Farewells ...

Our first farewell was to the remainder of our worldly possessions ...

Yesterday we hired a van from the wonderful people at Enterprise.  We filled it full to the brim with the final bits and pieces from the house plus some of the stuff that recently arrived from Sydney.

We then drove it all down to my mother's in Milton Keynes, where she is kindly storing some of it and also using some of it.  (We have donated our nice new TV plus the bedroom furniture to her).

My elder brother was visiting mother when we arrived at MK, so that was handy as he gave us a hand to unload!  I then took mother's old bedroom furniture to the MK tip, with my nephew, who also turned up with my Sister!  

A little later in the afternoon my favourite niece and her boyfriend popped in for a visit, along with their dog!

It was a partial family get together, which we finished up by having a Chinese takeaway!

It was a very early start this morning as we had to get the van back by 10.45 am ... we are normally just about up by then!  Consequently, the alarm went off at 5 am and we left MK at 6 am.

Funny to see a milk float doing the rounds ...

The dogs are fantastic travellers in any mode of transport and soon assumed their favourite position.....sleeping!

We had a pretty good run up the M1 and M6 ...

There was very heavy traffic around the Birmingham area, but luckily going in the opposite direction!

It was nice to get back to the slower pace of Bollington ...

We then picked up our mattress and sofa bed and donated one to charity and one to Elaine's brother, Trevor.

We made it back to Enterprise with 10 mins to spare!

In the early afternoon we dropped Bombo off to the dog groomers for a much overdue haircut.

We had to wait three hours for him to be done so we spent the rest of the afternoon sitting in Elaine's brother Trev's garden!  For the first time in just over six months there was some serious heat in the sun - the last time we felt some heat was at the end of November in Spain!!  If we hadn't have gone to Spain last year it would have been 8 months since some decent warm weather ... that is a seriously long time!  You can certainly see why the poms go mental when the sun comes out!

We picked up Bombo later in the arvo.  He looked fantastic ...

The other farewell was a lot sadder.  The last of our cats, Jaffa succumbed to old age -  he was probably pretty close to twenty years old.  (He came to us as a second hand stray, so we have no idea of his actual age, just guesswork).

He had gone downhill very rapidly over the last couple of days and yesterday afternoon Trevor took him to the vet, who put him to sleep.

Trevor has been kindly caring for Jaffa for the last 15 months.  The reason for this was that Jaffa was a very vocal cat.  When we lived in Oz and on the narrowboat it wasn't a problem, but in the confines of a motorhome it was too much and Trevor very kindly took him on for us, giving him a very loving and comfortable home.

Following I have put some pics on of the dear old Jaffa, all taken back at our old house in Sydney in 2005 ...

Who are you looking at?

All three of the boys on the driveway, Geoffrey, William and Jaffa.

I will sleep anywhere!

I will sleep in the rabbit hutch!

Handsome (agile) boy.

Who said cats scare away the birds.

He was too lazy to chase them!

RIP Jaffa - back with your brothers in cat heaven xxxx