Oh, My Days!

  Two water butts arrived at Damson Cottage this week, making us a 7 water butt household. There are three between the garden shed and the compost bins at the top of the garden, two in the courtyard collecting rainwater from the cottage roof, and now there is one attached to the greenhouse and another to the laundry. It’s all strategic, you know, to cut down on hefting watering cans back and forth across the homelands. Some might call it laziness, I call it efficiency. Anyway, 7 butts - Drippy, Sloshy, Soggy, Drench, Puddle, Mozzy and Fred. I am NOT Snow White. Heaven forfend... (I should like to point out that they are standard green water butts and not water butts shaped like bottoms as in the photo I’ve chosen to illustrate today’s blogpost. The photo is for comic effect only - I would NEVER install such a monstrosity in my garden. I have way too much class. Arse-shaped water butts? No thank you.) It’s been a busy week, not quite sure how because I wasn’t expecting it to be. I’v...

 I have become too old for my current duvet set. I know this not because it is covered in cute cartoon pandas (it isn’t, in case you were wondering) but because it is cotton and its surface has a pleated pattern in it and when I wake up in the morning, the pleated effect has transferred to my skin. The effect is worse on my face, mostly because I can cover up the rest of my creased self with clothing until everything springs back, as it were. I have to do some serious ironing with my jade roller to get the creases out of my face. My skin elasticity has had enough of life and is waving goodbye. I’ve pondered hanging upside down to encourage the creasing to fall to the top of my head where I can scoop it all up beneath a suitable hat receptacle. A cloche hat, I think - I’m being ever so fashion inspired by my binge watching of ‘Downton Abbey.’ Anyhoo, I’m seeking new and very smooth bedlinen. It has to be 100% cotton because anything else will make me crackle with static and I cannot...

 I found a dead swallow on the floor of the laundry this morning. I cried. The smallest things seem to set me off these days. Something else that set me off this week has been the commentary in certain sections of the media - newspapers and radio - regarding those of us who have chosen to decline the Covid vaccination. We have been called ‘refuseniks’, ‘conspiracy theorists’, ‘stupid’, ‘idiotic’, and ‘selfish’. We don’t care about protecting others, we are guilty of being disease spreaders and granny murderers. Through our self-centred choice we are preventing the return to ‘normal society’ which, as far as I can work out from the people spitting the bile, is being able to fly off on foreign holidays, go to concerts and visit the pub. Adding more pollution to our earth and poisoning their bodies, then... Claude Bernard, a physiologist and contemporary of Pasteur, declared the importance of maintaining balance in one’s body (i.e terrain) in order to keep it effective in coping with ...

  When Edmund, Lord Blackadder goes to seek the advice of the Wise Woman, these two things he discovers from the mad girl he encounters in his search : firstly, that the Wise Woman is a woman. And secondly, that she is wise.  Now, these are the things that you should know if you turn up unexpectedly on my doorstep for a ‘visit’: 1) I shall welcome you with politeness, a smile, and copious amounts of coffee and cake. Even though I am on a fitness kick and cake isn’t really part of my current agenda 2) I shall agree to your ‘treating us to fish and chips’ when it becomes clear you are going to sit on our sofa waaaaaaay past the hour of dinner and show no sign of moving your arse, even though this again scuppers my fitness kick plans but I can’t refuse because of my mad guilt complex, and if I say I’m on a fitness kick you will grill me for another two hours about the whys and wherefores of it all, inducing in me murderous thoughts 3) I shall allow you to park your effing enormou...

 I’m not a natural Creature of Change. Mostly, I like things to stay as they are. Oh, I can adapt when I need to (case in point, the last 14 months of Living on Planet Earth and, in my previous incarnation as Teacher, arriving to do a cover lesson and finding the absent teacher had left NO work which then required me to make something up on the hoof) but generally I am all for the status quo, and I don’t mean the band although I do admit they have some rockin’ tunes.  If there is to be change I like to know when, and for what reason. I do NOT like surprises. They leave me feeling wrong footed and out of sorts. Which is why, when embarking on this three week healthy living programme to support Andy in making changes to his lifestyle now that he is 50 (and everything is downhill from here on in) I regarded the caffeine-free tea and oat milk with a certain amount of suspicion, nay trepidation. To me oats have only one place in the world - covered in sugar and butter and turned in...

Months ago, I had plans. Plans to make something lovely and memorable of Andy’s approaching 50th birthday. I thought, ‘The zombie apocalypse will be over by May, bound to be. I know what would be great for a birthday celebration - a festival!’ And I had plans to erect bell tents and gazebos, rig up a music system, string bunting and fairy lights around the garden, hostess the mother of all barbecues, basically recreate the Glastonbury Festival in the garden and it would be a MARVELLOUS celebration befitting His Lordship Malarkey’s 50th year.  Pah! The Government and Scientific Posse in Charge of the Zombie Apocalypse (or GoSPiCZA) deemed otherwise - DO NOT MEET, STAY APART, YOU CANNOT EAT A SAUSAGE IN A FACE MASK, SANITISE YOUR HALLOUMI - and, as it happened, so did the weather, presenting us with a bit of sun, some rain, some wind and a thunderstorm.  And so the celebration progressed as a two person play of a single act but it was a generally pleasant day of companionable ch...

 Today I have a bit of a swollen bruisy area on my right hand, an injury sustained yesterday at the First Aid course I attended where I discovered just how brutal you have to be when delivering chest compressions PROPERLY and to the tune of ‘Nellie the Elephant.’  ‘Try not to sing it out loud,’ said Steve, the instructor. ‘It might be frowned upon by some people.’  He was a very good instructor. A paramedic. Engaging, knowledgable and with a quiet and wicked sense of humour. Made the six and half hours fly by. Best first aid course I’ve ever attended.  Anyway, with my left hand pushing down hard on my right hand in order to achieve the correct timings and pressure (the practise dummies were all linked by Bluetooth to a computer programme that told you if you were compressing too hard/too soft/too fast/too slow) I have acquired the aforementioned swollen bruisy bit but I also scored 100% for technique which satisfied my perfectionist nature and more than made up for t...

 Yesterday, His Lordship Malarkey and I met up in ACTUAL person with Heather and Ollie for the first time in MONTHS! There is something quite lovely about one of your adult children deciding to take charge of a situation, and Heather had done just that by very kindly purchasing for us annual passes to Blenheim Palace. This is Blenheim Palace... ...a massive stately pile in massive grounds, famed for being the birthplace of Sir Winston Churchill. Heather chose it because it is equidistant between her and Ollie in Kent, and me and Andy in Shropshire - just over two hours of car travelling from each end. ‘We can meet up at regular times during the year,’ said she. ‘You know, for days out. Picnics. Stuff like that.’  Isn’t that a grand idea? Blenheim Palace has a comprehensive programme of events during the year (zombie apocalypse aside) including various markets, fayres and jousting events. Its grounds are ENORMOUS! Plenty of space for walking, picnics, playing and admiring the l...