Frankfurt, here we come....

Yesterday we had a crafty day out. After the catastrophical past week it was lovely to have a real fun girls day out! The store was well filled with stash and bargain hunters, but only women . expcept for one man who was at the stamp-sale cash desk, working with an inner peace which almost sent me to sleep and the tempo of a foot-weary snail. Crafting really seems to be a girl thing. Craft stores usually have those ugly little plastic baskets in horrible colours. OK, good enough for a few stamps or some embellishments. But - I'd better say this quietly- they are all magically prepared!! They are able to force things to jump from the shelves into your basket, and they just refuse to go out again. The spell only gets removed when you get to the cash desk and the assistant passes her magic wand over them. This causes red lights to appear in her little machine, and before you can say Mary Poppins, you're are being hypnotised to pay a lot of money and then take your pretty little goody bag back home with you. And I know from my own experience and from confidential discussions with other scrappers - this basket-springing-scam is being practised all over the world, even on the Internet! Actually, it's even worse there, as these shopping trips always take place in the middle of the night, where we get manipulated by crafty elves to get up and start buying. And 2 days later, when the parcel comes, we have no idea what's in it, so it's always a lovely surprise!

After we had spent all our money for the coming month in that lovely shop we moved on to more basic things, like tanking the car and then tanking ourselves at McDonalds. Don't much like McD, but they have got better over the years, and it was a nice place to sit and eat. And I mean, McD were not responsible for the screaming kids who came in from time to time. But I still don't understand why some Mums change their children's nappies on the table instead of using the bathroom, where there was a baby corner just for that purpose.

My friend B who drove us to Frankfurt in her lovely dark red sports car had arranged a meeting with one of her scrappy friends there, so we had a nice natter together. Regine makes lovely little BIA and other albums, and brought us each a pretty diskette album, lovely idea and a wonderful surprise, as I had never met her before. She was a very friendly and chatty scrapper, it was nice to meet her.

At abou 5 p.m. we started off on the journey home, its about 270 kilometers each way. The weather was gorgeous, so the car stayed open, and we were able to race topless over the motorway on the way home.I love it when the wind blows round my ears and you can see the clouds scudding by, when the car brumms under my backside and we drive really fast, it's the teenage dream re-lived. B is a very good driver, I would drive to the end of the world and back with her.

Well, we didn't need to go soooooooooooo far yesterday. We made a stop on the way back in Bad Honnef, a very pretty little town on the romantic part of the Rhine where the castles are high on the mountains and not far from the famous "Loreley Cliff", made immortal for ever by the lovely verses of Heinrich Heine

"Ich

weiss nicht was soll es bedeuten..."

But for us both it was a little trip down *memory lane* as both lived there at different times in the past, and as my favourite Café (Nottembom) was still open, we sat outside in the mild evening air and drank an iced coffee to get strength for the last lap of the journey back to Düsseldorf, where the great Poet Heinrich Heine was born. And back home I spent a lovely evening sorting my memories and stash . Thanks for a lovely day out, B!