Hello! Bonjour! Hallo! and Hallo again!

We're back!

And didn't the grass get long while we were away!

After realising that in fact there wasn't actually room for all those monkeys plus two adults and two teenagers in one vehicle, we decided that we'd better take the kids instead of the chimps on holiday with us. (Tough choice).

So it was decided that only one monkey could come with us on our European tour and a straw poll was taken to see who the lucky (or possibly unlucky?) monkey would be. 007 drew the short straw.

While we were away I took 634 photos, but don't worry, not all of them have a knitted monkey in, so I won't bother sharing (all) of them with you, dear monkey-made-of-knit lovers.

Here, and over the next few days is 007's holiday ......

WTF Friday! ..... Whoa, those Floods Friday!

You may or may not know that quite a lot of the UK suffered from terrible flash floods a week ago last Friday. Thousands of homes were flooded and the road networks came to a standstill. We were sat in that standstill for quite some time.

It took us 3 hours to get to Swindon (40 miles away) and 6 hours to get across to Kent. Bladders and tempers were quite strained during that time. Luckily RGH had pre-booked us into a local hostelry for the night, ready for an early morning channel tunnel crossing the next morning.

And even luckier, we arrived in time for last orders.

007 had his customary pint of lager, bacon flavour fries and Appletise chaser. Nice.

Not so luckily, in said hostelry there happened to be a fruit machine. As a teen, RGH had a teeny tiny gambling habit. I say teeny tiny because it was short lived, and it really only involved him selling an award his brother had won to finance his addiction. Oh, and there was that time his mother gave him money for new shoes and bus fare and he accidentally spent the fund on something other than shoes and bus fare and had to walk the 12 miles home.

So since then, it's been better if he avoids the temptation of gaming machines.

Oh-oh.

Worse was when he got the RBD's involved .....

But I really had to draw the line when he enticed 007 to the dark side .....





And instead I suggested a nice game of darts ......



Although 007 didn't seem to enjoy it that much and went off to bed in a huff .....





..... where he bagsied the best bed. He proceeded to sleep like a baby but it was only later, when he woke up in a shock, to realise that the reason he'd been sleeping so soundly was this .....

..... he was being spooned by No. 1 (RDB1 had smuggled him into her bag). Now that would never happen to Daniel Craig, I'm sure! (Although ..... if he ever has trouble sleeping, I'd volunteer to spoon him, if that would help!)

Anyway, bright and early next morning we were off, on a little European Bongo jaunt .....

Tune in the same time tomorrow for the next exciting instalment of 007 on the Continent.

Au revoir!