This Weekend (17) ...

This weekend was a looooooong weekend. Bliss! And here's the killer! NEXT weekend will be a long weekend too! A girl could get used to the three day working week! But anyway, here's this week's news.

1) Thursday night. No pub quiz. I had a date with an actual boy instead. I'm not going to tell you about it. I'm being enigmatic. There's a first time for everything ...

2) Friday morning I hit the supermarket. I'm making an extra special really real effort to buy British where possible, and avoid import unless it's essential. Most of the time it's pretty easy, and I've been buying 'licious food. But tell me, why, in August, is Mr Sainsbury IMPORTING tomatoes from the Netherlands? Grrr! I feel a letter coming on.

3) The local Artists' Open House event is building a head of steam. Well it is in my house, anyway. I and another lady were meant to be co-ordinating the trail around the 29 houses that will form the Tooting trail, but she seems to have absconded, so here I am ... The build up and planning is going to be something of a running theme in posts for the next month, I think. (Early plug ... if anyone's in the Tooting area on 2/3 Oct or 9/10 October, then come and see us! You can see the brochure for the borough here, and keep popping back for more propaganda!) Anyway, it's with this in mind that I now have 300 pink balloons in my dining room. Deflated, unfortunately, but don't let that stand in the way of a good mental image.

4) On Friday night, it was my turn to host our girls Making Night. The five of us had a good old natter whilst we knitted, stitched, beaded, cut card and drank wine. We set the world to rights. It was all good.

5) The Lovely Amelia's youngest came to Making Night with her, and, in spite of his sugar high caused by playing something called The Doughnut Game (you can imagine ...) at holiday club, he flaked out in the spare room in no time. On Saturday morning he and I played out in the car with the top down, went to the park, ate Percy Pigs, and played Graffiti Ball on the iPhone. I'm not sure it was educational, but it was fun.

6) Do you know, I've no idea what I did on Saturday afternoon. I'm sitting here scratching my head, and nothing comes to mind. If I spent it with you, I apologise. The early onset dementia is, unfortunately, kicking in. Now where was I ...?

7) Sunday was to be a jewelling day. All my spare time at the moment is spent planning Open House, but I need to spend a little time making things that I can sell myself too. At the moment, I have about three things to sell. So I made a stack of bracelets and planned a few more and had a few ideas that I scribbled on a list. I'm not in control yet, but I can now see that I could be in control, if I could only concentrate long enough.

8) Then on Sunday evening, The Lovely Robbo (TLR, hereafter) came to visit. He is an old pal from university days, who did live just up the road, but then was made redundant and rather irritatingly got a new job in Newcastle. I'm still very resentful. But he was in town for a few days and I got to see him for the first time in aaa-aaa-aaa-ges. We went out for a bite to eat and nattered about all the things we've not nattered about for yonks.

9) Today was an uncharacteristically mild bank holiday Monday. Tradition has it that it rains on a bank holiday usually, so it made a nice change. TLR and I had bacon sandwiches the size of our heads for breakfast, then pootled along to Abbey Mills, a craft market near here built in ... you guessed it ... old mill buildings. We wandered along the river to Morden Hall Park, which is one of my favourite places in London. It's the most lovely park, beautifully kept by those nice people at The National Trust, and it's in such an unlikely place, that it's doubly lovely. TLR was impressed that somewhere so lovely had been right on his doorstep and he'd never known it was there. Well ... I don't share secrets like that with just anyone ...

10) Then after TLR left, I dropped some empty jars to a friend for her blackberry jam, made some cakes to take to the office tomorrow, wrote the event listings for Open House (see ... it's taking over my life), wrote a begging letter to all local artists asking them for prize donations for a competition, planned menus for next weekend's Big Weekend Away, made dinner, made lunch for tomorrow, and now, written a blog post. So now, I think it's time for beddy bies. G'night!