Zits

Its this country! I am obviously allergic to something in the UK. I've been back 36 hours and I have a spot....

Ma heid

Our last weekend in Alexandria was one of hangovers and shoes........

We moved out of Rudy and Carol's and into our new digs on Friday as they were heading off for the weekend. After 7 hours in the office we packed it up, locked it up and headed off with our bags and cases in search of yet another bed!

We then took a wander down to King Street with a camera to capture a few quintessential Old Town views. Of course, whilst we were at King St we simply HAD to have a Pops Ice Cream and take it down to the Marina. It was just like the old days....us stuffing our faces with some of the best ice cream ever, and the water glasses man playing away in the background. Ahh...I'm gonna make a sentimental journey....

The sentimental journey continued with a trip to my favourite Old Town shop. Namely the Nine West Outlet store. A weeny shop packed floor to ceiling with SHOES!!!! And not only that - they were buy one pair, get one pair half off. So I did!

Our evening was spent recreating our old Friday night out. O'Connells for drinks, sitting outside on the patio at a Thai restaurant for dinner knocking back cocktails, O'Connells for another drink, then Two Nineteen (the weekend office) for more drinks and listen to the band. We made a startling discovery after being ripped off for $13 a glass of PG. Their sparking wine is the cheapest glass on the menu! It was pleasant drinking and a much more reasonable $7. So I had two....

All this boozing meant that the next morning was a little slow..! We headed to Chadwicks for Eggs Benedict and OJ before heading off to Seven Corners. Stephen went for a wander round the guitar shop and I headed to the shoe warehouse. What heaven this place is. As far as the eye can see are boxes of shoes....enough to make me drool! It really was like letting a kid loose in a candy store! All these shoes, all designer, and all reduced..... I really, really had to restrain myself and only bought four pairs. I had to remind myself that there wasn't a 40ft container to bring them home and I'd have to fit the six pairs I'd bought into a case somehow!!

Talk about doing retail therapy! We also went to Tysons Mall as well as Best Buy and Target. We went to Target because we'd figured by this time we'd need another case! We weren't wrong!!

After a late dinner in the Warehouse (yummy steak and crab cakes), we bumped into Morag and Simon along with a couple of their friends and ended up in O'Connells until about 1am. We were both feeling very sorry for ourselves on Sunday morning that's for sure!!! We headed off to the nearby Starbucks for a life-saving coffee and muffin only to find that it was queued about 20 deep with fun-runners. ARGH! Didn't they understand that I NEEDED COFFEE NOW!!!!

Packing with a hangover isn't too much fun. All that bending over when your head is pounding is not clever! At first I thought the new jumbo bag was overkill, then I realised that actually we were actually going to need every available crumb of space. Ooops....

We met with Morag, Simon and the girls for lunch in Southsides. It was burgers and cokes all round!! We all really needed the fat and the sugar! Feeling a bit more alive, but sad to be departing we headed to Dulles for the flight.

I love Virgin! We got an upgrade to Upper on the flight back. What a difference it makes when you have a fully flat bed and a little duvet and some lovely lady wakes you with an orange juice and breakfast in bed. It really is the only way to travel...shame we can't afford to book it!!

Monday was a hard day for me. Stephen headed into work and I got to work on the laundry. I was fine when I was doing something, but as soon as I sat down I was asleep a couple of seconds later!! I opened one case to find that that it had a note saying it was opened and searched. Now - fair enough - they're keeping us safe and I have no issues with that...but why they hell can't they repack it as opposed to scrumpling everything up into a ball and stuffing it back into the case? Worse than that, they had opened up my two carefully wrapped (suspect) packages and not wrapped them again. One was a carved in the round wooded Colonial Pineapple and the other was two plastic bottles of grape jelly. I'd carefully wrapped these in individual plastic bags, then put both bags inside another plastic bag in case they got crushed and went splat all over the case contents. Only one bottle was still in the double bag configuration. The other was loose in the case. I'd have been livid if that had burst all over my clothes!! Thankfully for my blood pressure an dry cleaning bill, all items made it intact.

Photos

Photos will be forthcoming. But probably not until we get back to the UK as we've literally not had a minute to look at them, never mind sort them, resize them and post them.

As usual we've taken several thousand, so don't go asking to see the holiday snaps until we've sorted through them - you might regret it!!!

But, as you're probably missing our smiling faces - here we are in our temporary office.

Wednesday & Thursday - Keep Calm and Carry On

Back into the office. I swear we've barely seen daylight this week! Its an inside office with no windows so we could be anywhere. Stephen has been busy writing bids and I've been getting on with my job as usual. There have been a few frustrations - like having to share the laptop with Stephen, not having the information I have on my HD at home, and working off the BB in between times which is giving me BB thumb, but on the whole its been business as usual. We both spoke with our bosses on Wednesday (we have been in constant email contact). Tom was very cool about the situation. As long as we were okay and able to work he said that a flight in a weeks time would be fine. Stephen's boss was cool, but really wants him back in the UK. We had to explain about the flight situation....basically us stranded folks are being slotted onto any available seats. There are no rescue flights coming to get us home!!

We phoned Virgin again to see if there was any improvement to be had since the air space had opened up and after quite a bit of holding whilst they checked, they were able to give us flights on Sunday. Moving us up 3 days was great news!

I had my weekly conference call this morning. We had to laugh when I was explaining that we had a flight on Sunday, it was basically business as usual, and that we had adopted "Keep Calm and Carry On" as our motto. Sarah chipped in with "I'm not sure Tom's keeping calm. As I was walking into the office this morning he drove alongside me, rolled down the window and yelled over "Kerry's coming home!" ". Ahh...its good to be missed!!

We went for pizza at Faccia Luna with Morag, Simon and the girls on Wednesday night. Its THE best pizza in Old Town. We had our favourite pizza from there - honed after plenty of practice to Pepperoni and Onion. The girls were pretty quiet at first, but it didn't take long for Stephen to wind them up to the usual fever pitch of excitement!! Its a skill. I'm not sure that he didn't miss his vocation...

Zits go bye bye

In other news... The day after we arrived here my spots cleared up! It was a miracle, a MIRACLE I tells ya!! And despite all the stress of the past week, they've not come back! (I really hope I'm not tempting fate here!)

Zena may no longer have to "turn it up to 11" and electrocute my zits. Boots profits may tumble as I no longer need to buy a myriad of spot treatments. I may no longer have to spend hours at night surfing the web to find more and more outlandish spot-banishment solutions.

Of course, it could be that I'm just allergic to the UK and they'll come back with a vengeance! I think it might be something to do with exposure to sunlight. Is this a good reason to put down on a Green Card application d'ya think?? Reason for application: Your climate makes my zits go away. Hmmmm. It would take an understanding Official to pass that one!!

Tuesday - Into the office

After arriving at the office, I checked BBC online to find my hopes of a quick getaway dashed. No air space was opening up. At this rate our flight on the 28th would be in jeopardy and we'd be returning to the UK sometime in August. If we didn't just apply for our Green Cards of course!

It certainly made me really despondent. There was a glimmer of hope we might get home sooner, then it was snatched away. It turned out to be a changing situation though and thanks to BA brinkmanship I caught the headline that UK air space was open just as we were leaving the office. Thank you to everyone who sent emails and texts to let me know!

I wrote down the precise instructions on the Nats website for directions to the game. When we were nearing the ballpark I realised that we're doing SatNag down in some respects. The Americans must give fundamentally different instructions than the Brits as the ones on the Nats website were equally as likely to send us wrong as SatNag woman was. When we came back she instructed us to go left, then go left when what we were doing was changing lane. Confusingly she also says Go Left when telling you to turn left. Hmmmmm.

The Nats lost. But its always fun to go to the baseball! The Five Guys burger was great. The banter of the beer sellers was great. The beer was great.

Our hosts were flaked out on the sofa when we got home - waiting for the teenage kids (us) to come home maybe? At least with the opening of the air space they won't be forced to adopt us!!

Spent an hour on hold to Virgin before giving up at midnight.

Monday - QQ UK Inc is in business

We got into the office and Stephen got to work doing techy things to the laptop in order to get it working on the UK system. We made a couple of calls to our IT dept, and were surprised to learn that we were the only people who had phoned in to request things like making our mailbox size larger etc. Oh well, I guess we were in a lucky position of being able to do what we did.

We were very hopeful at reports that UK airspace might open up that night, or the following morning. I had a quick look at how we could book a ship back to the UK....or a row boat...probably each coz we have a lot of luggage...! We began to get news of others stranded abroad. Paul B, stuck in Sweden with some colleagues, my sister in Spain getting on HMS Albion the following day, Stephen's brother and family in Turkey, Richard and family in Majorca. But my heart really went out to the one guy Stephen knows who was stuck airside in Kuala Lumpur with a young family and no luggage (it was checked in and he couldn't get it back) who was told he was being re-booked for mid-May. Nightmare stories like that made us realise that we were in the best position we could be. We had lodgings, all our stuff, somewhere to work, lots of friends nearby and we knew our way around what is, after all, a lovely area.

We decided to go to the baseball on Tuesday as the Nats were playing. What a freakin' nightmare to book tickets on the website. Every page was timed, and it you were too slow you lost the tickets. The page that needed all the address and credit card info gave you a whole 3 minutes to complete it!!! On my second attempt (he'd already tried twice) I was yelling at Stephen for a local phone number "NOW. NOW. I need it faster than that...Oh. There we are. We've timed out again!" Honestly, that laptop nearly became a frisbee!! Between us it took 5 attempts to book the goddamn tickets.

After dinner Carol took us on a personal tour of the monuments at night time. Again, it was something we had never done - usually because we'd be bolstering the profits of O'Connells!! What a fantastic thing to do! We were running about with Stephens camera and a tripod getting photos. The only slightly nervous moment for me was when we were briskly walking to the White House and I realised that I was carrying a long narrow object that could easily be mistaken for a gun, towards the residence of the US President with several police cars and sharp shooters nearby!!

Sunday - A pain in the ash

After the adrenalin high of Saturday night, we had the low on Sunday morning. We could barely wake up. Our tiredness wasn't helped by the 4am text message. When will Stephen learn to switch it off at night, and when will people learn that he doesn't!!

We dragged ourselves out of bed and packed, checked out of the hotel, then drove down to Rudy's with all of our stuff. We were refugees with our worldly goods in bags standing on his doorstep. I honestly cannot thank them enough for their kind and generous offer to take us in. There were no hotel rooms to be had in the area. Or at least no affordable ones, and 10 days at $300+ per night was a scary thought...

We then scooted off to meet Rob at his Alexandria office and collect the laptops. This was great. We had a place to work and hopefully something to work on. Things were shaping up!

After that we had to get out to Dulles airport to swap rental cars as it had been significantly cheaper for me to book a new one than to extend the one we already had. I nearly died laughing when I saw what they'd given us. We have a Pimpmobile!!!! Honestly, we drove to the baseball on Tuesday through SE DC (the not so nice bit!) and some brother in the same car pulled alongside, window down and some terrible noise that may have been music blasting out the stereo! I'm just glad we didn't get hit in some mistaken drive-by shooting!! I sooooo wanted to find the Stock, Aitken and Waterman radio station and retaliate for the terrible noise, but then that may have opened up the possibility that we really would have been shot!!

When we were at the airport we took the opportunity to go in and speak to Virgin. The desk was quiet which surprised me - I was expecting a scrum. But I guess they'd let everyone know not to turn up. They were helpful, and also said that people who were informed they were cancelled on Sunday were being booked onto flights in May. That rather put things in perspective!

Saturday - The Sparks are staying in Washington

Its official. The text message came through from Virgin to say our Sunday flight was cancelled. BUGGER! This is not what we wanted to hear I can tell you! Up until we had hope that the volcanic ash cloud would move and our flight would, well, fly... Now we were there with all the other stranded travellers, trying to rebook flights.

We made an emergency dash to Target for toiletries and a pay as you go phone so we didn't rack up huge charges on cell phones or hotel bills. Then after stopping in at friends for 1/2 hour to activate the phone online, and popping to National Harbour for food, we got back to the hotel and into crisis mode. Stephen began the very looooong process of trying to get thorough to Virgin and I began to assess which clothing needed to be washed to get us through another couple of days. Thankfully I made the "wash all knickers and socks" decision, as when I came back from the guest laundry room he had finally got through (after about 3 hours) and was saying out loud words I didn't want to hear: "So you are telling me that the earliest flight we can get on is Wednesday 28th April?". WHAT!?! I had expected a few days delay and they were telling us that we were going to be stuck here for 10 days. TEN DAYS!!!! That was longer than our holiday had been!

At that point I went into turbo drive! I booked another hire car, emailed Rob to see if there were laptops we could use...everything that was going to get us working and mobile.

We walked along to King St to meet Morag & Simon for dinner. I was sitting in the bar before they arrived thinking "I swear I'm having palpitations, my blood pressure is probably sky high. Calm. Calm...". Adrenaline and PG got me through that night, and we had a great time. We ate TexMex and then singularly failed to get into the Speakeasy bar, despite Stephen's best efforts!

Friday - In the Capital

We metro'd to DC on Friday and headed to the Capital building. I was quite determined to see inside it as this was yet another thing that we hadn't gotten round to doing whilst we actually lived here!!

We made our way through security and into the visitor centre and Stephen disappeared. I was scanning the hundreds of people to try and spot him when this voice said "At your service" in an Arkansas drawl. I turned round and there was Carol! What a total surprise!

It was funny as Rudy had jokingly said that we'd probably need to join one of her tours in order to see her during our visit. Its always useful having a well informed tour guide as a friend, and she was invaluable to us with the hints on what to see in the Capital. We got onto the next tour a few minutes later and got to see the stunning interior which was amazing.

We met with Morag and the girls for ice cream in Old Town later in the afternoon. Morag and I sat on a bench and chatted whilst Stephen entertained the girls. This mostly involved him being a horse, so picture...Stephen crawling about the grass on all fours with one of the girls on his back, whilst the other encouraged him along my kicking him up the bum and smacking his butt. It was hysterical!!!

In the evening it was back to O'Connells to meet with Carol so she could fill us in on her holiday in Chile during the recent earthquake. We joked about the volcano affecting our flight "You can't argue with Mother Nature" was her sage advice! She certainly had experience of that!

Thursday - What volcano?

We woke on Thursday to a text from Richard saying he was stuck in Majorca due to a volcanic eruption. A bit of investigation on BBC revealed what he was talking about, as the US news channels weren't really covering it yet.

We headed back into Willamsburg for another wander, then onto Jamestown which is a beautiful place in the Springtime. You can imagine landing there, thinking this is brilliant - temperate climate, water accessible, friendly natives...then getting through Summer (scorching temperatures, high humidity, mosquitoes that try to gnaw your arm off - and it was on a swamp so loads of those!) and Winter with its freeze your bits off cold temperatures!!!

I was most impressed with the statue of Pocahontas. It was a lovely statue. But what impressed me most was where the verdigris was rubbed off....which was only on her hands and arms!! I can guarantee you that if that statue was in the UK she would have shiny boobs!!!

After driving back to Old Town we met Paul and Kristen in O'Connells for drinks then dinner. We were talking about the smoking ban in VA which means that we could sit in O'Connells front bar without suffering from smoke inhalation. A pleasant change indeed!

Wednesday - Colonial Williamsburg

After grabbing a Starbucks to go (yes, my addiction is back as strong as ever - and its not like its even brilliant coffee!) we headed off down to Colonial Williamsburg for a mini-visit to the "Historic Triangle" of Williamsburg (Colonial town and former capital), Jamestown (where the settlers landed) and Yorktown (where they kicked our butt in battle). The SatNag did her usual sterling job. This time getting us to the wrong place via a very convoluted route! We ended up at the entrance to some gated community as opposed to the hotel, but they were very good about giving us directions and lending us a lump hammer to silence the Nag who was, by this point, screaming ""You have reached your destination. Your destination is on the right. WHY are you turning around? You're HERE! MAKE A U TURN NOW. MAKE A U TURN NOW. MAKE A U TURN NOW. Why are you NOT LISTENING TO ME?"

We had a lovely afternoon walking round the town - both the new part and the historic, recreated part. When we had exhausted both ourselves and the photo opportunities we headed back to the hotel via a local Food Lion supermarket. Locals to Virginia are probably laughing now. Stephen jumped in to buy a bottle of wine so we could sit on the veranda and sip. He said that most of the wine came in demijohns and 2l bottles, but he did manage to buy a bottle of NZ Sauvingon Blanc. Can you guys whats coming? Yes...it was finest vinegar when we opened it! We should have checked the label - it was probably years old and not properly stored. The motto here is "when wine is mostly sold in demijohns...buy beer instead!!!"

I am developing quite a taste for martini's. Not the James Bond shaken not stirred ones, but the flavoured ones are delicious! They did really good ones in the place we had dinner. The food wasn't bad either. I had a delicious fillet steak and garlic mash. I think I misread the menu as I expected the mash to involve potato and garlic, but the potato part pretty much seemed to be missing!!! I was not pleasant to be around later I tell you!!

Tuesday - Into the Inc

Tuesday was our catch up with our friends in the Inc office day. After bit of light shopping in Pentagon Mall (well...a girl has to do...right?!) we entrusted ourselves to the SatNag and headed off to Ballston. She took us a very roundabout route indeed! When Stephen realised where we ended up he realised that we could have gotten there in half the time...SatNag is definitely upholding the female stereotype of not being able to read maps!!

It was so lovely to see everyone again and catch up with them all. Lunch was delicious too - I hope everyone enjoyed the gigantic bar of Cadbury's I left in the office in exchange!

After a quick trip to Tysons Mall for coffee and shopping (what?! Is a girl not allowed to melt some plastic??) we headed to Target and Best Buy for Old Times Sake. Oh, how I miss Target!! I didn't actually buy much, but I did get a rather cute Jean Paul Gaultier (yes, really!!!!) waistcoat. After that we zipped back to the hotel and did our usual quick change routine before heading down to the lobby to wait for the shuttle. Which turned out to be late. Very late. So late in fact that we had to jump in a taxi, rounding up waifs and strays heading the same way as we went!

We were meeting other friends in our favourite bar and then heading for dinner and a good chin wag. O'Connells profits must be back up to pre-April 09 figures this week! We have never been out of the place!! Sometimes we're in twice in an evening... All the staff remember us, which is lovely. None of them can believe that its been a year since we were last in. Anyway our good standing has proved useful when it comes to getting a table and a drink at the bar when its busy!

It was a shame that Andy & Marie got the meeting place a little wrong! They were in Union St and we were in O'Connells. When we got hungry and in danger of becoming sloshed, we headed to Chadwicks so Stephen could have ribs, thinking they might be there as it was their favourite bar, but no... Sadly it all got too complicated. Ah well, I guess stuff happens...

Monday - Beautiful St Michaels

Monday was a much warmer day than had been forecast so we took advantage of this for a trip over the Bay Bridge to St Michael's which is a gorgeous sleepy little town with a vast marina. Its famous for its fresh crabs, so with Spark logic...we had pizza! It was damn fine pizza! We sat in the open windows of this little restaurant on the main street and watched the world go by against a backdrop of shady trees and wooden houses with large verandas and rockers on the porch. It was very beautiful. It was also very quiet! I don't think people put their boats in the water until the end on May, so there were only a handful of folks milling about.

We were reminded of why we didn't love our Sat Nav - or Sat Nag as we've renamed her. Aside from constantly trying to route us through the centre of DC as opposed to using the Beltway ("Please make a U turn now" is a constant refrain), she was happily trying to work out a detour because the Bay Bridge had mild traffic congestion. Now, there is a lot of coast and water out that way...our options were basically a 300 mile detour, hope that we'd booked an amphibious vehicle instead of a car, or to sit in the traffic jam...which turned out to be on the other side of the road anyway!!

Sunday 11th - Touring the Monuments

It was an absolutely glorious day on Sunday. We had breakfast in the diner across the road and it was worth the huge wait for the omlette station. It was buffet and it had every conceivable breakfast option you can imagine.....mmmmmmm....waffles.....

After brekkie we headed up to the National Mall and walked down and around the Monuments: the Washington, the WWII, the reflecting pool and the Lincoln where we joined the throng before heading over to the White House to wave hello to the Obama's.

Stephen got pretty sunburn walking about. I was the sensible one with the sunscreen on - but would he listen? Would he? No!!!

We drove past "our" house on the way to Morag & Simon's. That was a weird experience I can tell you! They've repainted the door and hard pruned the magnolia tree in the front garden. It felt strange not to be parking outside and heading in...

Saturday 10th - awake and loving Old Town

Thanks to the late night we were able to sleep past 5am, so it was up, and down to Firehooks for a coffee and Morning Glory muffin (which is everyone's favourite!). Then we went for a wander round the Farmers Market and bought a lovely watercolour. They sell so much more than fruit and veggies y'know!!

We headed out to Great Falls just after and it was certainly Great! The water level was way up -probably the highest we'd seen it in the times we'd been before. We wanted a bottle of water, but the folks in front of us at the snack bar line were having problems. For a start they were told it was a $5 minimum purchase (even for cash), and when she asked for an ice lolly and changed her mind she was told it was too late. Surely all the guy serving had to do was put it back in the freezer and give her something else... We decided that this was going to be waaaay too difficult to deal with given our minor jet lag, so we jumped rund to Tysons Mall for a pizza slice and the all-important 1st Starbucks of the trip! YAY Starbucks!!

We met up with our old friends Morag & Simon in the evening. What a great night! You've heard the expression "What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas"? Well, we decided that for Saturday Old Town was Vegas!! Lets just say we were out until 1:30am, we had delicious cocktails that made us drunk from the feet up and Thai food in a new restaurant. An excellent night!!

Friday 9th April - travel to DC

Aside from my champagne bath at LHR, the only other little problem traveling out to DC was the 2 1/2 hour flight delay due to some computer at Manchester which supplies flight data crashing. After a couple of hours the pilot appeared looking nervous. It must be policy to send them out to reassure people when there is a significant delay. He got as far as our seats and stopped for a chat. We were laughing and joking. He said that a surefire way to make passengers panic was for him to walk down the plane carrying a spanner and wearing a life vest!!

The flight was uneventful and we arrived into Dulles to find a nice shiny new arrivals hall. And most importantly - no queue!! It used to be that you could be stuck there for hours waiting to get through passport control.

We collected the car, drove to the hotel and then jumped in their shuttle down to Chadwicks and a big juicy, char grilled burger! De-lic-ious!! Then we went to the weekend office to listen to the blues band. We were ripped off on the wine though. $13 quid a glass!! Harumph!

By 11:30pm we were bot gritty eyed after having been up for a looooong time, so we jumped a taxi back to the hotel and were in bed and asleep about 20 seconds later.

A pain in the ash

We have had a lovely time in Virginia and DC...and now, thanks to the volcanic ash cloud, we're going to have a lovely time for another week or so! A full update of our travels will follow.

*Thanks to Simon for the brilliant title. He's wasted as a genius scientist and should be writing for the Sunday Sport!!

The Sparks go back to Washington

Here we are, at Heathrow airport, sitting in the Lounge. 2 hours to flight time. YAY!

I'm pretty sure Nigella Lawson is sitting having breakfast behind me - a celebrity spot! Quick phone Heat magazine.

We're sipping champagne...and I'm also wearing some! The server managed to launch both glasses from the tray as she brought it over. All over my skirt, shoes, bag, passports...it was her first day (poor thing), but I'm not totally overwhelmed that I'm going to smell like a lush for the rest of the day! Ho hum....

Easter

Gotta love a 4 day weekend! I've come out of the Easter weekend relaxed and refreshed - finally! We spent a lot of time doing laundry in preparation for our US trip - Yes - even Stephen got stuck into it! We did an absolute mountain of ironing on Monday. Everest was conquered!!! But you know...it feels good!

It wasn't all work though. We did some fun stuff at the weekend...had friends round for dinner, did a bit of wandering round the shops, drank lots of lattes, went to see the ruins of Hailes Abbey and began to jet wash the patio....

I say began...it didn't have an auspicious start. After searching several shops I finally found and bought wellies, didn't try them on in the shop but should have twigged when I picked them out from beside Spiderman and Barbie wellingtons that they were kids ones! The foot size was okay-ish, but I have fatter calves than your average 10 year old...so I had to customise them to get them on! Then we dragged all the kit out the garage and I began to jetwash whilst Stephen ran inside to watch the Grand Prix (his domestic side does not extend to anything garden related!).

It was fine for the first section, but then I had to move the washer. At this point the hose connector flew off. I got wet. VERY wet. I tried to push it back on, but with the water flowing I had no chance. The next problem was that the outside tap wouldn't turn off... I was yelling on Stephen as I was totally soaked and didn't want to soak the kitchen with my tiny wellington'd feet!! He switched off the tap from the inside and I connected the hose to the washer again. He turned back on the water and...the hose flew off and I got soaked again! I cannot tell you how much under my breath (mostly!) swearing was going on at this point. I looked like I had stepped into a bath fully clothed!!