Book finished, life may continue...

Gripped to the last, I managed to finish 'My Cousin Rachel' early-ish yesterday morning.   I won't say too much for fear of spoiling it for anyone who fancies reading it but I liked the brooding atmosphere of this story and the fact that the questions in my head kept me turning the pages in search of elusive answers. I am now bidden to try 'The House on the Strand', (thanks Elaine!)  so will hopefully get to the book shop soon! (Don't suggest Amazon - that would be an expensive error to make - sooo much temptation!)

Meanwhile, changes are afoot at home.  

This necessitated a trip to the big-blue-and-yellow-home-furnishing store in search of  a new wardrobe and chest-of-drawers for Miss U-t-B, who has been making do with some rather broken down hand-me-downs.

In the end we managed to find a wardrobe/drawer combination which seemed a clever solution, creating all the storage she needed whilst only taking up the floor space of one piece of furniture.

Here it is...

Image source : Ikea

Coincidentally, this matches the sofa bed (you can read about it here - and you get David Essex thrown in for nothing!) we got earlier this year for the spare bedroom/ my sewing room - think we're getting a bit predictable!

Miss U-t-B herself is now enjoying getting stuck into transforming her room.  She is at that age, when one minute she is all sophisticated and grown up;

(witness the nails, putting together some storage boxes)

 ...off to work for two weeks at the start of the summer holiday, dealing with three years worth of these...

Image courtesy of Clearbooks - great small business accounting software!

...and building flat-packs;

She wouldn't let me take a picture of her - this one's from The Daily mail - sorry!

The next minute she's all teenager, staying in bed half the morning (actually probably rather more!),  playing SIMs non-stop with her best friend and shopping for clothes with the money she's earnt;

And the next, she's back to her childhood, buying a train set in the hope that her little niece...

...will want to play with her when she gets a bit bigger!

Meanwhile, she'll make do with her Dad!

Today Mr U-t-B's brother-in-law has arrived for a short visit.  

Earlier he had seen his wife (Mr U-t-B's sister) off, on her bike ride London to Paris!  She has now completed one hundred miles, and should be arriving on the Champs Elysees on Saturday afternoon, (where Mr U-t-B, her husband and her sister will greet her) having raised (so far) in excess of £2500 for Macmillan Cancer Support. 

 I am totally in awe - well done Mary!  

We went out for a bite to eat at lunchtime, heading to Godalming to this lovely place...

The Refectory

Now this beautiful building is a bit of a puzzle.

You look at the brickwork, the architectural details, the mullioned windows...

...the beams, the flooring, the stained-glass windows, ...

...the surrounding buildings...

..and you think, 'Ah what a fine bit of history!' 

And then you read that it was probably built in the 1950s! 

 (Though strangely, nobody seems to know for sure!)

So if that wasn't history, maybe our next little excursion was.

We were only five minutes away so we thought 'Why don't we drive through the Hindhead Tunnel, newly opened today?'

Here's why we shouldn't have...

... a flippin' traffic jam, just as long as the tailbacks it was built to prevent! 

Guess we weren't the only ones  who thought we'd try and do something vaguely historic!

But we got there in the end...

And back out the other side!