Bye bye The Mouse,and Stephen is ill (poor soul)

After our car trouble last weekend, we knew The Mouse (our little red Fiesta) needed replacing. We'd been looking forward to a relaxing weekend, so decided to take Friday off work to go car hunting. Neither of us have much interest in cars, so were pleased to have found and ordered a new(ish) car by 1pm that day. Again, job done! I drove two cars before deciding on the one we wanted - another Fiesta, but this time a "Ghia". I think power steering is going to take some getting used to! We should pick the new one up on Thursday. We were a bit sad when the salesmen (two - one from each of the dealers we went to) looked at The Mouse to asses trade-in value and each told us that the car was not long for this Earth. I think it will be sad to say goodbye to it. Old cars that don't work very well seem to have more personality than new ones. It's ridiculous given that we don't like cars that we're getting sentimental over a dodgy one.

We were chuffed to have got the car-buying out of the way as it left our weekend free for us to start a bit of Christmas shopping, relax in town and do a bit around the house. We even managed to get a man in on Friday to upgrade our TV aerial and fix some botched connections so we can now receive digital TV - hurrah: true anamorphic picture!!

So, on Friday night we decided to celebrate a job well done by going for a meal at an Algerian restaurant nearby. I phone up to book:

Me: "Hello, I'd like to book a table for two tonight."
Him: "GET DOWN HERE. IT'S WET. CLEAN THAT UP!"
Me: "Sorry?"
Him: "Sorry sir, carry on."
Me: "I'd like to book a table for two tonight."
Him: "CLEAN THAT UP! NOT THERE, THERE!"
Me: "Hello?"
Him: "Sorry sir, I wasn't talking to you, I was talking to my mother."

What a charming son!

The restaurant was cosy and the meal was very nice. The downside was I was up at 4am the next morning throwing up. Oh dear. I continued doing this until 6am, and then had a bit more kip. One more sick at 8.30am (is this too much detail?) and then I started to get better and was feeling OK by midday. Well so much for my relaxing Saturday in town - grrr! We did manage to have a big bonfire in our garden on Saturday night and burn the huge pile of cuttings we'd built up. It was good fun (and I hope it didn't upset the neighbours too much).




We spent the rest of the evening relaxing with good food and School of Rock on DVD. Quite a fun movie.

Then, on Sunday, we cut down loads more of the overgrown garden and had another fire that night (our neighbours will hate us!) The garden now looks a confillion times better and we have much more light coming into the house (during the day). Brilliant!

Our three day weekend is now over, and we're more exhausted than ever. Back to work to rest tomorrow.