The first sign of Autumn!

Thank you for all your very sweet comments yesterday. Clearing out is going to be a long process. Especially at my rate. I found some diaries I’d kept when we travelled round in a combi van called Eric. We chugged round the UK and France and Spain for about 6 months (in the autumn and winter) in the early 90s. The diaries are quite long winded (now there’s a surprise) as that’s all we could do in the van of an evening, in the rain. We broke down several times... Eric - not us - though it was touch and go at times! Lol

They make me laugh because every second is sentence is about much everything is! Mind you, we were doing it on a shoe string. We’d drive on for miles to find farmer’s fields that only cost £2 instead of staying in caravan sites costing £5! (£5!). Petrol was bought in £10 lots. And that didn’t go far in an old clapped out combi. We seemed to eat a lot of pasta a pesto. Although on one occasion (and I remember it well) we were in a pub with a half Guinness each, and lovely home made pub meals were wafting out past us. Eventually we relented and shared a steak pie, chips and peas.

We had joined the National Trust in NZ, so could visit them all here on that card. And boy, did we visit them! Every day. Not only were they interesting, and dry on wet days, they had lovely clean toilets. Those were the days! I’d do it all again, but JR is adamant- No way.

The fuzzy head I felt the day after the celebratory champagne hung around all day. I began to suspect it wasn’t actually a hangover. Not on one bottle. We had more bubbles the next night when the neighbours popped over to hear our news, and the fuzzy head stayed on. I’ve now realised it’s a cold. And a cough.

In fact, the first sign of Autumn is not the leaves turning, but the fact that my head was cold in the wind the other day - thoughts are returning to my woolly hat. Surely not yet!

Anyway, this morning we took several bags of books, travel books, maps, cassettes, videos etc to the local charity shop. Then we popped out to Ikea to check out storage options. Found just the thing. Haven’t been there for years, but it was quite fun.

It was a lovely day, but with my cold head, and my head cold, we decided to stay in the warmth of the car and have a wee whirl round the Borders. With the obligatory stop for a cake at the Flat Cat.

The countryside looked glorious, but always hard to stop when you wanted to. Today I tried out one of the ‘Art Filters’ on the camera. If I’d saved it in RAW, it would have taken two shots, and only apply filter to the JPEG, which is pretty clever.

I’m off to read Book 2 of the Three Parter ‘Travels with Eric.’ Riveting.