Ground control to...

Major Ted!

Work goes on a pace.  If there’s one thing I love and that is getting out there and doing stuff.  I suppose it comes from my other self sufficient life?  Oh and my very hands-on farming life.  I well remember a rep calling and saying to me

‘Look at your hands!’  

Horror writ large on his face, as his well manicured digits hovered over his order pad!  I have my mum’s hands... large, capable!  I can still feel the stinging on the back of my legs as I ran ahead of her up the stairs, in trouble again!  And they say only children are spoilt!?!

Yes my hands are built for work, soil under the nails, I just love it!  No acrylic nails for me thank you!  Come to think of it it would be like putting lipstick on a pig... so wrong!

Anyway back to the greenhouse base.  The slabs have been jiggled about, it is now a case of levelling.  The husband is the main man here as my ‘That’ll do!’ mantra, all my life (yes really!) just won’t do.  Reluctantly I will be the second-in-command, novel but there you are!

Spam....

how does it work?

Anyone know?

I am often known as a daft tart for my odd take on things and skewered way of thinking.  However could it possibly be if the post either has a heading i.e. my last post, that could be misconstrued or the content is slightly risqué?

Does that flag it up?

Next question surely a real person doesn’t sit reading blog posts all day and decide Ah ah, here’s  one!?!  Maybe they are so advanced a machine does it?  Anyway next question does anyone read this rubbish?  And more importantly then act on it?  I think not!

One thing I do know, it so blooming tiresome having to check and then delete.

With that I leave you with this image which some of us remember fondly or possibly NOT?

Off volunteering today so hopefully being of some use instead of the full-on pain I usually am!

Chin, chin!

Forking hell...

we made it!
Second instalment.

This is now...

It put up one hell of a fight.
The ball is now definitely in our court... boom, boom!
Look closely Ellie isn’t carrying a hand grenade or in her case mouth grenade, but a Kong.
The ground is clear, trouble is the next two box balls need lifting.  The one on the right is looking decidedly rough, the one on the left looks fine to be transplanted... trouble is where?
We have marked out the area for the base and now play with graph paper and bits of paper to work out where and which slabs will fit?
The only question now is... 
Do I need to get out more?
Careful how you answer that!

‘We’ve got them by...

the balls!’ 

we cried as commando-like we crept up the steps.  Ellie was the advance party sent ahead to sniff out where they were camped.

We weren’t really surprised at her report that they hadn’t moved.  It was obvious on an earlier reconnaissance that they were settled in for the long haul.

How to get them out was the main thing?  Yesterday we identified the weakest and concentrated our efforts on killing that.  In the process we did sustain one injury nay death!  The garden fork broke its back in the initial onslaught.

The Commander-in-chief sent a squaddie out to the local arms department for a new weapon of mass destruction.

‘Make sure you get the very best they have!’ 

she barked as he slid on his tum away from the theatre of war.

More to follow on the exploits of 
Mum’s Army...

The exhibition...

on at Olympia sounded just my cup of tea.

It was called something along the lines of 

‘The Spiritual Health and Well-being Show’

With me being an ageing hippy crossed with Mother Earth I just had to troll along and find out more?

I seem to think it was shortly after Simon died.  I was ripe for the discovery of whether there really was an afterlife... or so I thought?
At one stand I passed a lady stepped out and said you have the most wonderful aura!  I really didn’t know what to say?
What do you say?
One of the talks I booked for was an American woman who tuned in to guides.  No, not Girl Guides but the guides apparently we all have.  This I have got to hear!  The place was packed, as she got into the zone I felt more and more disgruntled as folk put their hand up and asked if they had a guide.
‘Oh yes and yours is called 
Big Foot Running Bear!’ 
or some such twaddle.  As the names got more and more fanciful I got more and more twitchy.  I was sat in the middle of the hall and the middle of a row of enthralled faces lapping it up.  Now, I thought how can I get up and discreetly slip away?  There was no way I could see.  I couldn’t stay a minute longer.  As if by magic my hand shot up...
as if by even more magic her eye caught mine.  Fully expecting a similar question her brain was  trawling like the Enigma machine through her book of most outrageous Indian chief guide names.  Fully expecting a similar question she kindly enquired as to my request.  Imagine my surprise as from out of my mouth these words issued forth...
‘I need to get away as I don’t believe a word of it!’  
A hush fell over the hall, the faces of rapture took on a meaner glint.  As I sidled past dagger looks dogged my every step.  I walked up a silent hall with a sea of blunt-force trauma glares accompanying my every move.
Relief spread over me as I went to walk out of the hall.
By the reception desk a man said very quietly you maybe interested
 to know your mother is your guide!
My heart filled to overflowing as I stumbled away as my lovely mum died in 1971 and I still miss her.

This memory I have just remembered thanks to Rachel’s blog post ‘Missing mum!’ on my side bar.

I can feel a...

strop coming on!

And why you might well ask?

The truth is... 

Look let’s cut to the case, now I am becoming a world renowned, global even(?) blogging person of some note.  I am afraid to say I feel the very strong need to lecture you all on your holiday arrangements.  With the world in the sorry state it is in I fear it falls on me to advise on air travel.  My millions I admit are sadly in air miles not real  spondolicks, you understand? However I am the person that has first class, err sorry I meant first hand knowledge of the problems that are facing the world. From my very elevated position I see things so much more clearly than YOU.

My suggestion nay demand... oops, sorry I forgot I have turned my back on my silver-spoon-in-mouth upbringing.  My ‘gentle suggestion’ is, if you guys give up your yearly holiday then the air space will be clearer, cleaner enabling my frequent private jet flights to get to my next money making venture so much faster.

Alright, alright, I know this may not go down too well and you might even think about the additional flights for my retinue of staff?  The many and various MET close protection officers jetting about all the while sat in business class counting their overtime pay.

That as luck would have it, isn’t my problem as I don’t need to pick up that particular tab.

All I ask is for you to do as I say not do as I do.  Not a lot to ask is it?

Although I spurn my title to you guys...

‘Call me Lettice!’

at home my staff are required to first thing in the morning address me as Your Royal Blogging Highness, thereafter Ma’am to rhyme with jam and to show due respect by a nod of the head.  Ellie as we speak is practising her curtsey.

Sound like a plan?

You know it makes sense!

She swept into...

the restaurant without an ounce of guile.  The door opened and out of the corner of my eye I spied an apparition of Aran meets Fair Isle knitted in the shape of a tepee.  Hard on her heels was a man closely resembling a yeti, all hair and no shape.  I watched in total awe at the complete and utter lack of self consciousness as they settled down to enjoy their meal, happy in their own skin and each other.  The true mark of genuine eccentrics.  Oh how I admired them!

I am afraid...

 all things dog seem to be occupying our life at the mo!

This morning found another pile and piddle awaiting our ‘pleasure’.

Last night late, we checked whether both tanks had be emptied...Yes!  I breathed a huge sigh of relief and went happily to bed.  That for starters was a foolish assumption. Luckily the vet had suggested it would be best to keep her appointment at 10 this morning.  What a good job we did.  She said if we could bring in a urine sample that would enable them to see what if anything is going on. 

‘You must be joking she doesn’t like us looking at her as she performs let alone get that close!’ was my pithy reply.

‘She’s a collie, that can be a problem!’

Added to which in the early days she would be frightened to go for fear we guessed at having been beaten for doing what comes naturally.  The thought makes my blood boil!

As luck would have it she had had an accident after we had all been in the garden.  Having stone floors we mopped up the wee with kitchen towel, which we managed to retrieve and squeeze out some pee.  The things you do for love, or rather... the things he does for love!?!

Ellie has a urinary infection, that would explains it!  Probably all her hang-ups stem from the way she was treated in the early days.

The choking episode was in a funny way a blessing, while we were there we got her checked over as she had only recently started having problems indoors. 

After the visit, we decided to give ourselves some fun on the very top of Clee Hill deep in snow... a clear day where on the top we could see for a hundred miles... exhilarating!

How do we know you might well ask? A chap at the trig point showed us all the mountains, named them and told us how far away they were... so there!

Twitterstone Clee taken from Ludlow not by me!

Snapshot of my day...

After the excitements of yesterday I was looking forward to a quiet day at home, measuring, manoeuvring, trimming, planning and scheming.

Last night an SOS came in for me to go back to the hospital today to help with a tricky situation.

So after having a mid morning coffee I set off, having taken the precaution of wearing blinkers just on the off chance you understand, that interesting artefacts make themselves known to me as I perambulate to work.  Husband waits at home in fear and trepidation as to what or who might accompany me home?

As he would say I do have previous on both counts!
I came away in tears, I know I am going to have to toughen up and I will.
After lunch we set to in the garden, all in readiness for the greenhouse.    In a couple of hours a rampant shrub was cut down, chopped up and taken to the tip.  The itinerant grille is slowly being man and woman-handled up the garden path.  I don’t mind telling you I’ve been led up the garden path more times than is good for a girl.  The latest plan is to lean it on the garden wall and train a clematis through it.
Ellie will have a bombproof  kennel with flowery walls, just what a discerning dog deserves, nay demands, don’t you know!

Just back from a trip to the vet. This afternoon during our major clipping and cutting back.  Ellie always keen to help, started chewing sticks.  She also has a liking for stones!  After her supper she started retching and rushing out to eat grass.  I naturally panicked and off we all went to the vets.  After a thorough check up she was declared fit.  
Quite an eventful day.

You know how...

it is? You step out on a bright sunny winters morning, shades on looking for all the world like the  Meryl Streep personage you’d like you think you are?  Mae West on a bad day might be closer to the truth!  Clean, with an empty tum in the very likely event you will be put on the scales?  Your yearly check up is long overdue and you want to look the picture of health obv!  In the blink of an eye the BP monitor was clapped on my arm.

‘Err...!’ I feebly said ‘My blood pressure will be off the scale that is why I have taken my readings at home!’

The nurse brushed my burbling aside, just as I was about to trot out my next line of defence... white coat syndrome.

‘Well it’s quite good! she said.

Probably because I thought I was bomb proof by my last skirmish.  All eventualities I thought had been covered so I strolled in quite the cool dude hence the nearly normal reading.

On my walk into town in a side street I spied this.

Walking away I thought I like the look of that, I wonder if it has been left out for the bin men?

Once out of the surgery, bloods taken, I was off on a mission.  As I crested the hill I could see it was still there...

Oh deep joy!

I knocked on the door with the hope that it had in fact been put out for collection.  

No reply!  Across the road were two men working on a car.  I explained my mission and one of them said well that is a holiday cottage.  Oh dear!  What to do now?  I must have looked  crestfallen as he then went on to say that a car had pulled up with two women in it and offloaded it.

‘What do you mean... fly tipping?’

‘I suppose you could say that!’

There and then I decided my mission was twofold, one to do my bit for the planet and two to carry home this wonderful piece of  artwork.  Casually I strolled over and lifted the thing up, well that was the intention... the flaming thing weighed a ton, solid cast iron. I literally couldn’t even carry it a yard let alone the hundreds and hundreds of yards to my gate.  All the while my mind was thinking of the wagon appearing over the hill to take the rubbish away.  Husband was out with the car, how was I going to get it home especially as I was so very ’weak’ from the blood lost in the surgery!?!  The men carried on tinkering with ne’er a care as I huffed and puffed.  A lady appeared with a dog and offered to help me carry it.  Well the two of us got it a couple of yards, when I said don’t worry I will battle on alone.  There was nothing of her, the dog was getting worried and I felt I’ve got myself into this pickle.  It was my crazy idea when all was said and done!  As she left she said why don’t you walk it home.  That was a master stroke.  Side to side I slowly crabbed along.  It then started to rain, I carried on regardless with each manoeuvre getting harder.  The tarmac has the scars to prove
‘LL wos here!’
 What happens if a car comes along this narrow lane I thought between moves as I endeavoured to get my breath?  And what happens if I drop the ruddy thing on my toe?  Flat on the ground it would be impossible to lift!  I was committed now... some might say I should be committed?  Round the corner five lads from the college came with their Subway snacks they had nipped out to get between lessons.  Now I never play the feeble female card normally... this most definitely wasn’t normal!  Boy, not only did I play it but I played the old dear card as well... shame!
Meryl Streep/Mae West came riding to the rescue as my persona as if by magic took on that of a 
very feeble old dear.  Method acting eat your heart out!

‘If you just carry it to the college, I can do the rest!’

The five boys set too, the shock on their faces as they realised the weight of it was a picture.  They carried it home for me.  What super stars.  Cans and a note will find it’s way a few doors up to the college.  

I now wait to see the husband’s face when he gets back?

A peaceful evening...

just the dog and I.  All is quiet as the man is out at choir.  I love Monday evenings.  We have an early supper and he is gone by just after 7. Looking back on the day I feel I haven’t really done very much.  I’ve made a sourdough loaf, played around with pieces of paper on a graph trying to get the easiest and most economical way to lay slabs to make a greenhouse floor.  None of today’s tasks too taxing until I got to the hospital for my voluntary shift. For some strange reason today I struggled with the demands that dementia puts on people.  One patient in particular has become more anxious since last I saw her.

‘Don’t leave me, I have so much still to do, the menu hasn’t been agreed!’  Another lady who has been there for months was due to go home today only for it to be cancelled due to flood water across her drive.  One patient I thought I would never see again is brighter, talking, eating.  Dying is a strange thing, you go when your time has come, she lives to see another day.

I felt drained as I walked up to himself waiting in the car to take me to the builder’s merchant to choose paving.  Usually as I walk home I  use it as a time of reflection, each footstep helping me to carefully shake off the pain of feeling helpless in the face of the gradual deterioration of others lives.