I put this together and thought it was funny – you might disagree:

We’ve been as diligent as we can keeping our diary up to date, but what about the days, I hear you ask, that are ‘normal’? For example, take today. It’s raining, which means we’re not on the beach, sunbathing or taking the boat out. Usually, we have midnight feasts (but continuously through the day) grazing through the fridge and stores, and catch up with reading, writing and bank reconciliations. We got used to doing this on our travels through France, Spain and Italy where we have experienced lock down. However, we are in Croatia, nearby Split in a tiny place called Sobrec and the shops are open!

A couple of miles away is the City Centre Shopping Mall. Not having been ‘stuff’ shopping for a while we compiled a list. Replacement windscreen wipers, slippers, flat sun lounger, the usual stuff as we no longer have Amazon – Croatia is without.

As you read this I will point out that whenever you enter a car park you never think of any height restrictions because you all drive normal cars. Ours is a Defender and height with roof rack, storage box and inflatable boat paddles has a total height of 2.3m. Most car parks have a height limit of 2m or 2.2m. Imagine our delight reaching the covered car park, when it’s raining, to find the height is more than enough for us and, not only that, we can park reasonably close to one of the entrances to the Malls.

The Mall is HUGE, loads of shops, HUGE shops and each one almost empty. We’ve not been shopping for ages, over 2,000 miles away from home and it felt like going to any shopping centre in the UK. Oh, I’m yearning for local shops and bargains. I wouldn’t say we were carrying large sacks of cash around with us, but were custodians of several dusty credit cards looking forward to being polished and shone within an inch of their magnetic strips by appreciative use in multiple terminals.

I won’t tell you what we bought, uninspiring, unspectacular and definitely unexciting, but it was good to have a day out – I say a day – it was more like a couple of hours through the three floors if you include a takeaway from KFC.