to the gift shop, and final restroom break, and off to the bus stop. We only had a five minute wait, and were soon back at the railway station. There we had another five minute wait, boarded the train, and made ourselves comfortable in an almost empty carriage. Ninety minutes later we pulled into Exmouth. Urban-Cub and Ellie headed straight back to the house while the Silver Vixen and Gorse Fox stopped off at the M&S Food Hall for some essentials.

It had been a brilliant day.

Sand

It started bright and sunny. There was, however, a cool breeze. The plan for the day evolved based on the whims of a 4-year-old!

Loading up the buggy we walked into town. A skirt purchase yesterday was the wrong size, so the first stop was to get it changed. While Urban-Cub, Ellie, and Silver Vixen where in the shop, the Gorse Fox headed across to the Tourist Information office. He picked up a local map and spoke to the lady who ran the office. She was clearly a local, and had probably been in Exmouth for that last 150 years. This gave the Gorse Fox an idea. He explained that the Silver Vixen had lived here and went to school in the town. He explained where the Silver Vixen lived and that she remembered walking along some disused railway lines on the way to school. The lady emerged from her reverie and said “Oh yes, there used to be a short branch from the station down to the docks. That is now the route of a new road that was built, but here and there you can still see the rails.” This was a great relief as the Silver Vixen was wondering if she had misremembered. Clearly not.

We headed on down to the beach. The sun was playing hide and seek behind some clouds but, out the wind, it was quite pleasantly warm. We found a spot, sheltered by the sea wall and laid out our blankets. A brief trip to a shop saw the mandatory bucket and spade added to our inventory. We sat down to watch the world go by and count the waves as the tide came in.

Ellie started by playing with the sand but it was too dry and dusty. This meant that she needed to get some wetter sand from the water’s edge. In turn, this meant a further change of clothes and the Gorse Fox decided it was time to paddle. We went down the beach. The sun may have been shining but nobody had told the sea. It was bitterly cold. Any stray thoughts of putting on trunks and going for a swim rapidly receded - like the blood flow to his extremities.

Ellie played for a bit longer but declared she wanted lunch, and a swim in a pool, and to go back to the house, and to go the soft play centre. We took this as multiple choice opportunity with only one answer permitted. We went for lunch. We tried the pace where we ate yesterday, but they said there was an hour to wait for food. We politely declined and went round the corner to The Heavitree. This was a nice pub which had a good little menu. The. Silver Vixen had a cheddar and ham ploughman’s, Urban-Cub had a beef burger, Ellie had a ham sandwich (from which she extracted the ham and just ate some of the bread), and the Gorse Fox had a grilled chicken breast burger. It was very good and quite sheltered.

Leaving the pub we wandered down into the town. The Gorse Fox decided that the cool wind, by now better described as cold, was such that his light sweater was insufficient. A trip to Mountain Warehouse was needed. A little while later the Gorse Fox emerged with a warm zip-up fleecy sweater. We headed back to the house for a quiet hour or so before the Gorse Fox took Ellie back to the park for a last run around for the day.

Early-ish start planned for tomorrow.

Soft play

When we left the house it was about midday. We had no specific plan other than heading for the seafront. The weather forecast was changing by the minute. The idea was to wander along the beach if the weather allowed or to go to the Ocean Centre if the weather was too threatening. The Gorse Fox hadn’t realised until he read the guidebook, that Exmouth has 2 miles of sandy beaches.

As it happened we had a short sharp shower and we were likely to get more. We checked in and found that the soft play centre needed to be booked. We sat down and booked there and then. This was an immensely slow process as their website was poor. There was a 15 minute wait while they were finishing the cleaning after the previous session.

Ellie was the first child into the immense cityscape of slides, ball pools, tubes, climbing frames and heavens knows what. Once she was in, that was it. We hardly saw her for the next two hours. She surfaced briefly for a drink or mouthful of food, but that was it.

Eventually, the session timed-out and we escaped. We headed back into the town and stopped at a pub called The Merchant where we had a lovely Sunday roast. After lunch we headed back to the house and sat down on the balcony to have a quiet hour. Ellie was still “high” and in the end Grandpa had to take her to the park to let off some more steam.

With Spurs winning 1-0 against Man City, all in all, it has been a very good day!

Snippet

 It’s always interesting getting a snippet of a conversation. Sitting on our balcony, the Gorse Fox has just heard:

I haven’t seen Amy for years. She’s obsessed with her new boyfriend. He has very strange hair from Hereford.

Travel

 Looking back at yesterday, the Gorse Fox concludes that it worked well. The early start meant we missed the inevitable traffic jams and managed to get here early enough to have a full day here.

The forecast for today is that it will be overcast and there could be a sprinkle of rain mid-afternoon. Once everyone else is up and about we will forge a plan action.