Smothered in fish sauce

I haven’t died…but I have been suffering from Nam Pla asphyxia, which has curbed my enthusiasm for blogging. Yes, I know, how can you be suffocated by a cooking ingredient but that Thai fish sauce is dangerous stuff. Especially when it falls over in your motorhome fridge during a ferry crossing and someone hasn’t pressed the lid shut….I’m not kidding, for a week it was like living in an intensely cheesy but essentially rank Wotsit. And despite one’s best efforts to clean it up, it just hung around like a….well, like a bad smell really.

That aside, we did have a great time while we were away but we were also pleased to get home. Unusually for us, we didn’t have any major incidents, unless you count Miffy running off not once but twice from the van as A tried to get her back in after dinner. There she was, scampering around the campsite without a care in the world while I did my best fishwife impression (must be the Nam Pla again) shrieking at her to come back and not get herself squished under the wheels of a tag-axle caravan. She obliged me eventually…

Our BH weekend in Orkney was certainly the trip’s highlight and we took our behemoth down every road we could and some we definitely shouldn’t have. But if there’s a bistro with cakes at the end of a windy narrow track, then what’s a bit of scraped paint and bashed plastic matter? Oh and then there was that episode in Stromness where your head is telling you to turn around, your heart is telling you to turn round quickly and your mouth says ‘carry on, dear, it’ll be fine’. Have you ever been down Stromness High Street? You can walk down it and touch both sides of the street at the same time with your outstretched arms. Well, at least that’s what it felt like, with the walls closing in the further we penetrated. It was a genuine squeaky bum moment but at last we emerged into daylight and breathed a sigh of relief. Very similar in fact to the one we had let out when the marshall at the ferry office offered to reverse the motorhome onto the car deck for us. We don’t do reversing except onto a campsite pitch, ever since we crunched a car with our first van twenty minutes after taking possession. It was good to see how the dogs reacted to a complete stranger getting into the cab and making off with their motorized kennel while mum and dad stood on the quay looking on…not a sound. Useful huh?

That said, the dogs have been very well behaved of late and so we rewarded them with brand new house collars from www.kitschcollars.com as their old ones were looking a bit frayed and shabby. I’ll try and get some pics in due course. Of course, having been home for five days, we’re already looking forward to our time away on the boat in June. If all goes to plan, this should be one week of work cruise to get us to Red Bull; two weeks of holiday to get us to the Pennines; and then potentially another working week to take us to Castleford where A’s client has a northern office and we’re hoping to install some techie bits and pieces. At some point, we shall take up residence in Sowerby Bridge for the rest of the summer before wending our way to Stenson over the autumn.

It’s probably going to be a little quiet on the blogging front until we resume our adventures but I’ll drop back in from time to time. Oh, and all you diet watchers….the weight’s staying off, thankfully, and I think I’ve even lost a little more since hitting my target. It’s a race now between me and Susie as to who can have the smallest waist…