Weekend featuring Meccano

Lola II's visit has passed in a whirlwind of activity, featuring high levels of food intake, botanical excitement and DVD-watching. She and Mr M arrived on Saturday, bringing gifts of flowers, wine, chocolate, pyjamas and an enormous raspberry pavlova. It has taken four of us more than two days to eat the pavlova, and the portion sizes were staggering. Delicious, though.

Lola II also brought the Meccano that dad acquired over 60 years ago, which I enjoyed playing with more than 30 years ago. All four of us spent some time on Saturday night constructing our choice of model. Mr A was preoccupied with studying (he has a deadline tomorrow), so his truck remained unfinished, but Lola II made a 'girocopter', I constructed a fairground roundabout, and Mr M created a 'swing boat'. You would have been able to see the results in a hilarious video, but for some reason Blogger didn't like it. So just these pictures, then:


On Sunday we explored the world of horticulture. Lola II's new house has small front and back gardens, and Mr M is keen to populate this urban jungle with some lovely plants. Over the last four months of heavy duty unrelenting school work, I have killed most of my indoor plant friends, including several leaves of the aspidistra, which I thought would survive anything up to and including a nuclear holocaust. Unfortunately, the garden centre we chose didn't stock indoor plants, but Lola II and Mr M came away with a haul of outdoor goodies, while I sat in the car because loitering outside in the wind was much too cold.

There was more plant-based excitement after lunch, with a walk guided by a leaflet containing fifteen walks highlighting the Trees of the Jephson Gardens. We did walk 1, particularly admiring the Caucasian Wingnut, the Paper-bark Maple, the Cedar of Lebanon and the Monterey Pine. Then we had a hot chocolate. The other fourteen walks will have to wait for future visitors to Lola Towers.

What else? Well, I provided noodle soup on Saturday night, we watched Dinner Rush, Mr A did a great roast lamb on Sunday with Yorkshire Puddings by yours truly, we watched Big Night, and on Monday we watched an episode of Jeeves and Wooster and had a small lunch in the pub. I estimated Mr M's carbohydrate intake at each opportunity, and gradually became more accurate through the weekend, which is very handy for my course.

These few days off have been very refreshing, to the extent that I'm almost ready to go back to work. Just a few jobs today, and I think it will be coursework for the rest of the week, and then revision: just under six weeks to my first exam.