The weekend

What a brilliant weekend. We are absolutely exhausted. It started with dinner in our local with Mr M's best mate, Mr H, his wife and Mr H's folks who swung via ours for a Hampton Court debrief. Bless them - the heavens had opened whilst they were there and so all were decked out in appropriate wellies and waterproofs.

On Saturday we didn't quite wake up at the crack of crows as intended, but made a darn good stab at it and were on the road by 7:30. We had a lovely run down, nipping through lovely little villages and towns like Midhurst, Singleton and Cocking. Oo-er! Our destination? Goodwood Festival of Speed. Like bees to a honeypot, or rather petrolheads to a petrol can...? Mr M got tickets for his b'day from my folks and it was fantastic. You get to walk around the paddocks and get really close to the cars and teams. Watching the F1 cars do the hill climb was deafening and the new Airbus did a fly-by which was pretty surreal. Didn't spot that many celebs, other than Fifth Gear filming around the supercars and Bond car exhibition. All in all, rather a classy affair - organic burgers and lager - so much better than the Grand Prix!

After a good night's sleep, we were ready to face the crowds at Hampton Court. We hopped on the £1 ferry to cross the river from Harts Boatyard and marched to the Palace. Once we were in, it was Mr M's turn to be in seventh heaven for the second time in 48 hours. Having slow shuffled our way around the show gardens and signed Mr M up for an RHS membership, we made our way to the veg exhibition and stumbled across the Franchi seed stand. I love those guys. Their packaging is so wonderfully retro. I've only ever found them in Borough Market. We picked up two lots of lettuce, yellow beans and borlotti beans. We then made our way to the Long Water to see the Thai floating market.

By that point we were getting rather hot and a little snippy - so we hurried to the beer and sausage stand and sat by the water devouring lunch and waiting for our feet to stop throbbing. We pottered around the rest of the flower show - naturally taking in the food tent and stocking up on some scrummy wine from here and oodles of sausages from here. And then we decided it really was time to go - everyone was starting to get a little twitchy and pointy elbows were being sharpened for the big plant sale was about to begin. So as we made our way out, dodging said elbows and those awful trolleys that people insist on buying, we were rather decadent and put an order in for the most amazing bench ever. We've been looking for one for a while and saw this demonstrated earlier in the day. Having ummed and ahhed about it all day, we went for it. It was discounted - so that helped - and is being delivered in the next couple of weeks. Can't wait! The day ended with us getting the £1 ferry back to The Albany and trudging our sorry little selves back to the flat. We had enough time to cool down, before our friends popped round for dinner. Bangers and mash - naturally!