In Sussex - 11 July 2008

In the middle of my lovely holiday with Bub, I took the train to Shopwyke, near Chichester to spend a long weekend with Jen and Colin, my aunt and uncle, who live in the grounds of a boys’ prep school which they used to own and run.

 

 

Suzi had travelled down from London at about the same time and Adam arrived the next day on his way back from Norfolk, through Brittany, and home to Zurich.  And to our surprise, Kate, Bret and the girls turned up with a cake for morning tea on their way to a corporate function in the New Forest!  So it was a big family occasion considering that all three of my cousins, Jan, Caro and Jules, and all their children, were also there at some time during the weekend. 

 

After a lovely lunch at Jan’s house at Saturday, we dodged the showers and walked into Chichester, wandered around the shops, explored the Cathedral and walked on the City wall.

 

 

Sunday was very cloudy but the rain kept off for a change and I counted twelve cousins and three ‘olds’ engaged in one sport or another.  There was heaps of tennis, cricket in the nets, rounders - and croquet of course!  And when it was time for a rest, there were always the fish in Colin’s pond who’ll come up and suck your fingers if you have enough patience!

 

 

And in the middle of all this, the famous Red Arrows put on a fifteen minute display during the Festival of Light at Goodwood, which made us feel as if it was carried out over the school grounds entirely for our benefit!

 

 

Like every other family, Colin had been prevented from lawn mowing by the almost continuous wet weather.  But Monday morning dawned fair and he set to work on the croquet lawn so that we could have a game in slightly shorter conditions! 

 

 

I’ll never complain again about having to mow my lawn!