Busy week!

Denise has finally sold the Lotus, which was sad. It was wierd seeing someone else climbing in and driving it away. It was really very much Denise's car. It suited her personality ... and her size! On the positive front, her brother Dave, who's birthday it was this week, gave up his Saturday to drive his and Sharon's Mazda RX-8 from down in Surrey to Manchester, and Denise flew down to meet him and drive it back. It's the full-power 231 model, with the sport pack and leather seats added, and is a shade of green so dark it's almost black. Brilliant. She's running the Glasgow half-marathon today, so she's taken the RX-8: at least she can give more than one person a lift in the new car.

We also booked our winter holiday on Friday. This is the replacement for our China trip, which we cancelled because it was going to be too much walking for me. Instead, we're hiring a camper van for a month in New Zealand. We're hiring a bigger van this time, because we're going to be in the van for longer than on our previous holidays, and will probably appreciate the extra room and storage space. On our Australian holidays, we'd had a long-wheelbase Merc. Sprinter, which wasn't bad at all: it had a nice strong motor, but we had to assemble the bed every night, and pack it away each day if we wanted anywhere to sit in the evenings. We'll be visiting both the North and South islands, crossing from North to South on Christmas eve, and staying in a nice hotel that night and the next.

But the BIG news is that I got a double-drop from the chocolage vending machine at work!