Patrick, Pavlina, Sebastian, Isabella

At the beginning of July our friends from Prague came for a visit. Assiduous readers will recognise them from our recent trip there in May. Anyway, they were expecting a relaxed, hot and sunny week at the beach. Unfortunately, they arrived in a storm and left in sunshine - the time in between intermittently rainy, windy, cold, warm, sunny, not windy. Some of the northwest of the country was seriously flooded, so our changeable outlook was satisfactory in comparison.

We did, however, manage to exploit the sunny and warm moments for all it was worth and got good use of our "garden" with two barbeques - a burgers and hot dogs affair on July 4th, for Patrick's benefit, and another at the weekend. Here are Pavlina and Misha enjoying the chance to gabble away in Czech. I managed to remember more than I thought and have promised to keep it up.

Our friends from Ipswich, Charlotte and Nick, came up for the evening. Charlotte and I met at Leicester Poly in the late 80s and have managed to stay in touch and friends ever since, in spite of me moving abroad and her moving down south. Her mum relocating to Ipswich in the 90s enabled us to reunite most Christmasses. Here she is devouring some potato salad. Apart from that we enjoyed grilled chicken, gorgonzola and walnut stuffed mushrooms, veggie hot-dogs, burgers and salad.

Here's Nick. He came with a raincoat and left without one. We suspect Patrick and the gang took it back to Prague with them by mistake. I am on the trail.

Gregor and Sebi having a cosy little chat. Actually, the kids got on really well despite the language barriers. After an initial territorial jostle everyone understood where they were and what they liked. Gregor liked everything Sebi did, Sebi liked the stairs, they both loved the beach and Isabella developed a soft spot for Alastair. Alastair was his usual laid back self, who didn't mind anything as long as he got his regular "row, row, row the boat" song from whoever was around. Patrick renamed him the little Buddha.

Isabella showing Alastair her latest dance moves. This room is usually a guest room, but instead the Carroll family were upstairs (in the boys' rooms) and Gregor and Alastair in cots here. It worked pretty well and Gregor has finally grown the length of the travel cot. This week we are making a grand purchase of a proper bed for Alastair, since he can really walk now.