Thursday and Friday (wedding day eve)

Thursday

As planned, Steve and the girls took off at sparrows fart to pick up the flowers.  They had a few other jobs so didn't get back to Flitton until close to midday.  

While they were away, I pottered around the house and pretended to help out with the wedding planning activities..... but mainly I enjoyed the time to do a bit of reading and catch up on news and other mindless stuff.

The rest of the day was spent doing a few chores around the house and church in preparation for the big day - flower arranging, mowing the cemetery lawns (that's the walkway between the house and the church), shifting hay bales, making a wash basin, painting.......... there's always things to do.

Excellent day getting things done.  Not much to report other than the wedding day prep.  Everyone was pretty knackered after the early start, so we all got to bed by 10:00pm which is the earliest so far on this trip!

Friday - Wedding Day Eve

Rain - noooooooooo

Surely not.  We've had great weather up to now.  And now it's raining - WTF???  We're madly checking out the weather forecast and it's telling us that today it's going to rain all day and that it will be sunny for tomorrow.  Finger crossed they're right.

With most of the prep done for the wedding, Cindy took off into London to meet up with Gracie for a spot of shopping and I decided that it would be a good idea to make myself scarce - I did not fancy getting in the way and stuffing up any last minute prep activities!!!

I drove to a small village nearby called Woburn. Situated near a stunning Abbey that is a major tourist attraction, Woburn is a very pretty little one-street village, with shop front and house right out onto the street, little cobbled lanes, an old town hall that now sells antiques and low-ceilinged pubs and hotels.  It's first record of existence is in 969!!

What it's most noted for these days is the parklands which includes a safari park.  I may have my facts slightly wrong - the parkland, around 15,000 acres, is owned by the Tavistock family which is headed up by Lady Tavistock.  

The land is used to farm deer which roam freely around.  Bizarrely the main road out of town runs right through the deer park.  It's completely unfenced and the deer just wander across the road.  Apparently there are several deer deaths each year as they sometime get frightened and run in front of passing cars!

There's a separate fenced off safari park which visitors can pay to go to.  I didn't go, but it's supposed to be pretty special as the animals just roam around freely and visitors drive through amongst them.  Lions, Zebra, Giraffe and other usual zoo animals live there freely.  Sounds pretty special and if time permits, we might visit. 

Given it was raining I didn't do too much wandering.  Instead I found myself a quiet little cafe/hotel and settled in to do some reading and writing in preparation for updating the blog.

I returned to Flitton mid afternoon and found that the wedding prep was coming along swimmingly - almost literally!  It was still pouring and everyone was a little nervous about the weather.

Never mind, the marquee looks amazing and is water tight, so rain or shine, the wedding will be amazing and the guests will stay dry.

We ended the day having a few beers at the pub next door catching up with a few of Cindy and Steve's cousins who had just arrived from Ireland.  It was excellent catching up with them, some of whom we hadn't seen since we lived in London all those years ago.

As it turned out, the weather forecasters were right about rain today.  It has NOT STOPPED ALL DAY.  I hope like hell that they're right about tomorrow.