When August Bank Holiday and Perfect Meet

It doesn't get much better than yesterday, peeps!

UK bank holidays are known to be wet.   But yesterday we were blessed with a Bank Holiday Monday which recorded the hottest temperature for a bank holiday since 1962!  Oh what a good time I must have had with my family back in '62, probably playing on the beach, frolicking in the refreshing sea.

And know what?  That's what I did on our hot August Bank Holiday Monday, 2017!

OK, this may seem a bit groundhog day following on from the previous post, but what can I say?
I went to the beach.  This is a beach outfit.

Yes, you guys didn't baulk when I showed you my recent Scruffy Pout look.

So I figured you could take more.

But this time with white shorts.  A subtle difference.

What do you wear for the beach? I'd love to hear.

I tried the camo hat trick, for I was sans maquilliage.

But you know, I figure you can handle scruff and you can handle barefaced me by now too.  It was a beach day, after all, so a bare face is de rigueur for sea swimming.

OK, maybe sunglasses are needed for the general public.

Besides, they make me feel a bit Jackie O!

I couldn't resist showing you this wall.

"We've" been working on this over the weekend.  This wall was piled high and wide with rampant osteospermum and ivy.  That's now in a 1 ton bag and we have reclaimed about 4-5 feet of drive!

Of course, we now have to decide what to replant with, something that doesn't go completely crazy.  But plenty time to think about that on cold winter nights, eh.  Not to deliberate over on a precious hot Bank Holiday Monday.

Now what did I tell you in Twilight-Picnic recently?  In that post I showed you that we had the beach to ourselves, almost.  Well, this is what the same beach is like at high tide.  We Guerns are suckers for the beach at high tide.

It was difficult to find spaces to park cars near this beach on such a busy day.  One poor lady had parked at a very precarious angle, half the car in a ditch.   Half an hour later, she was walking along the beach, asking each group if they owned the Suzuki parked next to her, which had to be moved for the recovery truck to be able to haul her out of the ditch.  Poor lady, there were an awful lot of people on the beach that she needed to ask ...

Then news quickly spread around the beach that the recovery truck had ripped the bumper off a nearby new mini whilst on the job.  

Not a good day!

But disasters apart, we had an absolutely fantastic day on the beach.

We met up with my lovely little family and friends of theirs with their children, whom we know.

We spent hours in the sea with the kiddies, sometimes swimming, sometimes tugging or swim-pushing them in an inflatable dinghy.  It was so so sooooooooo enjoyable.

After playing around like a born-again child, then sitting around chatting with the adults, I washed the sand off and went home.  Totally happy with my lot.

Then at teatime we met with friends at one of the beach restaurants down the road.

It was still hot!  All I could handle was a layer of loose linen.

Keeping the middle nice and cool.

Do you opt for loose shapes when the weather gets hot?

This yellow floral dress from Next was just perfect for the hot walk down to the coast.



Flatties, of course, I've already done the blisters thing for this summer, thank you.

But believe me, once we met with our friends at the restaurant, despite sitting by an open window and fanning myself for ages with a menu, I could not cool down.

Readers tell me of their 110F temperatures.  I do not know how they cope.  Our temp was a lesser 29c and I was H.O.T.!

Even horses were cooling down in the sea!  

Then as I sipped on a cooling Sauvignon

and fanned myself with a reservation slip, the menu fan no longer to hand,

I watched the hot sun set.  Well done, Sun, you did us proud on a beautiful bank holiday!

Then later, back home, we had coffee in the garden with our friends, garden lights a-twinklin' and candle flames a-flickerin'.

Living on an island, there is usually a little flutter of night breeze, at the very least.  But last night was so still so coffee al fresco rounded off perfectly a pretty darn perfect August Bank Holiday.

If you are in the UK, I hope you had a fantastic bank holiday too.  Didn't we luck out with the weather this year!

I hope all readers enjoyed their weekends, wherever they spent them, and I hope the week ahead brings you joy.

And if you are in Texas right now, I hope that you are keeping safe and dry.  My thoughts are with you all.

 A la perchoine.