No car, empty house, but the freezer’s filling up!

It’s been a fantastic three weeks; first the wedding, then having the whole family here together. We took Alex, Graham and Izzy to the airport today and the house feels very empty and quiet now.

The wedding photos are online on my brother’s site, www.peternorthall.com. Any friends who’d like to see them please email me and I’ll tell you the password.

Adrian and Julie lent us their car for a few days so that we could get out and about and do the airport trip as our car is still not fixed. When it was taken to the garage, a week last Monday, they were going to look at it and give us an estimate the next day, but that turned out to be a bank holiday and they didn’t get around to it till Friday evening. The estimate, including a Peugeot steering rack, was extortionate, but Kieran found a suitable, non-Peugeot, steering rack online which would save us 600euros, so we tried to order it, using 4 different methods of payment, including paypal, but all of them were refused, so eventually Adrian ordered it for us on his card (don’t know why no-one wants our money!), by which time another several days had passed. It should be delivered to the garage tomorrow, but who knows when they’ll get around to doing the work? After all, this is August!

The garden, however, is in full production mode and we’re struggling to keep up with the amount of fruit and veg that needs picking, preparing, cooking and freezing every day. There was another boxful of windfall apples today as well as two baskets of tomatoes, the last of the beans and a few plums and pears, and the Victoria plum tree will need picking tomorrow before the storms that are forecast for tomorrow night. We gave about 10kg of apples to a neighbour yesterday and came home with a boxful of courgettes in return, which I’ve made into courgettes provencales today, with some of our own tomatoes. We should be able to eat well all winter out of the freezer!