TGIF or Thank Goodness its Friday!

I had a fabulous Friday this week! On my return from Italy my friend Christie had emailed me to say she was coming over to Britain from her home in Utah and could we meet. The problem was that by the time I got her email she was already in England and I had no way of contacting her! I emailed her account anyway in the hope that either she was checking mails from here or that one of her kids or her hubby would pick it up in USA. Luckily she contacted me and we arranged to meet.

So Friday started with me first having a 9am appointment at the doctors to get a repeat of my Elixer of youth, commonly known as HRT, boy do I love those little white pills, I am a hormone junkie! Well, I sat and sat for ages in the waiting room at the appointed hour, people came in and left, children played then got bored and cried. Tumbleweed rolled through the waiting area when suddenly a family of horrendously HUGE poeple surrounded me on the seats making me feel like a squashed banana at the bottom of the fruit bowl. The Mother's huge thighs spilled right off her seat and threatened to over flow and smother mine. Her and her teenage children all wore a uniform of grey sweatpants with varying baggy tops. I longingly looked at a seat all on its own and wondered if it would look tooo.. rude to move to it, decided it probably would and stayed squashed.
Eventually 45 minutes after my appointed time I was called in to see the doctor. I told him I had come to tell him how well I was feeling with loads of energy, sleeping well and very best of all no awful life stoppingly embarrassing hot flushes. In other words ' just give me the pills and let me get out of here!' Then came the moment I dreaded 'I'll just check your blood pressure' Simple words but ones that strike terror into my blood stream and send the said BP into overdrive and out through the top of my head and through the roof. Now, I was late for my trip to meet Cristie, I had sat looking at my watch worrying about being late, and spent the last twenty minutes crushed between the big friendly giants! OF COURSE MY BP WAS HIGH! I thought the HRT was going to be off the agenda but he agreed I could have the pills but I have to see the nurse once a week for a month to get re-checked. He has to be joking, I will never get time from work once a week to check my BP that is perfectly normal at any time other than at the surgery! White coat syndrome is alive and well with me.

To try and calm the raging BP I then set off on a 75 mile motorway journey to Thame down the M42 to meet christie, I drove through torrential rain, thunder, lightening and I am sure a swarm of locust popped up at some point aand eventually was safely guided into Chinnor road by my sat nav. The trouble was it was the wrong Chinnor road! Unknown to me there are two in the same postcode district and this one was a Country lane with no civilisation to be seen! I was seriously late by now and wondered whether to phone (she would not be able to give directions) or try again. Brainwave alert! I remebered she said I had to park in nearby Croft Road so I set that into Sadie ( yes my sat nav has a name) Bingo it was only 3 miles away so off we went.

I arrived at the house she was staying at and nervously knocked the door, Three Women and a tiny four year old Chinese girl almost immediatly opened it. We all stood looking at each other for a moment as I was not sure which one was Christie as the only photo I had seen ofher was four years ago and she had curly hair then. All suddenly became clear when she spoke (the accent gave it away) I think she had not realised I would be so short! It transpired that the little girl was the adopted daughter of the friend she had travelled with. She was the cutest little thing apparently abandoned at birth as she had a serious cleft pallette and was a girl! She is now a very confident chatty four year old who helped us all get to know each other.

Christie had decided she wanted to visit the Cotswolds so we set off to the nearest village which is Burford. We got on like a house on fire, It was like we really were old friends which we are, just had not met before. We had written to each other on and off for five years. Sometimes though 3 months would pass and then we would exchange a few letters about our families etc. Then nothing again for another few months but we always keep in touch however sporadic. We spent the whole journey talking and laughing and catching up on our relevant families. She is a real lovely girl with a great sense of humour and fun.

We walked about Burford for a while and visited a flea market which she really liked. Like a lot of Americans she thought we all lived in quaint little villages and rode around on bicycles I think. She was a little disapointed with the amount of traffic in the village and the fact it was difficult to take photo's without cars being present. We decided to have lunch in a quaint little tea-shop suitably ye olde worlde! Christie decided we should have 'The Engish Afternoon Tea'. This was a delightful selection of pretty little sandwiches with the crusts removed and an enormous selection of cream cakes and scones and of course a pot of English Tea. The only problem there was that Christie being off the Mormon religion does not drink tea, so she had 'afternoon milkshake' instead off afternoon tea! By the time we were ready to leave I felt as humungous as the people in the surgery that morning! We left with two cake boxes of left overs to share and strolled, or was it waddled up the village.

Christie still wanted the quintessential English village photo's, so we wandered off the main street to the quieter lanes around the area.
She wanted to find quaint little cottages with window boxes and net curtains to take pictures of. I added that it would be preferable if Miss Marple was just coming out of one with her large wheeled black bicycle with a whicker basket on the front! She agreed this would be ideal, so we went on a search.

Miss Marple was out of town, but we found cute cottages, even one with Honey-Suckle clambering around the front door, it and many others were dutifully recoreded for posterity on Christie's film and my digital in case hers did not come out good.
Then the really impressive English rain began agin in earnest and fell in buckets, we fled under our brolly's back to the car where we had to just sit for ten minutes until it lessened. Christie was very impressed at the amount of rain that fell in a few minutes and concluded that the reason England was so beautiful was because of the rain!

It was great to meet Christie and fun to see a Cotswold village through new eyes as somewhere wonderful an unusual. I wonder just what she would make of Coventry!