Ahhhhhhhh

 It's been a bit busy and there's an awful lot of plate-spinning happening.

When we came to head up to Bristol the trip felt a little bit daunting - and we were also taking more luggage than usual (including a negative scanner...because, you know...).

As it was, it was as smooth a trip - we jumped on a bus at the end of the road, our train was already waiting for us at the station, the tube across London was painless and we only had 10 minutes or so to wait at Paddington.  Once we walk through the door of the flat and ascertain that there had been no obvious disasters in our absence, we can start to relax.

The utter delight of settling into the Barley Mow was unparallelled.  We observed that we don't really like pubs which are devoid of customers but the BM is a bit of an outlier in that, even if the pub interior is  largely empty, you know that there will be loads of people sitting outside so people are always coming and going.  We sit in peace inside, whilst knowing we're not actually alone in the place.

There wasn't an enormous range of cask we wanted to drink but it was Monday (we don't normally travel up on a Monday - it was a bit disorienting) we had lovely beer, and we relaxed.

Lots of work to do this week, but the knowledge of local beer availability makes it all a bit better.  Funding bid, anyone?