Oh, My Days!

 Mother’s Day has, in the past, been a bit of a bitter-sweet day for me but yesterday was very good indeed. I received this beautiful card from my daughter. She’d written a message inside which made me feel quite overwhelmed with love for her. She also gave me one of my favourite ‘witchy’ scented candles and a jigsaw puzzle of an art work which is right up my street - one of those puzzles that, when it is complete, is worthy of framing for display.  We spent a gloriously warm and sunny day in the Peak District at a stately home which was hosting an arts and crafts fayre. The journey outwards was very scenic - lots of winding roads with hair pin bends that crossed vast swathes of moorland as we travelled higher into the vertiginous Peaks themselves. I have to admit the end of the journey left me feeling somewhat travel sick, what with all the lumpy bumping, twisty turning and looking out of the window and seeing the countryside dropping away steeply to certain death. I have nig...

 This afternoon, I made myself mow the rest of the acreage on the Damson Cottage estate. I would much rather have settled with a book under a tree for a spot of lovely reading, but the grass shall not be allowed to become unmanageable this year, especially as March has been kind enough to grant us some lovely dry and sunny weather to gain a head start on all things horticultural.  As I passed the rhubarb bed (rhubarb currently about six inches tall) I noticed these two having a high old time on the side of one of the dumpy bags I used to store leaf mulch: There was a lot of enthusiastic bumpy lurve action occurring. And that’s fine because the ladybird is the gardener’s friend for keeping aphids at bay, so the more the merrier, that’s what I say. Anyway, I set about mowing and clearing up Winter debris, and every time I passed the dumpy bag, they were still at it. I spent some time in the top corner of the garden, moving the pile of logs that constituted our ‘wildlife’ patch, ...

  I PROMISED myself that I wasn’t going to have any more stupid ideas. I was VERY firm on this promise. And yet sometimes other situations prove to be MORE stupid and one is forced to renege on one’s promise and set about implementing an idea that causes one’s buttocks to feel VERY tight at the end of the day.  This morning, all began well. I saw the first hare of the season. Out in the field it was, quite close to Vladimir Poo Tin, our septic tank. What a wonderful sight! (The hare, not Vladimir.) Reader, I emitted a girly squeal when I saw it which quite discombobulated Nell. The hare was having a high old time running around and I watched it for a while until it ran into the hedge. I sent it a little blessing of protection that it didn’t become squished on the road, and that its babies were many and healthy.  And then, buoyed up with endorphins from seeing The Hare of Joy, I thought, ‘Right, I am going to tackle a tech problem.’ Rolled up my sleeves, put determined loo...

  I tried watching Comic Relief on TV last night but it all got a bit LOUD and SHOUTY for me, so I sort of zoned out, choosing instead to read and do word puzzles instead, which was far more beneficial for my brain than watching a bunch of over-paid presenters screeching at each other and the audience who were screeching back. I enjoyed the comedy skits based on Strictly Come Dancing and the Oasis reunion, and the mash up of Death in Paradise and Not Going Out, but that was all, and when Davina McCall started crying, I switched off.  Comic Relief never used to be like this, I thought. I'm sure it used to be more witty and gentle. It's been going for 40 years now so perhaps my tolerance for noise is weakening as I age. The Comic Relief modus operandii seems to be 'The LOUDER we SHOUT, the MORE money the public will donate.' They are wrong. Softly, softly is the best persuasive approach. But life in general seems too loud and full on now. It's not for me. This morning...

 I almost forgot I am a gardener. This is what happens when the Winter months set in, making everything wet and muddy, or you don’t want to be out in the gusty winds because for some reason gusty winds induce feelings of rage. However, we have been blessed with sunshine and warmth the last two or three days and, with today being the Spring Equinox (hurrah!) I took myself off to the greenhouse and sowed tomatoes, lupins, asters and geraniums. The greenhouse glass needs a good wash, but the spraying and dripping of water drives Nell into a frenzy of wild excitement and I cannot be doing with that shrill barky hoo-ha. The greenhouse bath will have to wait until she out for a walk with Himself, Lord Andrew of Malarkey.  I spent a majority of the day gardening apart for an hour and a half break for a scheduled Zoom meeting with my course tutor, and a spot of lunch. I set myself four gardening tasks because I find I can get more done with less injury to myself if I rotate three or f...

My darling daughter asked me yesterday how I was getting on with my ‘Sixty for Sixty’ list. Not very well, as it happens. I started the list, I stared at the list, I became overwhelmed by the list and set it to one side, deciding I didn’t need the pressure of coming up with sixty things to do when I am sixty because, well, who needs that kind of shizzle as they enter the elder phase of their life?  Of course, by darling daughter asking me this question, I immediately began thinking about the list again. This is what happens. I have a good idea, I lose faith in the good idea, someone shows interest in the progress of the good idea and I am at once invigorated anew by the good idea. I think this is grossly unfair, this going round in circles approach to life but it has dogged me since forever and is, apparently and according to philosophers, a ‘thing’ to make you learn lessons. Pah to that!  Anyway, I was pondering this ‘Sixty for Sixty’ thing again today and have realised, that...

  This is my view right now this very minute at almost 4 p.m. I’m sitting and thinking and doing a bit of staring. We’ve had some lovely weather this last week. The only problem with lovely weather is that it highlights that the windows need cleaning. I managed to do the downstairs windows but the upstairs ones require me to find the extension pole to attach to the window cleaning thingummybob, and that’s a bit too much effort at the moment. Our road is currently closed on the far side of the village for a bridge repair so the traffic is very scant. It’s lovely - very quiet. The roadworks are due to finish on Thursday. I am plotting ways of keeping the road closed for longer. I think some of my plots might be arrestable offences.  A couple of days ago I had an idea for a novel so I’ve started work on that which is very exciting. It will run alongside the editing of a novel I’ve already completed because it’s nice to have two writing projects running at the same time. I’m tryin...

 Well, I did it. Yesterday morning at 7 a.m, I was on a website for refurbished phones, sorting myself out a replacement for my current old faithful of the last 5+ years. I was becoming a bit fed up with the WhatsApp warnings popping up informing me that it wouldn’t be supporting its app on my old phone beyond the beginning of May, and also with my old phone’s battery saying, ‘I’m fine, I’m fine, I’m fine…I’m dead,’ in increasingly short spaces of time. It died on me on a recent FaceTime with my mum, and I had to scramble a return call on my iPad before she went all frantic and into her default diatribe about ‘these things having a mind of their own.’  ‘It’s alright, Mum,’ I said, when I called her back. ‘It was my phone running out of battery.’ ‘Well,’ she said, ‘I swear these things have a mind of their own.’  🙄 Anyhoo, I adopted a no faff attitude to selecting a ‘new’ phone because the choices out there in tech-land are ridiculous and I wanted to do other stuff with m...

 Hot on the heels of yesterday’s doggie-themed blog, this morning I was summoned to the fence that separates our garden from the neighbours’ garden by calls of ‘Denise!’ and ‘Nell!’ The calls came from the neighbours’ two grandchildren who were visiting their grandparents.  ‘I have a present for you!’ declared the eldest, and through the fence, she passed me this: A very lovely, and very orange landscape portrait of Nell! It’s even got her name on it in bold purple lettering, just in case I should have confused her with a Highland cow, for example, what with Nell being a very similar colour. Isn’t it wonderful?!  Well! This was a marvellous gift and completely made me forget that just ten minutes previously I had nearly met my end in a car crash with a fecking eejit (as they say in Ireland) in a large SUV, who decided it was a jolly good idea to overtake a tractor on a blind bend on a not very wide part of the road, which meant I came face to face with him on MY side of t...

 There are many dogs that live in my local village. For example, there’s Princess the Yorkie, Mollie the chocolate Labrador, Flynn the mad spaniel, Hector - another chocolate lab, Dylan the red setter, Ellie who is almost Nell’s cockapoo twin, and Daphne of indeterminate heritage. There’s also a rabid greyhound, a skittish Jack Russell, a shifty-looking collie-on-the-edge and a gorgeous rescued dogue de Bordeaux, none of whose names I know. And a little Daschund puppy whose name I have been told but for the life of me I can’t remember but I think it was something French-sounding.  Anyway, many dogs and they are well-provided for on the toilet front with a few strategically placed dog poo bins. There is no excuse for any doggy doings to be left on the ground.  Recently, though, there appeared on the village website a brief article highlighting the appalling FACT that some dog owners were NOT using the dog poo facilities and were, instead, leaving their dogs’ offerings on t...