An English "Summer"

These are just some pics of us doing our thing over what the Pommes call "Summer".

When taking a short cut through a church yard in our home suburb of Brentwood one Saturday, we stumbled across the cutest thing: Teddy Bear Parachuting! This is wear kids bring in their favourite (or not so favourite) teddy, the clergy attach a pre-prepared chute, and then Ted is thrown off the highest steeple into the wild blue yonder with only a chute to save him (just like in Point Break). Apparently, no teddies were harmed.

This is a "Strawberry Fair". Apparently. Which caused much excitement in our household in its lead up. Unfortunately, this excitement was a bit optimistic. Out of around 50 stalls, the one you see in the photo is the only one that had even a semblance of a strawberry associated with it, leading us to believe it was just a "Fair". Even though there was just this one strawberry stall, the stall did a roaring trade with Peg.

...as did the Pimms stall next door with Drew.

More optimism abounds as we proceeded to purchase a tent, commonly associated with dry weather. Many rainy weekends after date of purchase, we decided to risk it and take it for a test run in The New Forest. Luckily, the rain held off mostly and we had 2 beautiful overcast days. This is a very house-proud Drew standing in front of his newly built tent. Fortunately for us, who were a bit green on the whole tent-setting-up-process, there was an identical tent to the back right of us which we used as a template.Peg, taking up her position of choice.

Hoping to get a bigger slice of the Tour de France action in London, Drew volunteered to be a steward. He got this by lying on his application and saying that he'd done heaps of stewarding before (thinking it was food & bev), then got there on the day and didn't really know what to do. So he just stood there looking stunning in his sexy vest and watched the bikes all day.

During the Caravan (bunch of promotional cars driving the route before the riders), one of them saw Peg as the ultimate target and she copped a soaking. This would have been just fine in a normal summer, however, we were in London and she already had a runny nose.

Drew fulfilling his stewarding duties. Wasn't in the handbook, but we were fairly confident that eating ice cream was part of the job description. So Drew did some overtime.

Patriotic Peg and Sexy Steward Drew.

One barrel-of-laughs "summer" activity is having knee surgery - yay! Lucky Peg got to enjoy this task in July following her barrel-of-laughs winter activity, tearing her anterior cruciate ligament skiing in Andorra in February. This is Peg showing off her pre-surgery scar-free knee in the final hours before The Cutting.

Just in case he got confused during The Cutting, the surgeon came in and drew all over Peg's leg so he did the right, sorry, left one.

Omigod - there is a wine list! What kind of hospital has a wine list? Unfortunately, Peg's tipple of choice was morphine, so it was just Drew drinking alone tonight.

Post-surgery. 'nuf said.

A little bit happier on the couch, where she sat for 2 whole weeks. Somehow Peg convinced Drew to make her jelly as post-surgery recovery food. When she had her wisdom teeth out, she had jelly, so this was variation on a theme.

We thought we'd give this camping/raining thing some more practice. In all seriousness, we were camping for The Only Two Days Of "Summer". Seriously. Peg went and deliberately got sunburnt to remind us during the next week that it really happened.

Having a pint for Frances at her pub, The Old Neptune in Whitstable.

We stumbled across some Pick-Your-Own strawberry fields one day. Of course we had to stop and have a go.

After eating her own weight in strawberries, Peg managed to fill more than half a punnett which we then paid for and left.

It was hard to get a photo of a strawberry before it got snatched and ingested.

The remainder of our haul for the day.