I have to apologise to those of you who read my works. There's been a lot going on recently and I haven't ben producing as much as I would wish to. Partly this is real-life distractions, like the Evil Twin grand-daughters (tm), household matters, a short-notice holiday (vacation) in Cornwall and, of course, it is just too hot!

We arrived back yesterday from a week's stay which overlapped with that of my son and family. The forecast got it wrong and we basically fried for a week. Luckily most of our transport options were air-conditioned as were our hotel rooms, so we survived reasonably intact. We stayed four days in Camborne followed by three in Liskeard. We had a good time and travelled widely.

One thing I was pleasantly surprised with was the costs involved. Cornwall obviously tries to make things easier for visitors and both car parking and train fares were ridiculously cheap. Example: we went on the Liskeard-Looe line for a ride and parked at the station: £3.00 all day before 10:00, £1.60 after 10:00. Parking in Liskeard itself was ~50p/hour before 16:00 and free afterwards. Camborne and Redruth were about the same. In Bodmin, there were machines in the car parks but the parking was free anyway.

Sample train fares, with Senior Railcard: Liskeard-Looe return, £2.90; Liskeard-St. Austell return (for Eden Project), £4.55; Camborne-St. Ives return, £3.25.

We also used the buses but as we have Senior Citizen passes they cost us (directly) nothing. The only thing was the ticket machines all rejected them as they were out-of-county, but the drivers are used to that for obvious reasons.

The Eden Project was hideously expensive (£25 each) and involved walking a long way just to get from the shuttle bus stop to the entrance, not fun in +32C heat. Car parks are even further away. Inside, the tropical domes were hot and steamy but barely different from outside. The Mediterranean dome was supposed to be at ~25C but was about 30-ish when we were there. I guess they didn't factor in global warming when they designed them...

Arriving back home yesterday afternoon, the temperature in my little office cum Mission Control was 35C, which doesn't do the computers any good. I'd switched some off before we went but the others have just about survived the experience. What this means is that, should this weather continue, I'll only be able to get on-line in the mornings and that means getting everything done then, not just writing.

Things to do: I need new glasses, there's work to do on the house and an implant fell out while we were away. Fortunately the heat has stopped the grass growing for a while but everything else still needs doing, and it is difficult when it is so hot. Oh, and we have decided that we need air-conditioning, but right now I doubt there's any spare units left in the country...

Milsy #22 is about half finished and I have some other ideas slowly being fleshed out. I don't really like working on more than one thing at a time, for fear of getting myself confused, but I'll do it when I have to. If I didn't put down something then those other ideas might fade in time. It just adds up to more distractions when I should be finishing what I started. Fortunately, my muse hasn't yet deserted me, so that's something of a relief.

Penny

Edit: The rail prices quoted above were for off-peak day returns. I'm not daft enough to pay full price.