Oh, My Days!

 The septic tank pipe work was dealt with very effectively yesterday so (fingers crossed) we shall now be free-flowing of effluent and the drain rods can be packed away to a place where they will hopefully gather a lot of dust and cobwebs. Three rogue drain rods and a plunger were retrieved and the damaged pipe was on the verge of total collapse, so a job well-done in the nick of time. As the drain chap hooked up his trailer, upon which sat the mini-digger, he said, ‘It was an easier job than I anticipated,’ and he knocked £240 off the bill, which I thought was very decent and kind of him.  This afternoon, Lord Malarkey and I retrieved our tent from storage in the laundry and put it up in the back garden, firstly to check for meece damage (there was none - hurrah!) and secondly to maybe have a chez nous camping experience later this week. Heather and Ollie have also expressed an interest in using the tent for a camping trip, although they’re currently in the throes of demolish...

 Continuing in the July spirit of ‘Household Things Going Wrong’ our built-in single oven decided to chew up and spit out its thermostat yesterday which meant lots of raging inferno-style heat, a persistent warning alarm screaming ‘Switch me off NOW!’ and two baked potatoes that were charred black on the outside and rock hard in the centre. Now, the oven was installed with the kitchen almost seven years ago and this is the first time in my LIFE I’ve experienced an oven breakdown. Also, I think for an oven part to go wrong after barely seven years service is pretty poor especially as the oven is supposed to be a fine specimen of German engineering. But these things happen, and happen it did and I give thanks to St Brigid (of house and home) that we didn’t all go up in flames and dinner was the only casualty. This isn’t a major disaster because we still have the AGA and a barbecue and a slow cooker and a George Foreman grill and a panini press and a steamer at our cooking disposal. B...

  I sowed some poppies in pots a couple of months ago and in the last few days they have popped into bloom. The photo doesn’t do the vibrancy of the colours justice but they are wonderful and make me smile every time I see them. They are also very resilient, given they’ve been beaten by heavy rains and winds in the last few days.  I spent all morning in the garden, beating back the latest crop of undergrowth that has been horribly persistent in this Spring and Summer of heat, rain, heat, rain. The Autumn raspberries have been rescued from nettles and docks, I’ve pruned back some of the hawthorn, hornbeam and privet hedges, and weeded the courtyard rose bed. The weather is supposed to be dry for the next two days so I shall mow the grass before it rains again on Saturday. Gardening these days is like playing a strategic game of chess. I suspect it will become more so as the years go on. Nell has spent a lot of time inside hedges and is now covered in grass seeds and sticky weed...

  Thirty years ago today, Lord Malarkey qualified as a veterinary surgeon. Thirty years! In the same career! Mind-blowing. And highly commendable.  Congratulations, Dr Hunt, for hanging in there for so many years. You’re fab! xx

  A few nights ago I was watching one of those NHS fly-on-the-wall hospital A & E programmes. Well, sort of half-watching because it was on a commercial channel, so I always have a book to hand to read during the increasingly longer and longer advertising breaks, and sometimes the draw of the book overcomes the TV programme and…oh, shut up, Denise! Just tell the story, eh?  I was watching this programme. And one case they showed was of an elderly lady who had presented herself to A & E feeling unwell and with chest pains. The medical team did various tests and then left her sitting alone in a curtained cubicle whilst they waited for the test results. When the test results returned it transpired that yes, indeed, she had suffered a significant heart attack and would be admitted to a ward to be assessed by the cardiology team for further treatment.  All this information was delivered to the lady in a very factual manner by a young doctor who was clearly rushed off h...

 Our septic tank, Vladimir Pootin, underwent an endoscopy this morning, on account of Lord Malarkey and I having to run him through on an increasingly regular basis with the drain rods because he keeps backing up with, well, you know...effluent. Something was clearly amiss and needed investigation. Therefore, a jolly chap arrived at ten a.m in a little tanker lorry thing.  ‘Hello!’ said I. ‘You’re from Kent, aren’t you?’ said the jolly chap.  And then he chatted away non-stop whilst going about his business with various pipes, cameras, rods, blowers, suckers and pointy things. By the time he’d given Vladimir’s pipes a very good and through seeing to, I had learnt that the jolly septic tank chap owned three collie dogs - all adopted - had left school at 15 with no qualifications, had travelled extensively around the UK and hence was very good at identifying regional accents, and that he kept shire horses which he took to various shows and fairs to raise money for charity....

 ‘Do you remember when Labour won the General Election in 2024?’ someone might say in my distant future. Well, they might. After all, my brother and I had a discussion yesterday about our father’s succession of Volvos back in the 1970s and a holiday we had in a caravan on Fakenham racecourse, in Norfolk.  ‘Oh yes,’ I’ll say. ‘That was the week I had a bout of gastroenteritis, and an over-cautious practice nurse referred me to be seen at a specialist clinic via the rapid ‘two-week-referral- appointment-because-you-might-have-cancer’ scheme.  Sheesh. After agreeing with me 99.9% that I had what I thought I had, she then said, ‘But to be on the safe side, I’ll refer you to see a specialist.’ A doom-laden letter duly arrived within 24 hours saying if I hadn’t received an appointment within two weeks I was to use the email link/telephone help line and make a nuisance of myself. It was VERY IMPORTANT that I did this, and also, ‘here’s a ‘phone number in case you need a counsell...

For the first time in YEARS I find myself booking an appointment at our local medical centre. I have been there once in eight years and that was because my employer insisted because I’d had my arm yanked in a violent way by a teenager in the ‘red mist’ mode. My forearm felt a bit sore and tender. There was a red mark, but that’s all. One of those occupational hazards when you work with children with violent habits. ‘I expect he’s caused a sprained tendon,’ said I, poking my arm in the staff room. ‘It’ll get better with time. ‘You need to go to your G.P NOW!’ barked the then headteacher.  ‘Okay,’ said I, because at least it meant I got to go home early.  In the G.P practice, the G.P said, ‘You’ve got a sprained tendon. It’ll get better with time.’ Sigh…only eight years ago and you could see your G.P the same day. How times have changed. Never mind! We’ll have a Labour government come Friday morning. I expect they’ll sort things out with great efficiency. Ahahahahahahahahahaha…H...

 One of my favourite books as a child was ‘The Phoenix and the Carpet.’ My copy had exactly this picture on the front. I must have been around nine when I read it, and I remember the TV series, too, which came out in 1976. Do you remember the summer of ‘76? Blimey, that was a scorcher. How things have changed in almost 50 years.  E. Nesbitt also wrote ‘Five Children and It’ which I read, too. Coincidentally, my great-grandparents grew hops of the type ‘Phoenix’ in their hop gardens in Kent, and I have ‘Phoenix’ hops in my own garden as a connection to them. Another coincidence is that this morning, Lord Malarkey was heading off to B & Q to buy some compost, and I said to him, ‘As you are going out, could you please take some stuff to the rubbish tip?’ and he said, ‘Yes,’ and one of the things happened to be the poor, demised, chewed-to-bits-by-horrid-dog-Nell carpet rug that was much beloved by me and my toes as a feature of the dining room.  Anyway, I had accumulated...