Doors to manual

So while we were away last week the blog was set to auto with a bit scheduled for posting each day. Now we are back from gallivanting around the Loire valley the autopilot can be switched off.

I was both pleasantly surprised and mildly irritated when I first checked my email after returning. The pleasant surprise was that there were fewer spam emails than I had expected - only 1200+ in the spam folder and five that had escaped the net and got in amongst the "proper" emails. There were 122 in that folder, including the 5 spam but including also some 70+ returned or undeliverable emails. That was the irritating part - somebody had hijacked my email address to send out spam! Catching up with what all my favourite bloggers had been writing and admiring the pictures taken by the city bloggers passed quite a few happy minutes - but then it's back to the grind. Get the accounts brought up to date, reply to emails, letters and telephone messages, laundry, mow the grass, get cracking on the next issue of Jungle Jottings, update club and district web sites...

I'm not complaining, not really. I know I'm lucky enough to be able to take off for a week in the way we do every couple of months. We get to enjoy two completely different lifestyles and there have to be some small drawbacks.

Oh yes. I'll continue the story of how we bought our French house a bit later on. Maybe next time we are away.