So August was in two distinct halves. The before holiday, and the after holiday. Thursday the 3^rd,  saw a fleeting visit from Robbie’s old Uni mate Jordan, before Tricia drove them both to the airport for a long awaited trip to Poland to visit the other member of the uni triumvirate, Weronika. Seems like they had a terrific time.

On the Saturday Tricia was doing some catering for Janet Bayly’s 50^th wedding anniversary… which we then went to, before going off in the evening to Canon’s Ashby to see a very amusing version of Midsummer Night’s Dream in the open air, performed by a group called The Pantaloons. Only half a dozen of them, playing most roles, and those they didn’t were taken on by the audience. Great fun. We had a lovely pre show picnic…. and the weather was good to us.

We had our niece Sarah staying the following week. She stayed in Ellie’s freshly decorated room. I promised Ellie I would redecorate, and managed to get it done amongst everything else going on. The Friday the 11^th, Tricia was out with Nikki. Nikki took her to Rousham for a birthday tea. In the evening we had Pamela and Jim, Pat and Clive over for a farewell meal for Pamela and Jim. On the 12^th I finally managed to get all the furniture back in the correct rooms after the decorating. In the evening we were over at Juliet and Jon’s for their son Dan’s 21^st. Whilst all of this was going on Tricia and I were finding time to keep up with the World athletics championships.

On Sunday Tricia and me were over at Nikki and Matt’s for a bbq. Robbie and Amy came over, Matt and Charlotte and Simon and Katie. A pleasant afternoon… we even recreated an old photograph :-).

On the 15^th, Tricia and I walked up to the Black Boy at Oving for an anniversary meal. 31 years! We had planned to do this when Ellie was away, but it took us nearly the whole month to do it. A lovely meal. Not a late night as we had to be up early next morning to go and pick up Ellie from Heathrow. An emotional return. She had had a fantastic time.

On the Thursday, the first order of business was to go into the school for Ellie’s AS results. She was nervous. Very nervous, panicking about her Business Studies result, because one of her papers hadn’t gone quite so well. As it turned out, A in Drama, and C in English and Business Studies was an excellent set of results.

Back home, there was a frenzy of packing, and sorting items out as the next day…. We were off on holibobs J.