My parents were up visiting for the first time this weekend hence the lack of posts. They came on Sunday and after a quick look around the house and garden, we had some lunch and then popped over to a garden centre about 5 minutes away from us for an hour and a bit (yes it's that big!) to pick up some things for our garden. My Dad (bless him) brought us up 4 tomato plants, 3 mixed pepper plants, a Melon plant and an Aubergine plant. And 10 lettuces that are growing far stronger than mine! (Well he does have a greenhouse!). So we picked up a couple of grow bags, some bamboo, a chilli pepper plant and some cheap flowers to cover the back of the garden where it's full of builder's rubble and rubbish.
Sunday was quite a nice day. It had been forecast to rain but the rain held off all day. We got back in time for Dave to watch the football and so my Mum (not a football lover) parked herself in my deckchair watching me and my Dad do some gardening. Despite my joking I hadn't meant for my Dad to actually pick up the spade, but he just went off and levelled out our back dumping ground for me! We can now get this covered with some matting and get some shale/shingle on it as it's full of all the spare part bricks we've dug up, and other rubbish. I spent about 2 hours sieving the back border, trying to give us at least an inch of semi decent soil to plant the flowers into. Then on Sunday we got the new veg/salad planted. We now have an abundance of lettuces, I can see us giving a few away to Paul's and Dave's families! My Dad also covered up the strawberries to prevent the birds from getting at them. There's only a small handful on there this year (it's only a strawberry pot) but it's still fun to grow food, regardless of quantity. I also had my first raspberry off one of the raspberry canes. The main crop should come later in the summer hopefully but there are a few coming through now.
Sunday evening we went out to the local Beefeater restaurant (I say local as it said 6 miles away but to be honest seemed far further!) for dinner. It was dead for a Sunday night, guess everyone was at home watching the football! Still it was very nice plus I got about 500 extra points on my Nectar card despite not paying for dinner (I did offer!!).
On Monday we went to the McArthur Glen at Cheshire Oaks which is about 5 minutes drive from here. My Mum doesn't get to go shopping or wandering around browsing clothes these days, well if she does she's usually alone as my Dad isn't the shopping type (are many men?!). So my Dad went off on his own to do his own shopping at his own pace and we went to wander around the place. On a Monday morning is was pretty dead which is great, no hustle and bustle or people getting in your way! I didn't bother looking for clothes but did pick up some cycling gloves as my hands hurt a lot when we last went out on our bikes, I picked up a few DVDs courtesey of a free £10 from Virgin XS, and a Budweiser t'shirt for Dave which came with a free mid size football (that I keep playing with in the kitchen!). Monday evening was BBQ night. Unfortunately my Dad decided he'd do the cooking so I didn't get my usual look in 
Still the food was great, possibly less burnt than I usually manage!
They went yesterday morning, unfortunately. It's usually me who's leaving and due to driving at the time I don't have the chance to think or wander when will I next see them, but yesterday as they walked away I realised how much I miss them both living so far away.
