Days 49 and 50: August 8th and 9th

We had arranged to go to Peterborough on Tuesday to catch up with Ann Eaves. Ann was a colleague, companion and friend of Mike’s mum (Audrey). The 2 first met at the special needs school where Audrey was teaching when the family came to the UK from Jamaica. Ann was a very young teacher at the time and is just 3 years older than Mike’s sister. She went on to specialise in special needs education and retired when she was 55. They lived together until Audrey’s death about 32 years ago and Ann continues to live in the same house now.
Peterborough is about 90 minutes drive north of London along the M1/A1 so we hired a car and Pauline drove us to the nearest rental depot in Watford which is about 20 minutes drive slightly northeast of here. Pauline really is the kindest person. We are so lucky to have her in our lives via her gorgeous daughter!
The Europcar lady offered an upgrade to an automatic which I accepted, partly in order to try out the sporty Mercedes. I was very glad I did as the weather was rainy and it’s hard enough navigating in a new car without having to change gears also. In addition Mike was in a flap as he’d left his phone in Pauline’s car so was somewhat distracted until we were able to confirm that it actually was there and had been retrieved. I rather liked the Mercedes. It had plenty of pep and it was great to have the automatic windscreen wipers. I wouldn’t swap Ingrid, our Volvo, for a Mercedes sport version though 🤗.

There was heavy traffic so we didn’t get to Peterborough until about 11.45. Audrey’s house is still exactly the same (the family will understand) although the outlook has changed. Instead of a sugar factory across the road there is now a new LIDL supermarket which is extremely convenient for Ann, who is now 81.

Ann looks pretty good for an 81 year old and she has good mobility and health. She’s still as sharp as a tack.

Audrey and Ann’s passion was always the garden and their back garden was designed and redesigned on a regular basis. It has remained one of Ann’s passions and is stunning, although she was complaining at how awful it was looking in late summer.

Looking from the back terrace away from the house.

There are numerous little paths going in different directions creating different ‘rooms’.

The section is long and narrow and is landscaped to within an inch of its edges!

Looking back towards the house, which is detached with a garage behind the apple tree on the right. Apart from the garden everything else is exactly the same, a bit like a time warp!

We had a coffee with Ann and then took her out to a pub just a few miles up the road for lunch. It was quite a new place and had great food. You could order your main and help yourself to a very nice salad bar.

Begonias and fuchsias are definitely the summer flowers of choice in Cambridgeshire.

We dropped Ann back home and headed back to Watford in order to miss the worst of the traffic given Pauline was still coming to pick us up. Again the rental lady directed us to the nearest petrol station to avoid the additional petrol charge. I must say that both the prices and service from rental car places over here have been great.
We had a lovely chicken filo pie for dinner that Pauline had whipped up and which tasted great. Then it was our final game of cards which I was very happy to win. All of us won at least one game over the two weeks despite some ruthless bidding so everyone was happy (more or less 🤪).
Yesterday was the penultimate day for us and for Craig and JenY and the weather was warm and sunny (as it is today). Typical!!
We walked up past the pond to the Orange Tree pub where we had a nice lunch outside under umbrellas. I was needing to get shade!

This is not Herry’s pond but is just a few hundred metres further up the hill.

All of yesterday and most of the day before, Pauline had been preparing for last night’s dinner which was a Japanese food extravaganza. It was also the first opportunity for us to meet JenY’s sister Sarah and her husband Hamish as they had just returned from a friends wedding in Vancouver after their earlier wedding in Portugal in July. We were very much looking forward to meeting them and they were exactly as expected delightful. We look forward to getting to know them better some time in the future.