And we're back

Lovely holiday, thank you for asking.I'll post pictures tomorrow, but tonight just want to get something up here before I forget how blogging works! Feel very disconnected from that part of my life at the moment, - and don't much like that feeling.

Though we left home amid the high drama of a thunder storm that knocked out the power for many in the area (but which young Libby coped with as just another one of the new and exciting aspects of life in the big wide world), we had more than adequate weather, and nearly all the time we wanted to read, to sleep, to watch the moorhens emerge from the rushes...
We cruised from Northampton to Oxford, a distance of just under 40 miles - at most an hour's drive on country roads then. It took us 12 days to do the round trip...and there was not a tedious moment. Libby only fell in 3 times (twice as a result of her own joie de vivre, as she lollopped along the tow path with cheerful abandon, falling over her own paws with predictable results) and seemed to enjoy every minute of it. So did I.

The greatest joy, of course, was the presence of Hugger Steward. He did make it to the top of Kilimanjaro (probably the first man ever to do so while wearing skeleton pyjamas - there's glory for you!), had only 2 bouts of malaria to his name (and that's despite taking the appropriate meds) and is clearly as homesick for Yamba as ever I was for Karnataka. He has yet to update his website but when he does, the photos are well worth a look.

Our re-entry to normal life was rendered rather dramatic by an accident that befell Teddy the Ginger Pirate Cat last Monday.Clearly his thoughts were so focussed on his plans to take over the world (his nomme de guerre is Spirax Sarco, who ought to be a Bond villain, even if he's not) that he forgot his Green Cross Code and had a run in with a passing car. He emerged with a broken jaw, necessitating an unbelievably huge vet bill and tube feeding for a week.
As he is Hugger Steward's cat this wasn't absolutely the best homecoming for him, though Teddy obviously believed that it was his hospitalisation that brought HS home.
After a fraught weekend, the tube was removed this evening, though wires remain in place and he's clearly got some serious recuperation ahead. Assuming that one life was used up with his lost leg 13 years ago, and there are surely other dramas that we wot not of, I'm hoping he'll go carefully for a year or two. There is serious money tied up in that cat :-)