JEDI July: Day 11 - The one where it rained all day

Evening dudes. It's been raining pretty much all day long, meaning today's activities have been fairly limited. It's only on days like this - raining from dawn til dusk - when you don't actually feel guility for wanting to stay indoors, and while in the winter they tend to be many and frequent (consequently being written off as 'another dreary day') post-April they are a treat to be savoured.

However, despite being the perfect day for sheltering inside and getting stuck into a cosy project such as clearing out a drawer, this morning I did have errands to run. Lydia finally nagged me enough to get her birthday invitations printed and for those that didn't need to be posted, I ventured out on door-to-door deliveries.

I called at Nanny's (for the second day running), the Butler's and the Boilos, each for about an hour, and at each location I was treated to a welcome drink and a friendly chat. It was definitely a 'weekend' sort of thing to do and zipping about like this really makes me appreciate the freedom having a car of my own brings.

While I was at Matt's we arranged to meet this evening at the pub with the two Mikes.

Arrived home at 2ish for lunch. Ernest soon arrived and he drove Lydia and I through the rain to Carlo's Ice Cream Parlour, on the way to Romsey. He we enjoyed servings of strawberry and vanilla ice cream, topped off with a 99, though because of the wet we had to savour these in the car as opposed to on the usual picnic benches. Such sacrifices!

On our way to Carlo's Ernest had discovered that his driver side headlight had gone so we had to stop off at Halfords on the way home for him to get it replaced. While he was sorting it out I had an oggle at the various car maintenance stuff. I had wanted to try out my new bumper blackener this weekend but the weather has so far prevented it. We also popped in to Tesco, where Ernest purchased some rather smashing flowers for his best beloved.

After popping home for tea, Ernest later returned with Beth for our second film night. We had planned to watch two movies the previous night, however, it was felt that the excellent (if slightly harrowing) 'Miss Potter' may be slightly trivialised if followed by madcap kiddies animation Jimmy Neutron. The rather substantial food food pile had also proved too much even for yours truly, and thus we had decided to move the second film over to this evening.

Last night we instead went for a very noisy drive across the forest, venturing down the dark and eerie roads of East Boldre, speeding through pointless Pilley and storming through the fords of Brockenhurst. We were, in fact, so loud that Ernest commanded a vow of silence on our way home, breaking up the headache-inducing northern accents, frenzied waving contests and girly chatter in the back for at least a little while.

Back to this evening...and Jimmy Neutron was, I have to say, probably the most nonsensical film I have had the 'misfortune' of witnessing! I will admit that it was funny in places, and that it did provide a good evening's entertainment (not to mention a fine excuse for food consumption) though this hardly made up for the deep sense of weariness that we all experienced at its conclusion! The film genuinely wore me out, so we were certainly well-advised to have a seperate (very spesh) film night, otherwise I think I would have been completely drained of emotion come the bitter end!

Once we had cleared up I drove across the forest to the pub, where I met up with Matt and the two Mikes. As they had already been there a while, we launched straight into several games of pool, first single matches and then doubles. Mike A proved to be pool master supreme, though I didn't think I did too badly either (despite twice conspiring to pot the black!).

James Page was there with some of his friends and I chatted to him for a while, mostly about cricket. He was trying to pursuade me to join the Hythe team, though I in turn assured him this was not a good move in view of my recent church performances!

A final tonking by Mike signalled the end, and I followed Matt home across a very dark and wet forest, making it back safely and in good time to finish this blog.

I'm on visuals at church tomorrow, me and Ernest are challenging cousin Kev to a round of golf and there is a church youth service in the evening. If the weather holds up it should be a good day. See ya then!