I have to say that August has gone by very quickly. Normally when we are counting down the days to our Autumn escape to France August seems to drag. Not this year though. I can’t believe we are off to St Aygulf on Wednesday and as per usual we have quite a bit to do before we go, even now. I think that perhaps because we have had some nice weather during the month we have done more sitting in the garden and swimming outdoors than usual and all this has made the time pass quickly.
The outdoor swimming we have done this month has been fantastic. We discovered that if we went to our favourite pool (Hunsonby) about 11am on a Wednesday morning, we more or less had the pool to ourselves. And so this has been what we have done and we have thoroughly enjoyed our swims. We only missed one Wednesday as the pool was closed for maintenance much to our disappointment. Mind you it was a bit overcast & rainy that day so we found something else to do that morning. We know that the outdoor pools usually close at the beginning of September, when the school holidays end, so we said our goodbyes to the pool last week as I’m sure it will be out of action by the time we get back from France. Sad times 
Of course we always tagged on a nice lunch after each swim and we will also miss going to the places near the pool, such as The Shepherds Inn at Langwathby too
Most of August has been spent doing our usual stuff really. I have continued with my shifts at Op shop, Geoff has done a lot of dog walking & playing pickleball. He has also done quite a bit of extra visits to see some friends from Church and other friends who have suffered strokes recently. One of these friends is recovering slowly at home but is a bit isolated in the small village where she lives. We have both been going to see her regularly and she is beginning now to get out and about a bit more. Not being able to resume driving though is still an ongoing problem. One of our other friends Iain, is a member of our U3A French Speaking group, and his stroke was a severe one. We have not really been able to see him as much as we would have liked as he is only receiving family visits at the moment. All of this has really brought home to us how thankful we are to have taken the step to return back to the UK when we did and to have bought a small manageable flat here, close to our daughter and within easy reach of shops and facilities. Not being able to drive would be a pain but not an unsurmountable problem for us here. It has also brought home to us that we are all getting older and more at risk of these health problems too.
We have of course done some really nice things this month. We took three of our grandchildren (we chickened out of taking the baby too this time!) to a caravan at Silloth for a long weekend. It all went very well…the caravan was nice, picking up and dropping off arrangements for Ethan and Hadley worked out well, and Layla (who would happily go and live in a caravan full time) was really happy to spend time with her cousins. The weather was mostly kind to us and the kids really enjoyed being able to get out on their scooters in the holiday park and swimming in the pool there. Hazel and Phil brought the baby out to see us ..this is the benefit of going to Silloth as it really is not far from Carlisle. The weekend all worked out really well and we all had a good time. I have to admit though that Geoff and I really enjoyed having the final night to ourselves when all the kids went off home, leaving us to pack up in peace the next morning! We were pretty tired!
Another nice thing that I did this month was to go with Hazel to a book launch event in Carlisle one evening. I really like the “Poe and Tilly” thrillers written by the author M W Craven. He is a Carlisle “boy” and so all the locations in the books are in or around this region, which I also like. The event was a sell out as usual and we both enjoyed hearing all his stories and anecdotes from the latest book…which of course I bought! And yes, I have already read it and can recommend it!
We also tried very hard to watch the solar eclipse. Geoff was very proud of his “colander & white card” contraption which he rigged up in our garden. Unfortunately the weather had not received the memo here in Carlisle and the sun was more or less “eclipsed” by cloud for most of the time. We did manage to see a very small chunk of sun disappearing but we felt a bit underwhelmed by the whole event really
We have had a birthday celebration this month. Our lovely baby granddaughter celebrated her first birthday. It was a pretty low key celebration as she was at nursery for most of the day as Hazel has started to get ready for her return to work in September and so has already started M’s sessions in nursery.. However we all had a lovely birthday tea with cake and balloons…as well as a lot of toys! Her first year has really flown by…it just feels like yesterday when she arrived. She is as bright as a button but is very reluctant to start crawling as yet! I suspect that she will be doing so by the time we get back from France though.
We have been watching all the news again, about all these disasters which are happening in the world at the moment. We are very relieved that most of the awful fires in France now seem to be over (for now anyway) but the destruction they caused still rumbles on. Our friends finally got back to their house in Le Porge and as we have not heard a lot from them since then we think all was OK for them. Now we are watching all the storm damage recently in France with horror too. Geoff is regularly receiving orage (storm) alerts on his phone so we are crossing our fingers that all will be well when we get to St Aygulf. And of course we are now seeing horrific footage from Nepal. It really has made us wonder what we are all doing to our planet.. its all very scary isn’t it?
This last week has been a bit of a worrying time for us, as Geoff has had a bit of a health scare. As anyone who regularly reads my blogs will know, neither of us goes anywhere near doctors if we can help it. However Geoff was summoned for a check-up review - the first one since we returned to the UK. He has so far escaped all these reviews and so there is very little recorded on his health records. Of course one of his blood results picked up a serious anomaly …which indicated poor kidney function. A repeat blood test a week later showed an even worse result and so we were told to go to the hospital as an emergency to have all this checked out. This of course was only four days before we are due to fly to France for a month so I was already cancelling the trip in my mind as my ex-nurse brain was working overtime! I even made sure that he had very smart underwear on for this visit in case they wanted to keep him in! Happily the doctors at the hospital were not too concerned and so apart from another repeat blood test which he needs to have done in a months time he got the all clear. He even made the very nice doctor smile when he told her he has felt recently that when he plays pickleball his legs and muscles take longer to recover now! She smiled and reminded him that he was 74 years old! There was much relief as we drove back home though…and yes we did get the all clear to go to France too 
Our final jaunt this month has been a trip to Grange-over-Sands where we had tickets to go and see a performance of the opera Carmen, which Geoff had spotted as being on there. We called in to see Geoff’s cousin Carole who lives in Grange and also found Carole’s sister Julia there too, so that was a nice surprise. We had a lovely lunch together and we all agreed that we should meet up more often…something we are not good about really. As Julia said…”lets not wait for the next family funeral to do this again”..a very good point! We left them and headed to the Victoria Hall where one of us really enjoyed the opera at least! I was dismayed to find that it was a concert version and although the singing was good, I was totally bored by it all. I need to see action, costumes & colour…none of which was on offer at this performance. Geoff however was enthralled by it all. Hey ho…as we say in French “nous sommes tous different”! Our evening was also a bit bizarre. We drove from Grange to Ulverston where I had managed to find a hotel on this Bank Holiday weekend, at a price which wasn’t going to break the bank. Mmm… I now know why this one was not booked up! It turns out that Ulverston seems to be the party central place of west Cumbria and our hotel was certainly being a big part of that! I had booked a “deluxe” room as advised on B.com to be as far away from the busy bar area of the hotel as possible, & that turned out to be on the top floor (3 flights of stairs up) & overlooked the outside bar veranda which was very lively with loud music going +++! Needless to say it was very very noisy…as was the downstairs bar where we had hoped to get some food! And it turned out every other eating establishment in Ulverston centre was also either packed, ultra noisy or fully booked! Eventually we enjoyed a takeaway kebab in the car down by the edge of the estuary looking over towards Arnside! We really know how to live eh? We returned to the hotel, turned up the TV for the rest of the evening to block out most of the outside noise and eventually, much to our amazement we did have a good night’s sleep after all. I somehow think though that a repeat visit to Ulverston is not ever going to happen! We drove home the next day via the west coast roads to avoid any traffic problems in the Lakes or on the M6. It had been a strange Bank Holiday weekend!
And now on this very last day of August, we are just sorting out all the last details ready for our departure to sunny climes (we hope) on Wednesday. After all the odd things that have happened this last week I can honestly say we are more than ready for our break now. I am not doing a shift in the shop this week which will allow me to finish off clearing our hall and bedroom here in the flat both of which are going to be redecorated whilst we are away. So on that note I will end here and hopefully catch you all up with September’s news from our flat in sunny St Aygulf.
A bientot mes amis…
