I’ve got what I can...

only describe as a crush.

Before you all groan and think

what unsuspecting man has LL in her sights this time?

Let me tell you it is a woman.  I know, I know, hard though it may be to imagine I have just seen a programme on...

Germaine Greer...

she has no idea at this time 

 yet she

is my newest, bestest, bestie!
What a woman, what an intellect, a winning killer way with words, sharp as a pin taking no prisoners.  What a stunning beauty she was in her time.

A few years ago a woman said to me you look just like Germaine Greer, I don’t mind admitting I was miffed as I peered into the mirror when I got home...

Now I’m taking it as a compliment!
How bloody shallow is that?

Today... I am all of...

a doo-dah!

Why?  Lots of different reasons.

The main one being I haven’t heard from Audrey and I have faithfully promised I wouldn’t hassle her on the telephone.  She is so strong and happy being in the driving seat of the journey both of us feel is approaching its end.

I do message her so if and when she picks up her iPad she sees I am thinking of her.  Until the last couple of days she has either sent an email or faceTimed me, when she feels strong enough.

We as I have said before talk freely of her death, she informs me she isn’t ready yet?  Her body might have different ideas?

She fortunately has three good friends who help her whenever she requests their attendance, not carers, you understand, perish the thought, thinks one so strong as Audrey!  When I do voice the faint worry that she might die alone, and I have said on occasions that I  hope one morning she just doesn’t wake up! Her tart reply is she fully intends to be awake so as to experience this once in a lifetime experience!  You have got to admit she has a point?

What a woman!

Death is the other reason I feel discombobulated as another friend is sat beside her husband dying in a hospice.  These strange times mean I can’t just do what I want to and hop in the car and go.

So many folk must be feeling the same and a whole lot worse as their worries are closer to home... family members.

Ellie training goes...

up a gear!
A day out, in readiness for our three day holiday in Wales in August.
We went to

Westonbury Water Gardens a magical garden just a 45 minute drive away from home.
The journey didn’t faze her, the dribbles were under control and on arrival she sat contentedly as we had a coffee before we walked sedately around the gardens all carefully keeping the regulation 2 metres apart.  
We had a lovely lunch sat outside in the sun, she happily sat under our table like the seasoned explorer of new climes Ellie obviously thought she was!
A little light reading and meditation and we were ready to go for Ellie’s part of the trip.  Let off the lead on Bircher Common it was her turn to open up the gas and go!  Which she obviously did, all the while like a good Sky Tours rep, doubling back to check we were still with her.
‘Keep up you oldies!’
A super day of fresh air, new places and fun for all.
Is it any wonder we all came home happy, content and tired?

With a cheesey smile...

I stepped out of the dentist!

I had lost part of a filling way back in the mists of lockdown.

I had an appointment for the back end of August.  I limped along only having my granite crusted sourdough bread in tiny squares in  order not to put too much pressure on my tombstone old pegs!

A call came through...

could I manage a 7 am appointment?

Could I what?

Are there two 7 o clocks in a day I idly wondered?

Telling myself it would be a novel experience to be decent, up and out of the house by 6.45am I agreed.  After she had told me of the conditions I needed to expect on my arrival, I told her mine! 

As they were struggling to fill the early appointments I would grace the surgery with my presence 

only if they could arrange for someone to bring me up a cup of tea in tea at 6am on the morning in question... sounds reasonable to me!  She laughed and neatly dropped the ball into the husband’s court.  

It was like an out of body experience being abroad

in Ludlow at such a strange time, I quite enjoyed it.  I even got there before the dentist.

I must say being approached by two

bright orange suited operators was   weird to say the least.

It felt not unlike being given a seeing to by two jaffas.

I came away pleased as punch: by way of celebration I donned my mask and swept into Aldi, sad that I couldn’t dazzle them there with my 

Colgate ring of confidence.

Sourdough crusts eat your heart out, LL’s choppers are coming to get you!

One minute I’m talking...

Welsh, the next the Gaelic and in the main the twaddle.

I am on a mission to get a holiday, first off just over the border into Wales for a bit of a break, and more importantly to see how Ellie gets on travelling to exotic climes?  She is not a good traveller in the car, she is improving as we find more exciting walks that little bit further afield, than the fields around here.  Sorry about that!  The town-training is okay going up to the town, walking to heel on the lead.  She gets stressed when either of us disappears into a shop and the minute we turn even vaguely for home, she flattens to the ground and pulls as if training for the Worlds Strongest Dog competition.

We go around the market and each time we are headed back towards home the same thing happens.  Turn away and everything is chilled and fairly relaxed.  What this is all about who knows.  How she will be in a strange town is the next exercise?  

Then later in the year I plan to go back to my old township and finally get the ruddy pressure cooker out of the box that I feel I have conned my neighbours 

into buying.  My three regular readers will remember how I sweet talked my way into getting my lovely ‘boys’ (old neighbours 83 & 81) into buying a all singing, all dancing pressure cooker in order to make more tasty and nutritious food for themselves.  Nobody was more surprised than me when 100 Scottish notes arrived in the post in order for me to purchase the contraption on their behalf!?!

The fact it is still in the box, not only the pressure cooker box, but the blooming box it was sent 

in, is of no surprise.  My feelings of horror that I have in effect conned them into buying... a what is, in their eyes a newfangled bomb in the guise of a cooker is a mere bagatelle!

I am determined to go up and demonstrate the finer points of this machine.  If cooking on Masterchef and daytime telly didn’t faze me I am sure showing two Highlanders how to use a all singing all dancing 

mean machine will be a doddle.

Whether as the husband says they will use it after I have gone is a question only time will tell?

The main thrust of my argument 

will be that even if Iain falls asleep after he has been on the hill gathering sheep all day, the food he has prepared and cooked won’t burn as he slumbers on counting even more sheep.  The reason being once cooked the thing bleeps and then slowly releases the pressure and then keeps the food warm...

What is there not to like after a hard days work?

My sledgehammer persuasion worked, they now have the gadget.

Can my skills as a teacher work to ensure they use it?  Only time will tell.

The old boiler’s...

days are numbered.

No, no on this occasion I am not referring to myself!

The thing of beauty and a joy for ever is going to the big steam-punk heaven in the sky, where it will make the acquaintance of past things of mind blowing beautification.  For example the 

Sinclair C5, the trains of the mid- west with the frilly cow catching fronts that oh so gently brushed the cows out of their paths as they steamed through the barren, arid lands.

The Segway.  

Dare I say the Reliant Robin and risk offending fans the world over who loved Derek Trotter Esq.

Twin-tub washing machines.

The mangle of yore that gave grannie arms the size of a Sumo wrestler.

Flat irons, tin baths. 

Crank handles for cars float by on a cloud jumbled together looking  ‘other worldly’ like a 

viper’s nest.  

Clippy’s ticket machines 

on the buses.

Isambard Kingdom Brunel’s cantilever experiments that never saw the light of day.

Feel free to add to this list in order for the old boiler not to feel totally unloved as it lurks behind the palm, trying with every nut and bolt of its being to blend into the background.

Goodbye cruel world it pants with gas fuelled gasps...

Like a thief in the...

afternoon Ellie crept out of the Orangery.  One leg lifted high and with care, she could have been starring in a Tom and Jerry cartoon. The other paws followed in the same stealthful style.  She was good at this.  She crept up the steps then along the top to where Ratty so intent on gorging on the sunflower seeds was completely oblivious to the foe silently approaching.

With a mad scramble she shot along the flower border only to see the tail departing under the garden fence.

Mind you if she had of caught him she I am sure wouldn’t have known exactly what to do.

What makes me say that?

The other day after months and months of chasing she caught a squirrel, much to her amazement as well as ours.  She kept pawing it as it tried to get away, similar to a cat playing with their victim before the kill. We called her off and I sent the husband to investigate and to do the deed if necessary.  He couldn’t find it, so it was decided the best thing to do was to send her in to flush it out, which she did and luckily it got itself up the tree, looking dazed but seeming okay.  We were all glad, well apart from Ellie I suppose?  

I well remember me having to kill a squirrel that Letty had caught but not finished off.  I went up to check it was dead.  It was badly injured and I had the job of despatching it.  Not a task I would recommend to anyone.  The problem I had was I hadn’t taken the deep leaf mould into account and hitting it on the head, just pushed it further into the forest floor.  It took me a couple of goes, I remember the horror to this day!

As I sent the man off, coward that I am  I reminded him of my mistake and be sure not to do the same thing.

Meanwhile Ratty is getting ever more adventurous.

The tail of...

Ratty and the Wind in the Wrenery!

My aim was to make a wildlife garden to encourage creatures great and small, minus slugs obv! and on all counts I have succeeded.

Last night as we put Ellie out I turned on the lights and saw Hedge was here with a friend, not another prickly one this time but one with a long tail.  The kindness of strangers i.e. me was being extended to rats as well as hedgehogs.  Now where do you cross the line and say there’s wildlife and there’s well, wildlife with long furry tails.

‘Rats lives Matter’ 

might be a consideration?

Call me a softie I don’t care!

Alright, alright I am guilty of bowling a snail into the path of oncoming vehicles and poking a pigeon up the posterior, however I do try to love my fellow creatures.
These pictures show Saturday’s entertainment.

The rat was having a lovely time harvesting the sunflower seeds rushing off and stashing them away  just a short hop... where?
Backwards and forwards it went stopping for the occasional drink in the recently opened since lockdown was lifted bar...
‘The Shell Bowl’ 
to the right of the picture featuring the FT.
Being a novice wildlife photographer I missed the shot of the rat silhouetted on the top!
After a very interesting luncheon, ours not the rats, we decided to investigate.
Husband moved the logs where we were both sure the nest would be, last night we saw it disappear into there.  All, was clean as a  whistle.  Husband admitted he was relieved not to find a nest of ten babies because he would hate to kill them, I felt the same.  We decided the rat was nipping under the fence and so in a nutshell or more to the point, a sunflower seed kernel it wasn’t our problem.
So as of now we are live and let  live.  Sounds like a good plan to me, because after all if you are encouraging the wildlife you have to entertain the not so fragrant as well as the positively
gooey-wooey, cuddly-wubbly, don’t you agree?

I stood outside...

a shop looking for all the world like a tom looking for trade?

Yes, I had never heard the expression either until I met the husband.  Apparently ‘tom’ is the name for a lady member of the oldest profession in the world...

who knew, not me for one.  I’ve lived such a sheltered life... if you believe that you’ll believe anything!

Anyway, back to what happened yesterday on our shopping trip crossed with Ellie’s town training session.  So many people look at us and smile and remark to each other about Ellie.  She draws comments wherever we go.  Well you might imagine how that goes down with spoilt lump LL,  me being upstaged by a hairy heap!  In the end I’d had enough, I said to a couple saying exactly the same thing to each other...

‘Gone are the days when I got such admiring glances!’

Whether I did is a moot point?

She laughed and said maybe I was on the back burner?

‘On the back burner?  Banished to the blooming scullery, more like!’

I can feel a hissy fit coming on...

My lovely dad...

 was born on on the 3 July 1920

he would have been 100 years old today.  Sadly he died suddenly alone at home in 1990.

This is us on the beach in 

Le Touquet.  A holiday I shall never forget for two reasons, the first and most traumatic was me getting lost.  The beach had rows of the tents you can see in the photo of me looking very pleased with myself!

 I had wandered down to the sea and obviously unknowingly paddled along the seashore.  Coming back up the beach where I thought they were... they had gone?  I kept calm until I went up to a family and said 

‘I’m lost!’

Their reply in French obviously tipped me over the edge from being very, very brave to being very, very afraid.

I started to cry.

I was taken to the Life Guards hut on the beach and waited until my father rushed up looking as upset as I obviously was!

Safely reunited with my mum and dad, calm was restored.

 My other abiding memory of that day was the shame of mum making me wear a vest under my cozzie.  The swimsuit I remember so well it was a green knitted fabric which I hated with a passion...

even at five going on fifteen I classed myself as a style icon!?!

Dad with my grandmother and who the other lady clad in fur was, 

I have no idea?

Happy 100th birthday Dad!

I shuffle around like...

an old crone.  Suddenly the years have crept up and bitten me on the bum.  My pazzazz has frankly limbo-danced away on creaking knees.  

Stylish, well for me, stylish,

(for most...

‘Ooh I wouldn’t be seen dead in that get-up!’ type of ensemble) clothes hang desolate in the wardrobe.  Not even all dressed up and nowhere to go vibe!

I can barely be bothered to dress let alone care what I look like.

Even on the farm I cared how I looked and dressed.  Full face slap on, climb on my little red Fergie and go, no worries by the end of the morning my frilly lawn blouse was splattered with cow crap!  I well remember the day a rep came a calling, I roared into the drive - tractor-ago-go.  Sitting there chatting I couldn’t work out why he seemed a little bemused?  It was only after he had gone I climbed off, went in and discovered my left breastical had bounced through the fine lawn to expose the treasure beneath.  You’ve heard of metal fatigue?  The fabric under such extreme duress had given up and rent from top to bottom, as it were! 

Vivian Westwood eat your heart out.

Anyway back to today.  I find I wear the most rag-tag of clothes, not caring a fig about how I look, was it ever thus?  No, before I did take a pride in my appearance, sadly not any longer.  Now, you can probably guess where this is going?  This blooming pandemic!

Suddenly taking my eye off the ball of how I greet the world is having a detrimental effect mentally and physically.  Will my mojo ever find its battery and like the Duracell bunny keep going and going, I idly wonder?