Wet weekend; completed wardrobe; chamomile

Kicked off the extra-long Bank Holiday weekend with a drive to my parents' place early on Saturday morning. Despite having left at 6.30am to supposedly avoid the crowds, the M5 was still slow by the time I reached it, with many caravans heading south, presumably towards the West Country. Not much of a weekend for caravanning.

It proved too damp a weekend to do much in the way of going out, but this gave me a chance to bake Herman. Not the most amazing cake I've ever tasted, but he certainly smelled better cooked than he did raw. Dad made a beef curry in the evening and Mum and I ended up watching the latter part of The Return of the King, my least favourite of the LOTR trilogy, partly because of its battle-heaviness and partly because Frodo and Sam's trek to Mount Doom is made so long-drawn-out and histrionic that one hates the pair of them by the time they finally get there. And don't get me started on Arwen. 

Sunday proved even wetter so after attempting to help Dad with some indexing software in the morning, I joined Mum in vegging out for most of the rest of the day. We watched most of the Thames Pageant, though this was dominated by Mum's worrying about what had happened to Huw Edwards, who had apparently been listed as among the event's presenters - though it appears from this Mail Online tirade that he was drafted in for the later Thanksgiving service. We went for a brief and extremely wet walk to Mum's favourite oak tree (pictured) before returning to the house for a roast pork dinner.

Returned to Reading on Monday and Ruth and I managed to correctly hang the sliding doors on the wardrobe, with only a minimum of panting and swearing. It's now housing quite a bit of our clothing - two temporary rails and several bags have been emptied; there's more to come but I will have to conduct an overhaul and prune of my clothes, which I intend to do just as soon as I've lost some weight.

Went to Ray's on Tuesday morning for brunch, followed by a trip to the Pudding Lane nursery at Arborfield to purchase some more plants to go around the water feature. Among other things, Ruth bought six chamomile plants - am now being transported by romantic visions of myself floating outside to gather chamomile, which I will then make into tisanes.

Back at work today, where I was rudely awakened this afternoon from post-Bank Holiday apathy by the plastic casing on one of the fluorescent strip lights in my office crashing to the floor. Could have been nasty if it had been the one over my desk. Someone from Estates turned up reasonably promptly to pick up the smashed pieces, generally exclaim a bit, etc. It will presumably get new casing at some point.