Another weekend over, another working week started …
The weekend started well by having Friday off on leave .. this allowed me to have a lie in :) and lounge a bit before commencing the day’s proceedings.

We headed to the Harbour and utilised the Gosport ferry in the aim for purchasing multiples of tickets for the rally next week, see the place and having a spot of lunch. Gosport is very much now the poor relation on the south coast, as Fareham and Havant have pulled themselves up in the world over the last few years. We had lunch on JDW (The Star) but it’s a very cramped and dark pub so it wasn’t that great, but nice enough for a change. We then wandered around Falkland Gardens next to the ferry before trying to purchase the carnet … alas the Gosport Ferry interpretation of a Carnet is not the same as RATP (Paris Metro); as they have it as 10 trips for 1 person not 10 people for 1 trip, bummer as a single trip costs £1.60 return and the carnet (10 trips) is a bargain £6.70! We took lots of harboury pics of the delights of Portsmouth from the ferry before re-landing on the better side! Then it was a wander around Old Portsmouth, a jaunt up into the Round Tower for more Harbour views (and showing Tom what had kept me busy of late), then along Long Curtain Moat (soon to have a new bridge across) before arriving at the Common and a peruse of the Southsea Shops. Bought The News (in Waitrose) due to its headline that John Lewis is moving from Southsea to be the cornerstone of the new northern development of the city centre (yipee a 4 storey JLP within walking distance of work … and from the sounds of it, the store will be bigger than the Soton one!!!)

All this walking back to the flat meant I was bit tiredy custard by the time we finally got back so the planned housework stuff didn’t quite happen as we were back rather later than I thought we would.

Saturday was SAGGA Committee Meeting in Cheltenham, a new part of the world for me (not that I saw a lot of it) and at least easy drives there and back. Young Master A joined us and survived the experience by having an escape with daddy after lunch! Hopefully this is his first step into saying ‘No’ to things…

Sunday was yet more Guidey/ Scouty bits with Church Parade for Remembrance in the morning … a whole 6 brownies turned up (a record) with representation from each of the sixes! We managed as many from one unit as the combined numbers from the scout group. Alas I feel that we’ll be back to 2 next time but at least our efforts worked in getting more of them there yesterday. The afternoon saw a jaunt to Soton for drop of signs for the rally, which were forgotten the day before. I then subjected Dr T to a raid on Hobbycraft, which he survived unscathed.

Also over the weekend we had Local Derby Part 1, Soton 2 Pompey 1 … and all the goals were scored by Soton; Arrests: 5. We shall see what Part 2 brings later in the season.