JEDI July: Day 29 - The one with the soggy sunset

It's amazing to think that in just two weeks' time I will be under the canvas at Soul Survivor - hopefully without the threat of being flooded out of the tent like we were last year. July has proved a pretty poor month weather-wise, though the damp conditions did provide some rather dramatic photo opportunities whilst out on a rare drive with Ern this evening.

With Lydia out on driving practice in Jalopy, I suggested that we pop down to Calshot to see Southampton's latest cruise liner, Celebrity Equinox, heading out of port for the first time. Sure, the ship has a naff name and at first glance appears little more than a floating apartment block, but at least we could say we had witnessed the maiden voyage of the only new cruise ship to visit the UK this year.

Celebrity Equinox had almost reached the spit by the time we arrived, so we were fortunate not to have missed it altogether. The castle area was already littered with cars as many others turned out for the landmark event, regardless of the angry-looking clouds circling overhead. Ern snapped away with his camera as the ship swam gracefully past, using the zoom function to great effect in spying on the privileged first set of passengers! Unfortunately I had left the house in a hurry and had forgotten to bring my new camera on its inaugral outing, though we had a good time reviewing Ernest's efforts once the ship had moved past.

As other cars filtered away the heavens opened. Ern continued to point his camera in every direction in search of atmospheric shots as we made our way back along the spit, though an attempt to capture a spotlight through raindrops on the windscreen proved slightly above our combined photographic ability. The castle and colourful beach huts were snapped against a slaty-grey sky and, after briefly pulling up beside Lydia and Dad in the bedgraggled car park, we found the contast between a hazy setting sun, orangey-pink cloud streaks on the horizon and the leaden scenes behind to good a photo opportunity to miss, even if it did involve braving the torrential rain beneath Ernest's golf umbrella!

These visual weather treats were in marked contast to the rest of the day which, like Tuesday, had proved fairly mediocre. The only real event of note was my weekly visit to Nanny's, where our hour of catch-up chat was accompanied, as usual, by tasty treats, this time in the form of melt-in-your-mouth cheese crackers and a strawberry jam tart. Nan was keen to hear all about Mum's birthday and the secret cake baking (she was in on it too!), while we also discussed last Saturday's Saints match and Sunday's family picnic with plenty of mirth.

My procrastination excuse of the day was retrieving my old box of diecast car models from the loft and, dull as it may sound, I spent a pleasant couple of hours looking on the undersides to find out the make and model of each. This brought back many happy memories of 'garage' games from my school days - and, boy, does that make me sound old! Lydia even challenged me to a series of races on the kitchen floor, with my Ferrari F40 proving unbeatable against the stellar line up of a Porsche 911, a Jag XJS, a Bugatti EB110 and an Aston Martin DB7. Oh what it was to be a child...!

Just two days left of JEDI July...will I manage to catch up on time? Find out tomorrow!