Oh, My Days!

  I was going to wait until tomorrow to launch the ‘Hallo Tarot!’ website, what with tomorrow being 1st July and, therefore, a nice tidy date for a beginning. But this afternoon, I became involved in a flurry of final tidy loose ends activity, and thus ended up cracking the metaphorical bottle of champagne against the ship of which I am Captain and whoosh! Off she went into the World Wide Web!  You can find it here : www.hallotarot.co.uk The blog is moving there, too, so unless things go horribly wrong, this will be the last entry here.  I hope to see you on the other side then! Let me know what you think. 

 Remember the King Charles III rose bush I bought in celebration of the Coronation back in April? Well, it has produced its first bloom! The bush is putting on some good growth and there could be another two or three blooms before the end of the year. It smells lovely, too. I never saw the point in a rose that had no scent.  The ‘Hallo Tarot!’ website is almost complete! Just a few more tweaks to make and then I hope to press the launch button at some time over the weekend. I realise that I shall probably want to make changes during the following weeks, but sitting on it and faffing around with it in the pursuit of perfection seems a waste of time. I won’t know how practical it is unless it’s ‘live’ so there’s no point in waiting. Today, the moment arrived in the design process that I’ve been least looking forward to, and that was the Taking of Photos of Me. I’ve never been fully confident in how I look and whilst I realise I am a generally decent-looking sort of person, I’m s...

 How lovely is this? It’s a new giclée print for my office, from TatiMagic Art on Etsy. I love making purchases from Etsy. There are some wonderful artists, makers and creative bods there. You find unique pieces you wouldn’t find in your bog standard shops AND you are supporting talented people in their business ventures. This Tarot Cat (his name is Mr Fantabulo!) is A4 in size, and I shall be taking it to the framer in town to have it properly framed. I think I might hang it on the door of my office. Just so people who enter therein know what they are getting!  The other lovely thing about buying on Etsy is that the seller quite often adds little extras to your order. Mostly it is in the form of a hand written ‘Thank you for supporting my business’ type note. But this one arrived yesterday with a little bonus print… And a very good quality bookmark… How sweet is that? It’s the sort of personal touch which makes me more inclined to return to the seller. I’m still busy building...

 Nell is doing well following her spay operation. She is still clacking around in her buster collar, having accepted it as a new fashion accessory and weapon of destruction. Her surgery wound looks neat and clean and she has her energy back, although she is still careful when climbing on and off the sofa. Yesterday, I attached her to her long lead which is fixed to the washing line, so she could pootle around the garden as she was clearly growing bored with having to walk around attached to me by her lead.  The landscape surveyor appeared yesterday morning to make final measurements and undertake other important landscape stuff prior to us having our driveway block paved and the new fencing and gates installed. He was a nice chap - told me lots about his rescue Staffies. Hopefully, the work will start sometime in July. It will be disruptive for around a week but then these major building things usually are. But I am braced and ready, and keep telling myself it will look lovely...

  Here’s the thing: I am a terrible nurse, and this comes from being a terrible patient. I don’t like being unwell. It irks me. It stops me doing what I want to do when I want to do it, and therefore I avoid being ill as much as humanly possible. I get grumpy with myself if I am ever unwell. Unfortunately, this in turn makes me intolerant of illness in others, especially when I think ‘You could do something about your unwellness yourself and it is my opinion you are being awkward, nay bloody-minded, in not doing so.’  In my defence, however, I have all the time in the world for people who grab their unwellness by the throat and shake it until it surrenders. I am there, on the sidelines, shouting, ‘Keeping drinking the water! Keep moving! Distract yourself with something active or intellectual!’ I’ll 100% actively support people who need help, but the lead-swingers? Nah. I think this comes from being brought up in a household where illness was shrugged off with a dose of Lucoza...

 Poor little Nellibobs. Off she went today, with Andy, having spent the first hour of the day snuffling around the garden after squirrels, playing frisbee, and getting herself covered in sticky weed. (Have you ever tried to remove sticky weed from the fur of a cockerpoo? Takes the patience of a saint, especially if the cockerpoo has no patience herself.) And the next thing she knows… She’s being prepped for surgery and then she’s had surgery and now feels like a pile of poo. Yup, she’s been spayed. She FaceTimed me at lunchtime to tell me how pants she was feeling, but that she had been very good having her anaesthetic and she’d woken up quickly afterwards, but she was very dribbly because she felt totally nauseous with it all. Poor little sausage. How do you explain that it’s all worth it for the benefits she’ll receive? Lots of healing cuddles and toast for her this evening.  I made the most of being puppy-free today by firstly rearranging my office. My monstera plant is get...

Free? Free????I’m still reeling from the shock of the bill I received from the dentist this week for the replacement of a broken back tooth filling. Yes, I am with a private dental practice because NHS dentists around these parts are rare as hens’ teeth. Yes, it was a composite white filling as opposed to the usual grey amalgam filling (not that I was given a choice, I might add) and yes, my dentist did an efficient, pain-free job. But still. £125 !?!?!???!!!! I was in there for 20 minutes. Sheesh.  But what can one do? Even registering with a private dentist is tricky these days, so I need to hang on to my place at this practice. I’ve been attending since we moved to Shropshire, so seven years in total. I dare not miss an appointment in case they strike me off and I can’t register anywhere else, and have to resort to self-dentistry using pliers, chisels, chewing gum and gravel. I suppose I am fortunate that my teeth are pretty good for my age. Touch wood.  Andy took delivery ...

 I grew up a Kentish Maid, and now I’m a Shropshire Lass. This is also a Shropshire Lass… One of three climbing roses we planted in a new border two years ago. The first year they were little more than a bunch of twigs, and last year they started to sprawl everywhere but no blooms, and I was a bit concerned they might not be happy where they were. But this year! This year, as Elvis Costello sang, has been a good year for the roses! The other two ramblers - Rambling Rector and A.N Other I can’t remember and am too lazy in this heat to go and track down the plant labels to find out, are also flowering well (Paul’s Himalayan Musk is ringing a bell, though…). As is ‘The Lady of the Lake’ I planted next to the archway leading into the orchard. In fact, The Lady of the Lake is doing so well, she nearly took my eye out this morning when Nell and I were playing a game of ‘Run and Boo!’ in and out of the hornbeam hedging. The assortment of roses we inherited when we moved here are also goin...

  You will have to crave my indulgence today because I want to say how inspired I have been in the last couple of days by three strong women, namely Vera, Cat and Heather, because that’s who they are. Their inspiration is embodied by the above quotation which I wanted to share. This is what they can do. This is who they are. And who I hope I am, too. I’ve had conversations with them all in the last 36 hours, and I thought, yes - they’ve got this life thing. I have also been inspired by the author of this book: Dr. Gladys is 102. She is still working in holistic health and she has a 10 year plan going forward in her life! An example that it is never too late to do anything. That the best way to honour the life we are gifted is to live each day in hope and activity, and in the pursuit of making a dream become reality. And during the conversation with Cat, she brought up Shirley Valentine and this:  When I was thinking about starting a business last year, the doubt kept creeping ...

 We bought Nell a paddling pool.  And this is the result! She looks a different dog when she is soggy wet. But still, she enjoys it, especially in this current spell of warmer weather. This morning, it hit 29 degrees C according to the back garden thermometer. We had a brief thunderstorm yesterday evening, and the clouds opened and poured, which was good for the garden.  Of course, lovely weather like this means we are spending most days outside to keep cool in the shades of the middle garden. Keeping cool is not helped, though, by a dog deciding the best place to sit would be on your head… Nell keeping Andy toasty warm!  The swallow babies, I think, will fledge this week. They are literally spilling over the edge of the nest and looking jolly cross about it, too. Every time I enter the laundry - putting a load of washing in the machine, retrieving something from the freezer, stuff like that, I say, ‘Hello, babies!!’ And they go, ‘What the chuff have YOU got to be so...

 Of course, now I’ve read this… …I am regarding all food that I haven’t made at home from fresh ingredients with high suspicion. I did our weekly shop yesterday (according to trade figures the ‘average’ person does 16 shopping trips a month! Seriously? I do around six, and I think that’s too many, in my ‘there are too many people out there’ introverted way) and as I wandered around the aisles, all I could think was, ‘Supermarkets are just one massive UPF outlet.’ I paused every now and then to pick up a packet of this, or a tin of that, to read the ingredient list. Terrible. Even bread, which should be flour, salt, yeast, water, plus oil if you fancy, has unpronounceable stuff in it. All in the name of speed and cheapness of production and shelf-life, of course.  Luckily, we make all our bread at home! Luckily. Or so I thought. I checked the fast action dried yeast I use. You wouldn’t think yeast would have an ingredients list, would you? You’d think yeast was just, well…yeast...

 It’s very handy having a son-in-law who is a mechanic. Especially when, like Himself Lord Malarkey, you own a car that is on its last legs… Having been making loud and unnecessary noises for a while (the car, not Andy. Actually, yes Andy, too…), Andy put his aged Citroen C3 in for its M.O.T and to have two sets of wheel bearings changed. £300 lighter, he came home with a list of advisories on the M.O.T which Ollie said he would deal with. When Ollie went under the car to check a few things, he emerged and said, ‘Normally, I’m all for keeping an old car going but seriously, this one is not worth spending any more money on.’ (He is going to fix an exhaust leak on Friday, though, as it is a somewhat pressing matter.) I’ve been suggesting to Andy that perhaps, maybe, we ought to swap his car for something more, er…reliable…for a while, but now I have the honest opinion of Good and Wise Mechanic Ollie, I shall start insisting a newer car is considered, and with some urgency.  It’l...

 I’ve just finished this reading this… Sheesh…just when I thought the human race couldn’t become any greedier or more stupid, this bombshell drops. It’s very science-based but also very readable. It also makes a lot of sense. Of course, I doubt anything will be done about the state of our major food manufacturing businesses (because all they care about is a) making ‘food’ in the cheapest and quickest way possible so they can b) make huge profits. Ironically, you can’t take money with you when you die, and eating a diet of UPF will ensure you die sooner and with more health problems than you should. Of course, the cynic in me wonders if the food giants are in cahoots with the pharmaceutical companies - ‘we’ll cock up people’s health with this crap, and you can make profits treating their health problems. Just don’t tell them they could sort out many of their health problems by eating proper food though, or our plans for world domination will be scuppered.’ Humans - greedy and stupid...

 Happy National Olive Day! I can’t bear olives, so I shall be celebrating National Dinosaur Day instead by pretending to be a pterodactyl. ‘Squawk…squaaaaaark…flap, flap, flappity, flap flap!’ So nice to have an option, don’t you think? I digress… I’ve started a new blog as part of setting up my new ‘Hallo Tarot!’ business. I’ve called it ‘Hallo Tarot!’ (I did consider calling it ‘Hallo Sausage!’ but realised this would probably cause an element of confusion amongst potential readership. Don’t want to attract any unsavoury types, eh? The newbie blog can be found at: hallotarotpathways.blogspot.com Of course, I shall continue with ‘Oh, My Days!’ because one needs a space to vent one’s spleen and chat witty shite about every day shizzle. Also, I’ve started writing the Much Malarkey Manor Christmas Story 2023 (I know! How organised/sad is THAT???) and it will need a suitable platform.  Now I need to go and bottle some of this initial-flush-of-excited-enthusiasm that I’m feeling w...