Date Night

Last night Paul came over and we had a lovely dinner with the girls. We did a deal with them - we would walk the dog if they did the dishes. Amazingly, they agreed, and we left them slaving away in the hot kitchen while we went out into the cool evening air with Benson-the-enthusiastic-walkies-dog. After half an hour of striding up hill and down dale, we happened upon a.. skip. Oh, the excitement. Builder's skips are fun to explore, but this one was even better. It looked like someone had been cleaning out the house their elderly parents had lived in for approximately fifty years and never thrown a thing away. I think it finally got to the point in the clean-out when the children finally caved in exhaustion and called in the skip. So many treasures. And yet, we were strong. We left many treasures for others who may happen along, but happily relieved the skip-removers of some of their burdens. Luckily we found a mop bucket in which to pile the small treasures, and Paul bravely volunteered to carry the furniture.

I will spare you the finer details (one of those sprinklers that goes chick-chick-chick....whirrrrr in a circle) but cut right to the two most wondrous items. First, up above, a vintage short-wave radio that worked immediately we changed the batteries. It only needs to have a new aerial attached (Paul working on that as we speak) for us to be able to use the short wave to get Radio Minsk. As it is, it only works on AM radio, so everything it plays also sounds vintage. This is going to be an excellent addition to our picnic expeditions, but the next treasure we found will make them even more marvellous.

We found a fabulous fold-up picnic table with folding stools, circa 1967 at a guess..

To pop it in the boot of the car for picnicking purposes you fold the stools and the table together which turns it into a kind of carry case, like a mini ping-pong table.

Made in Sweden.

Fits perfectly behind the study door, ready for a quick getaway.

On the way home we stopped for a minute outside the Indian restaurant so that Paul could shake some feeling back into his arms (turns out the Swedish designed for durability rather than featherlight weightlessness back in the day). Inside the restaurant there were lots of couples having lovely meals accompanied, no doubt, by scintillating conversation, but we couldn't imagine that any of them were having half as much fun as we were having, walking the dog in the twilight and rummaging through a skip. This is how you know you've met the perfect man, when you agree that dumpster diving turns a pleasant evening into a great night out...