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The wedding of the year!

July, for us, started with the long-awaited wedding of the year for the Dean family. Our nephew, George was due to marry his fiancee ( now wife ) Amy on Sunday, July 11th, 2021.

Their wedding has been one of the many caught up in the ever-changing Covid19 situation. The wedding had originally been booked for July 2020 but unfortunately, Covid restrictions meant it had to be postponed for a year.

The year must have been so stressful for them. Rules and regulations about what was, and what was not allowed regarding weddings seemed to be changing weekly. Even with a very short time before the new date, everyone was still checking the latest updates with bated breath. How many guests would be allowed to attend? Would it be allowed to go ahead at all? Do I get my wedding/funeral suit cleaned?

Thankfully, with just a few days to spare, the rules were relaxed. With some minor tweaks to the numbers, the wedding could eventually go ahead.

What else could possibly upset the wedding plans?

As the Euro 2020 football was progressing it was starting to look like there was a chance of England making it all the way to the final.

Then it happened. England beat Denmark in the semi-final. They were now in the final, the first time England has been in a major football cup final in 55 years – on Sunday, July 11th, 2021. The day of the wedding!

There was a real concern that the football would overshadow the wedding but in the end, I think it made it even more of a day to remember. There was definitely an air of football excitement that infiltrated the conversations of the day. As you can imagine, the game was mentioned on more than one occasion during the speeches! At 8 pm all proceedings stopped to watch the match on a big screen. I’m sure you all know the result so I won’t remind you and I admit, it would have been the icing on the wedding cake had England won. Even so, it turned out to be a wedding date no one that attended will ever forget.

The journey to Chiswick

The day after the wedding, the 12th July, we were due to travel to our third housesit in Chiswick, London. The family was not due to go on holiday until the 13th. However, they asked if we could arrive a day early as they were leaving very early in the morning. This meant that we would have plenty of time to meet the family and their pets before they left.

In true Dean/Angeloudis style this was not to be the case!

We had left Birmingham New Street train station in good time on a direct train to Euston. We expected our arrival time to be around 6 pm. An hour into the journey the train stopped in Northampton station. We had waited for about 15 minutes with no movement when there was an announcement.

“Ladies and gentlemen – this train is terminating here, please alight and wait for further announcements”

It turned out that unbeknown to us there had been severe rainfall in London. This had caused flooding on the tracks. All trains into London were now cancelled until further notice!

What to do now!

We all ‘alighted’ as instructed, and awaited further instructions. Waited, and waited. After about an hour an announcement came –

“ladies and gentlemen, There is no news, nobody knows anything, keep waiting”

That might not be exactly what was said word for word, but you get the gist.

Another hour passed. We had found a bench and had settled ourselves down but were conscious that we were now likely to be very late arriving in Chiswick and knew that the family would be wanting to get to bed. We decided to call them with an update. They were very understanding and we agreed to give it another hour. If there was no news by then we would book ourselves into a hotel for the night. The homeowner agreed to leave a key for us at the next-door neighbours in case we didn’t make it until the following day.

The train station was in chaos with a couple of hundred people hanging around not knowing what to do. By now well over three hours had passed, we had all but given up hope of leaving Northhampton that evening so we started to discuss finding a hotel for the night. Suddenly, without any warning, everyone started to move at the same time. Everyone started to grab their belongings and were running to the exit. Literally, just in time, a line of coaches started to pull up outside to enable us to continue our journey. It was a mad rush as there seemed to be more people than seats but we managed to nab a seat. Four hours late but, unexpectedly and miraculously we were back to plan ‘A’.

The rain really had been torrential. As we were heading to Euston on the coach we were passing areas where cars were halfway up their windscreens in water. It was hard to believe that when we left Birmingham a few hours earlier the sun had been shining.

Anyway, the main thing was that we were back on track. The coach dropped us at Euston and we immediately went to check out the underground station situation.

The line we needed had also flooded so all services were cancelled here too! This journey had turned into quite a challenge. Eventually, after quite a bit of umming and aaring we ended up taking a very long-winded way to get to the tube station we needed. Finally, we battled through the rain to the house – arriving looking like drowned rats close to 1 am.

The homeowner was really kind and understanding ( although she looked really tired!). She welcomed us in and gave us a quick tour of the house before heading to bed to catch a couple of hours sleep before heading off to the airport.

Chiswick – Housesit number 3

This was our third housesit and after our previous bad experience, we were a little apprehensive. However, it turned out to be a great sit. In our care was a lovely family home in Chiswick, and two beautiful British Shorthair cats, Floyd and Diggory

There was nothing not to like about this sit. The house was clean and spacious with a decent-sized garden. The area of Chiswick is really nice. Quiet and leafy with a community village feel to it. The high street has lots of little independent shops cafes and bars and there is lots of green space within easy walking distance.

Even the weather was on our side. Considering the weather was so bad on our arrival, the following day the sun came out and treated us to a mini-heatwave for the rest of the duration of our stay

The cats are brothers. Really independent with a cat flap to let themselves in and out during the day then a clink of their feed bowls easily brought then scuttling home to spend the night indoors.

They were really friendly, but definitely not lap cats and much preferred to relax in their own chairs. Diggory is the confident one of the two. Floyd is much shyer. For cats, both had a strange affection for water. They loved playing around the hose pipe when we were watering the garden and we would often find them sitting in the bath or sink!

Unfortunately, Covid thwarted our attempt to visit Kew Gardens. It was only a 30-minute walk from our housesit. However, on the day we went it was full. There were no queues but due to covid many attractions still have reduced capacity This meant they were not accepting any more visitors for the day. This was disappointing as we were so near but we hope to be in the area again sometime in the future so a visit is back on our ‘to-do list for another time.

The two weeks we spent in Chiswick flew by. Our confidence in House and Pet sitting was renewed, and it was soon time to pack our bags and head to our next sit.

Number 4…

When we started to plan our house sits, to keep the travelling days to a minimum, we were only going to do those we could find for a time period of around a month or so. However, as new sitters, we also wanted/needed to get a few reviews quickly in order to give future householders confidence in us. For this reason, we accepted a short housesit for number 4.

This housesit was in Hayes, Kent and our booking here was for one week only. The journey to Hayes is only about an hour from Chiswick and it neatly filled a gap that we had before starting our 6th housesit that we already had confirmed.

We needed to arrive in Hayes a day before our housesit in Chiswick ended so I went on ahead to meet the family and get settled in. Karyo then came to join me on the following day.

This worked really well and is a system we are likely to try to adopt in the future. It saves us money and more importantly the hassle of having to find accommodation for odd days. I find the travelling days stressful and, in my book, the fewer we have, the better.

Hayes – Housesit number 4

Unusually, I arrived without incident and in good time. This time the homeowners needed sitters as they were taking their grandchildren on a mini cruise for a birthday treat.

Our pets to care for on this occasion were two Burmese cats – Anya and Lilly. At 16 and 13 years old they were both old ladies but a pleasure to get to know. Anya needed medication to help with a liver condition and also her arthritis. This was a new experience for us. We gave the medicine orally in a syringe but she seemed to like the taste and so was a very good patient.

Anya seemed very frail She spent most of her time sleeping, occasionally waking to waddle over to her food bowl, it was hard not to feel sorry for her. Lily, however, did not show any of her 13 years and was still very kitten-like. Running, playing and chasing through every waking hour.

It was obvious that they loved each other very much and it was really cute to see the way they slept, curled around each other.

A week flies by – we were in Hayes for such a short time that we did not really get time to see anything of the area. We had enjoyed spending time with Anya and Lily but were hardly settled in when it was time to move on again.

Where next?

As I write this I am on the train heading to Watford. Again, Karyo is going to join me tomorrow. Well, when I say heading, I should say sitting stationary.

I don’t bloody believe it! It is a windy day and a tree has only gone and fallen on the line! Luckily, as before, the homeowner is not leaving until tomorrow so I am not panicking – yet

I have sat here for an hour already so will let you know next time if I ever manage to get there on time – wish me luck!