Sunday

 Good morning, everyone.  I'm up very early this morning; it's not quite five and I have watched a Moviemaker tutorial, stripped a chicken, sorted out the kitchen and enjoyed the first coffee of the day!  I'll pay for it later with a nice snooze either in my recliner or outside in the garden, depending on the weather.  Oh, the hardship!

It is nice to be home for a few days.  I was greeted by a parcel which surprised me as I hadn't ordered anything but it was the new Chubby Cubs cookery book which I preordered months ago.  I might find time to start looking through it today or I might just take it with me to Potters and enjoy it there.

Anyway - yesterday.  I started the holiday washing on Friday but didn't get it out so I gave that another wash and then made the most of the continuing fine weather to line dry that and the subsequent loads before ironing it all.  There was quite a lot as I had changed my sheets before leaving and, of course, there were my friend's sheets to do too.
All done now although I'll probably wash the few things left tomorrow morning to give me a clean sweep, so to speak.

Chris came round to ask if she and Steve could watch RideLondon go past from my garage space which runs alongside the road the cyclists were coming up.  Of course, I agreed and went out to join them.
When the Tour de France passed by, it was very much a case of 'oh, what a circus, oh, what a show' with hours of sponsored lorries and trailers, give aways, adverts, and then police, various medical type vehicles of all sizes and descriptions, spare bikes . . . before the Main Event which was over in a few seconds.  Blink and you missed it!
This one was far less commercialised and, sadly, probably seen as less 'important' as it was the UIC Women's World Tour road race, even though it was for the best women riders in the world; with no cavalcade of sponsored stuff, no give aways, no dressing up, just quite a lot of police motorcycles and cars, ambulances (rather disconcerting but absolutely essential just in case) and the necessary backup stuff.
I filmed it - surprise surprise!

(This view, my country view, is where I take all those sunset photos!)

Once that was all over which really didn't take that long, I carried on with all the usual householdy stuff until early evening when I went round to Dave and Anna's for a take away Indian and a good old chat.  Anna's mum was there and it was a jolly good evening.

On to today and the early start.  I came back from Dave and Anna's with a cooked chicken!  When Anna went to Morrisons, there were loads of cooked chickens reduced from nearly £6 to 60p - that's what I call a bargain!  I rarely find reductions as good as that but Anna has a real genius for finding YS stuff.
This morning, I stripped it, the carcass is boiling away and I have a plateful of chicken to use.  Most will go in the freezer, of course, and I'll have a good old roast chicken dinner today for very little effort!

Apart from that, there are a few strawberries to pick (yay!) and a bit of tidying up to do and then I'm going to play with Moviemaker again.  One YouTube tutorial said about layering - putting one video clip over another - which sounds interesting, and also I think (might be wrong) that you can synchronise music and pictures and I might see what I can do about that.  Also, I recorded some windmill clips in portrait rather than landscape and, surely, there has to be a way of rotating clips so they don't play sideways?  There must be, surely!

The last day of the RideLondon event impacts here again today.  The web site tells me that there's a mass participation ride and I know the same roads are closed again from 6:30 am to 3:30 pm.  I could get out, if I wanted to, but there are some roads that are just plain cut off for those nine hours which is tough if you need to get out (for work, for example).

So that's today.  A lazy old day really and I am sure I will nod off at some point this afternoon but it's going to be good.  The sun is now starting to shine and fingers crossed for a warmer day today.
I really hope yours is a good one and that you are able to do all you hope and plan to do today.  Stay safe and be happy.  xx