Oh, My Days!

 Andy has built a pergola. It is a grapevine pergola because the grapevine has gone wild this year and we felt it deserved a bit of a treat. Also, it was trailing itself across the grass and making the grapes all too easy for the idiot cockerels to access. I bet cockerels are secret vintners - I bet they could snaffle grapes, put them in a bucket, tread them with their scaly feet and make a nice little Sauvignon blanc with accents of feather, sunshine and wasp spit. Can you imagine? Not only idiot cockerels, but DRUNK idiot cockerels. Heaven forfend… This is the pergola. There has been a general consensus between myself and His Lordship Malarkey that we could grow hops up the front posts. I’ve a hankering to grow a few hops, for decorative purposes you understand, because hop growing is in my genes, coming as I do from a line of brewers (on my mother’s side) and rather liking the prettiness of them. Anyway, it’s a plan. Pop in some hops when the time is right. Andy’s plan for the pergo

Such is life that one can pootle along with not very much occurring and then EVERYTHING happens at once. Of course, being the top notch planner and organiser that I am, I can generally cope with these moments of Universal Chaos which is just as well because this week has been jam-packed FULL of activity but, bizarrely, none of them jam related.  Operation ‘Decorate the Back Bedroom’ (postponed from 2020) began in earnest two weeks ago with the arrival of a new bed frame and the purchasing of paint (white for the wood, Frosted Dawn for the walls) and these rather lovely door knobs… They were fairly expensive but are things of beauty and I love them! Also, being made from heavy duty ceramic, they could double as a home defence mechanism against errant burglars. I reckon they could cause substantial damage if launched firmly at the forehead of an intruder. I bought four altogether to replace the flimsy wooden knobs on the built in cupboards. I also bought these to replace the five flimsy

  On a shopping trip to Aldi this morning, an elderly gentleman called out to me as I was pushing my full trolley to my car.  ‘Hello! Excuse me!’ he shouted.  I turned to him with a smile, which he could see because since the mandatory wearing of face masks ceased two and a half weeks ago, I’ve stopped wearing one in shops. It has been a blessed relief. I have struggled with wearing a mask for the last year and have great admiration for people who have to wear them for their jobs.  Back to the elderly gentleman. ‘Excuse me,’ said he. ‘But are masks still required to go in there? I’ve been waiting in my car for someone to come out who wasn’t wearing one, so that I could ask.’  ‘It’s personal choice now,’ I said. ‘I stopped wearing one as soon as I could. I couldn’t breathe properly, so I am happy they are no longer law.’  The elderly gentleman’s face lit up. ‘Oh, I’m so glad,’ he said. ‘I couldn’t bear it. They are so stuffy, aren’t they? Made me panic a bit, too. Horrible things.’ I no

 I’ve not been watching much of the Olympic Games because I’m not really a sports sort of person save for ‘Dancing Round the Kitchen When No One Is Watching’, ‘Extreme Gardening’ and ‘Trying Not To Ooof When Getting Up From Lying On The Floor.’ There’s been so much sport on TV recently - football, rugby, cricket, more football, repeats of football from the 1970s, 80s, 90s blah blah blah yaaaaaawn - that I’ve been finding other, far more interesting things to do with my time instead. Things like playing ‘Stick, Ribbon, Feather, Box’ with Bambino, ducking angry swallow parents, and continuing my mission to rid the world of nettles. It’s all important stuff. However, I have been watching some of the coverage, namely gymnastics (I could do that if I had a bit more boing and a bit less fear of smacking my head on the ground), athletics, swimming and, most recently, horse riding.  Aaah, horse riding! Happy memories. I used to go horse riding as a child. Every Friday evening Mum would take my

Heavens to Murgatroyd - I knew it had been a while since I’d last blogged but I didn’t realise it had been THAT long. Almost two months! How did THAT happen, eh? Eh??  I’ll tell you how it happened. Whilst I would like to say it has been down to the effect of a retrograde Mercury causing havoc in astral communications, or a Barbary ape making off with my iPad, the blame lies firmly with me, myself and I for taking a bit of time to do some thinking. A lot of thinking. The trigger for this thinking has been from working through, and completing, Part 3 of my Healer training. It has raised lots of ‘stuff’ that needed deep consideration and thought of the ‘contemplating one’s navel’ variety. Of course, other stuff has happened, to whit I shall fill you in now… 1) the first batch of baby swallows (those from the previous post on 11th June) have fledged and flown. Four in all, right mess they’ve made in the laundry - I shall have to take a stiff broom and lots of hot, soapy water to the concr