Boxes, bikes, bottles and (Nice) blogs

Last week I finished the VAT and today I was looking around for a suitable box to package up my account books and papers to send to our accountant. The postman arrived and, as if by magic, provided me with the right size box. Inside it was a bicycle seat for M's bike. He was going to cycle to the station last week, when I went to the dentist, and after 100 yards, the seat fell off. So when the son & heir was here for the Bank Holiday weekend, he asked him to hunt down a seat on the internet. Our son found a site called Wiggle, and apart from sending this perfect box (and the saddle), they supplied us with a bag of sweets too.

The bicycle riding gene, like the camping gene is something passed from father to son (in our case). It has nothing to do with me. I prefer four wheels; then at least I know the vehicle won't fall over.

Anne (www.myspace.com/annebrooke) has nominated me for a Nice Blogger award, for which I'm most grateful, but unsure I'm deserving of such an award. Anne, who is also a recipient of this award, doesn't seem to know how to include this on her own site, and I'll have to wait for someone technical to explain to me how to do it, too.

We had a lovely weekend with the family and subsequently friends. The sun came out. Wasn't it lovely to see it? We were able to sit out in the garden on Saturday, and we went out for lunch with son and family, including two of my granddaughters on Sunday, and sat outside for that too. The place we went to has a dovecote and a lake and the girls bought seeds to feed the ducks at the lake. Everyone was in good temper - except me, as M had made his clean shirt dirty by going into his workshop in it, having, the previous day, sat in an ancient and disgusting tee-shirt all day, without changing. I did a bit of screaming at him, and of course, even after he'd changed for the restaurant, he very quickly got chocolate sauce on the replacement shirt.

When the family had gone, on Monday, we joined some friends for lunch at a French restaurant in Clandon and had a beautiful meal. I felt very reluctant to return to normal work on Tuesday, particularly as the washing basket was full of M's shirts.

I listened to Laurie Graham on the radio one day last week. We, at the reading circle, read her book, Future Homemakers of America, and all enjoyed it very much. I thought she was American, but it turns out she has an American husband and is herself, English. She talked about how the title of one of her books had to be changed for an American market. This made me even more convinced that A Bottle of Plonk's name has to be changed for marketing on Virtual Tales (http://www.virtualtales.com/). I am going to discuss it with Dave of VT next week.