There are no words......

There are no words to describe what the World is going through, five months seeming like 5,000 years.   Slowly, slowly the UK is coming back to "normal" - whatever normal is.  People say that the World will never be the same but for just a few weeks, the roads were empty, crime figures were down, we queued at supermarkets where we found very little on the shelves and we avidly watched the 5pm news report from Downing Street to see how many people had died.   I know we are a long long way from the end but Del and I were very happy to be able to enjoy a weekend away in our happy place where the most annoying thing was two yappy dogs.   No masks, everyone giving a little smile and a cheery good morning - something we had forgotten to do because we are so all worried about social distancing - kids enjoying meeting up with their "new friends" and of course, just sitting peacefully watching the World go by, the real "normal".

Our first weekend away in 2020, we'd not even been able to visit Daisy since February!   With all the usual roadworthy checks we were soon on the road to Chertsey.  The roads are still relatively empty compared to what they were pre-Covid and the M25 was actually okay and we arrived at Chertsey within the hour.   Fabulous warm socially-distant welcome at Chertsey, good choice of pitches and we were able to park up near to the river (if you stood on tiptoes and held your head at right angles...).   The first trip out is always a "let's check that everything is working okay" trip, this one also included a "let's put up the new awning" trip.  So it came as no surprise that to find that the toilet flush didn't work, a clamp on the new awning had broken and the water pump needed a great deal of 'jiggling' to start pumping.  Thank goodness for Youtube and a superb video explaining just what to do!

Saturday morning was beautiful and we decided to tackle the awning, I swear if caravans had net curtains they'd be twitching - RED ALERT, RED ALERT awning going up, divorce in a bag.....   Sorry to be a spoilsport but we don't argue, we work together and very very soon the awning was up.   It's HUGE!!!!!!!!   Unfortunately the awning carpet looks more like a rug so we'll have to buy a new one.   The broken clamp proved a little more tricky because it just wouldn't 'clamp' but brain box here (moi, polishing her nails...) came up with the temporary idea of using tape to stop it sliding down.   On inspection the clamps are quite poor quality so we'll replace them all with more sturdy ones.

After a hearty camping breakfast we went for a lovely walk alongside the Thames, there were lots of people out and about enjoying the sunshine.   There are some fabulous houses with their own moorings alongside the river and plenty of boats sailing up and down.  All seeming much nicer as there were very few airplanes taking off from Heathrow still.   

All in all it was a wonderfully relaxing, getting away from the "new normal" and revisiting the "old normal".   Hang on in there everyone, let's face it 2020 is a year we'll all be glad to see the back of, just concentrate on these little pockets of loveliness.   

2020?