Yesterday it was amazingly, suffocatingly, unbearably hot. I am, in general, not a person who minds hot weather. In fact, I relish summer and I'd rather be hot than cold, but yesterday was even too much for me. Apparently temperatures reached 36 degrees Centigrade, but it might as well have been 56. All day I was lusting after a nice cool Caipirinha. I even looked up the recipe, but for obvious reasons I decided not to give in to that particular craving. It would be delicious, though... Hmmm.

It didn't help that we spent a large part of at least the morning in the car, travelling from Yorkshire back to the Midlands. My friend B and her husband, who have been the most amazing guests, but more of that later, wanted to see our old house, and since yesterday they had also planned to travel to London for a few days of sightseeing, we thought we'd shorten their journey by bringing them to the station in the Midlands rather than in York or Doncaster.

Good thought, only such a misfortune we'd picked the probably hottest day of the year for that car journey!

Still, it was nice to be back in the Midlands, if only for one afternoon. I packed a few boxes, attempted to hoover the house, and realised that if I didn't sit down immediately I would most likely pass out. Maybe pregnancy makes me more susceptible to the heat?

In any case, B and C's departure for London went smoothly, just as the rest of their stay so far has been. They were amazing. Sure, they had announced that they would try to help a bit with our house renovation, but I sure did not expect them to clear half the garden AND paint the bathroom! We even had some more help at the weekend, in the shape of one of D's old university mates, who rang up on the Friday and announced that since his girlfriend was working at the weekend (they are both medics), he was planning on coming up to see us for a spot of gardening. Together the three men were an amazing team - a huge area of the garden is now cleared of brambles and they even managed to bring 4 trailer loads of the stuff to the local recycling centre!

This inspired me to do a bit of gardening myself - I try not to do too much, especially since one of our neighbours just had her baby 4 weeks early because she'd been decorating. With the house looking the way it does we can NOT afford an early appearance of the bean!!

Anyway, I added to the few plants which I had already planted in the neglected border next to the kitchen door:


It still looks chaotic, but I'm ridiculously pleased with myself, simply because it looks like someone is living in the house now. It's strange what a difference just a little bit of care makes to the look and feel of a place...

As a thank you to our friends, we took B and C to Bridlington on the Sunday night. I'd never been, and I'm not entirely sure it's my kind of place. It's too much like the stereotypical English seaside resort, with amusement arcades, fun fairs, and lots of beer-swilling, beer-gutted guys in shorts... Still, for a visit it was fun, and we had a lovely dinner of fish and chips and ice cream. Hmmmm!


On Monday poor D had to work again, so I took our friends to York for a day out. It was already rather suffocatingly hot, so we opted for a leisurely day of shopping rather than a big sightseeing tour. I only showed them the Minster, because even if you don't do any sightseeing I think it's a necessity to at least have a peak into this amazing old building, and then I took them along The Shambles, were we spent an enjoyable hour in the Earl Grey Tea Rooms.

I also managed to sneak into the yarn shop there - Sheepish - which I had looked up a while ago when we started thinking about moving here. It's the cutest little shop and the owner was lovely. Of course I couldn't resist buying something, so I treated myself to this:


I've been meaning to buy this for some time now, mainly because I want to make Butterfly, but there are quite a few patterns in there that I quite like.

And last, but certainly not less importantly because of it, look what arrived on Tuesday in the post:


It's a pair of the cutest little baby socks for the bean, plus a lovely postcard, all from the amazing Sherrill over at Baa Bonny Belle. Thank you Sherrill, the socks are beautiful!!