"Are you Verity?"

"Nope. I'm just looking her up on the net."

Ilfracombe.

Verity is on the other side of the harbour: Ilfracombe Harbour

We had a strange day. The "Monday is family day" thing is going a bit awry. Joel's ended up working quite a few Mondays, Gemma's not always here - or at least not for the whole day, then there was the VAT week, the anniversary hangover Monday.... and today some nice rain and the flooding.
Gemma wanted to go to a very specific sweet shop in Ilfracombe to buy very specific sweets for her boyfriend Dan's birthday (which is today), so we thought we'd incorporate it into our "family, minus Joel, day". But then it rained, and rained, and rained and rained and rained and rained and rained. The roads filled up with liquid chocolate and Richard ended up going to the shop to sandbag and clean drains.

Finally we got to Ilfracombe. It was pretty flooded in places and the roads were a bit sploshy. Someone drove so fast through a puddle coming past us that they sloshed a great torrent of filthy water up onto Richard's windscreen and he was temporarily unable to see anything. Smart.

We didn't get out and walk around Ilfracombe. It was too bloody wet. We just waited for Gemma and sploshed back out of town. Then we did something completely not different or particularly special and went to the garden centre for lunch. And bought some dog food. And some potting compost.
As if all that wasn't excitement enough we then dropped Gemma into Barnstaple and went back home.
Go us! So out there.
Crazy shit huh?

After composing ourselves (not to be confused with composting ourselves) we then braved the still lashing rain and took Tess to the beach for a surf. I sat in the car for the first half hour and watched from afar. Finally the clouds began to thin and the rain eased, and I wandered down onto the beach and watched them and lazily photographed them. Richard's been coaching her and she's doing really well.

By the time we walked back to the car park, the sun came out. Yeah thanks, Sun. We'd kind of just about finished with today. You big flaming ball of hiding fire.

Back home I discovered my runner beans are getting big enough to eat, so picked a few and made a hearty garden vegetable pasta, and Richard went to the pub for a while.