One of the good things about a long and crazy-busy week at work is the glorious feeling of relief and euphoria that comes over you as you walk home in the sun on Friday night. Three nights and two days of freedom. Yes please.
We spent our Friday evening in the usual manner – Chicken Bhuna, white wine and a little bit of Patrick Jane. Not that we’re creatures of habit or anything…
We also decided that we just had to finish the friggin’ sun canopy. This has been an ongoing project for about four months now and has been starting to irritate one of us whenever she notices it just sitting there in it’s half-finished state. So it was time to blitz it and just Get. It. Done.
Three nights and two days of freedom. Yes please.
Ever positive, we like to call it a sun canopy, but really we know that it’s a rain shelter. We decided we needed it on one of our very first trips away, when we pulled up to our pitch, got the deckchairs out, cracked open a beer and sat ourselves down to toast the weekend. Just as the rain came on. Drinks down, chairs folded away and everything back inside the van. And a bit damp.
We figured a light-weight canopy would be a good way of keeping us a bit more dry (shaded…?) on one-night trips when we can’t be bothered putting up our killer awning. We searched the net and quickly decided we could save ourselves around £100 by going DIY, so we ordered some tent material and started drawing up plans. Fast forward 16 weeks and we finally have our finished sun canopy…
To be honest it didn’t take that long to make at all, it was just one of those things that seemed like such a big project that we kept putting it off. We’re pretty pleased with how it came out though, so pleased that we actually high-five’d on completion. True story.
And so it was with much excitement that we packed up our new canopy ready to head West early on Saturday morning. We couldn’t wait to get out of town.
But Doris had other ideas.
You see she’s starting no problem, but as soon as we take our foot off the gas she just cuts out. Maybe some little part’s just worn away. Maybe it’s something bigger than that. Maybe the old girl just fancied a weekend at home, who knows. But she certainly wasn’t up for going anywhere and several hours after we lugged the bags down our three flights of stairs, we were on our way back up again.
We knew this was going to happen at some point, lets face it you have to expect a few issues with a 30 year old vehicle, but it was a bit depressing when we were so excited about getting away. We felt sorry for ourselves for about an hour… and then we got over ourselves and decided to have a fabulous time in Edinburgh instead.
Although we couldn’t resist a (not very polite, sorry mum…) gesture of contempt towards her as we headed out…
We ended up having a really nice little day. We watched the colourful and celebratory Pride march and we played tourist for a day and went round our city on the hop-on hop-off bus tour. We laughed at the sullen American man who interrupted our tour guide’s flow to ask where the skyscrapers were and we learned that the cockles on the side of the old buildings on the Royal Mile were put there to ward off witches. Who knew.
One of us indulged in a little retail therapy at the Jenners sale and the other one of us virtuously proclaimed that she didn’t want to shop as she didn’t need anything at the moment, thank you very much. She was quickly reminded that she’d already bought 6 dresses since the start of the month and should probably get down from her high horse.
One of us wanted to see Prince of Persia so we headed to the cinema for the early evening showing. The other one of us was easily persuaded that for an extra 20p she could have an extra large portion of Ben & Jerry’s, scoffed four scoops of the stuff and then promptly fell asleep in a post-sugar-rush comedown. She was quite pleased to have missed half the film though to be honest, once you’ve seen one sword fight in the sand you’ve seen ‘em all.
Sunday brought with it some news that deflated us a little and made us want to just stay in our little flat, cosy and protected. We had a very lazy day, flirting between sewing projects, photo processing, website stuff and watching England crash out of the World Cup.
Sometimes it’s good to just be at home, ignoring the laundry and the dishes and the ironing. It was exactly what we needed to re-charge that day. Hey, maybe Doris planned it like that all along….
