Its Over - Life Begins Again

Exam marking is over. This time for ever. This time I truly mean it. Life has been mostly on hold for the last month.


At least the weather was right for marking. There was little chance of enjoying days in the sun.


Before settling in to work there were two sunny opportunities. The first was to take a 2012 shot of David the gnome, complete with a plastic monarch butterfly.

The second was on a visit to Milton Keynes when after visiting nan we went on to spend sometime with Tim and family. It was a lovely sunny afternoon when we were able to sit out in the garden and being late home we called in to collect a delicious Chinese take-away which we could have had in our garden, but chose not to.

Loughton Lake.
Notice the clear blue sky on the last weekend of May.
After this we still wait the return to the high temperature and the same blue.

June would arrive, together with the on-line scripts for the tick jockey and the diamond anniversary of our queen. Sadly, the rain and the cold wind came and with others we sympathised about the frozen, wet performers who were in the Thames pageant.


Our one concession was to attend a red, white and blue dance at the New Stapleford Community Centre on Friday night.

Revellers

Laughter

Irene N in red - Irene B in blue

Buffet

 After this the marking kept me busy and the rain helped. But, there was one special concession and that was to visit nan on the occasion of her 92nd birthday. She remains mentally very able, but frustrated at being able to do less and less.

During a break in marking I strolled into our garden and was taken by the site of a a glistening blob of rain caught in the spikes of a bush and grabbed my camera.

On Wednesday 6th June I turned on the computer to find that there were no more items left to mark and that the sky was almost cloudless. This called for a celebration and this was to drive out into our beloved Derbyshire country side.


Our first port of call was to be Lea Gardens. http://www.leagarden.co.uk/Pages/default.aspx. The best of the blooms were finished, but it was still a good place to sit and enjoy a pot of tea and roam around. We were greeted by a young lady who apologised for the fact that the door would not work. But delivered our tea which we took over looking the garden and the bird feeder.

 From here we drove off in the direction that the car faced eventually arriving at Crich Stand. http://www.crich-memorial.org.uk/. This a memorial in honour of the Sherwood Foresters Regiment in both world wars. We arrived on the one day that it closed, but we could still enjoy a walk up to and the views around it.

In Crich village we found a bakery/cafe and sat to enjoy to very filling salads. Each of our plates had three different salads. I had the home made pork pie and Irene had the feta.


As we left the sky began to darken and the best of the day was over. Having a little time to spare we decided to call in on the Nottingham canal at Cossall, but the sky, by then, was very uninspiring and so we went home calling in to water the greenhouse on the way home.

On Thursday we went up to have a session on the allotment between showers and Irene managed to plant the penultimate bed of seedlings while I attacked the weeds on the final bit of ground. We await with little hope for a drier time.