NaNoWriMo begins tomorrow...

Hi Guys, I came back from Denmark on Sunday evening, totally knackered after 2 days driving through Europe. I'd love to be able to share some of the pictures I took with you, but I downloaded them onto my sister's laptop to make space on the camera.

Oh well, I'll just have to wait until I can get them on disc before I show you... It was a lovely trip anyhow. We (my two sisters and their families) took a ferry to France (Calais), then drove through Belgium, Netherlands and Germany to Denmark, then across to my mum's birth island of Samso. Unfortunately I still had whatever bug I'd had for the week before we went, so my sisters had to take a turn at driving my car as well as their own, but it could've been worse. I could've puked (seeing as I'm just about the world's worst passenger, that was a distinct possibility! :-( )

There we met three of our Danish cousins and some of their children. They are great people, and we all had such a time of it... lots of drinking, laughing and catching up to do since last October when we had our Cousin Party in Norfolk.

My uncle and aunt also came over to the island one day, and we took a tour on the bus they'd specially hired for the day, whilst my uncle told us stories about his and my mum's childhood, and pointed out lots of places of interest. It was wonderful, and so nostalgic!

Oh yes, and we saw a school of porpoises - that was truly amazing!! (I have pictures :-) ... on my sisters laptop :-( ) For years I've gone on boat trips where a sighting has been hinted at, but never have I seen any in the wild. To see them only meters from the shore was truly one of life's greatest experiences. As soon as I get my pics, I'll see if they show the porpoises well enough to show them.

So, then we went over to the mainland, and spent the rest of the week in a summerhouse with a swimming pool in the middle of it. It was a novelty, and the kids loved it (apart from all the youngest four now having an ear infection!!!), but it was sooo expensive to heat. The heating had to be paid separately from the rental, and boy was the electricity bill steep for just one week - it was about £100, and we hadn't been allowed to turn it down, even though it was so darned hot in the house! Oh well, for novelty value it was cool :-)



Whilst staying in the summer house, which was just down the road from our family's village (they all of them live only a short way from each other - in fact, they've almost over taken the village! :-) ), we visited the local museum in Glud - Basically, it consists of something like ten houses from different time periods, restored to how they originally looked. It was amazing how small the beds were (that struck me more than anything) and how low the doorways were. I thought at the time that it was because the people were smaller a in the sixteen hundreds, but I stood corrected when we visited Aarhus museum of Moesgaard Museum (where the bog man is kept) and one of the exhibits showed how height has only changed a few centimeters. So, that means these guys were really squashed into a small space (no more than about 4 feet long, I think - you would certainly have had to bend your legs to get into it! - pics later!)



So, last weekend, sadly we left for home, got stuck in every German traffic jam going, stayed in an interesting little youth hostel (I'd always been under the impression these were only for youths, but it turns out that they have family rooms too, and they're open to all - at £10 per person per night I certainly wasn't complaining!!) Then home to more traffic jams on Sunday- but boy was I pleased to see the familiar outline of my house... and lie in my own bed! Still waiting to catch up on the sleep....

Since then it's been all go. Back to work, rushing round and being generally incomprehensible to all I babble to :-D

And now... to this month... I've decided to do the official NaNoWriMo for the first time ever (I did write 'a novel' in a month back in March in the company of Farris, but it would be nice to do it when so many others are doing it too (and it'll give me a break from editing my first effort :-) ). So, I'm not going to return to blogging until the end of the month. Believe me, I'm missing it, but am also so wrapped up in the abundant things taking precedent in my life at the moment that I daren't start (because if I do, I don't stop! :-) ).

The only exception to this is, of course, the Dona Nobis Pacem on November 7th, which there's no way I'd miss! Apart from this unpreventable participation, I think I might just do what I did last March, and put up some photos of the day I like...

Hope you are all well, my friends. I'm thinking of you all the time!!

XX