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April 30 Goodbye April!It's a sad day for me as I realise that the most exciting thing I have done today is empty the hoover bag! I woke this morning with an urge to do housework, and as there hasn't been a fat lot done over he past few weeks I had to get my sleeves rolled up. Still it looks great when it's all done and the smell of polish is greater than the smell of wet dog!
The fencing people are working in the back garden and as Betsy, our dog, is an escape artist she wasn't long in finding that the old fence was gone and there were wide open spaces to be explored. Thankfully our neighbour Les puts bread out for the birds over his back fence and Besty was taken up with the task of clearing this up just long enough for us to grab her before she furthered her adventures. Yesterday, when I took both dogs for their long walk, Besty went missing in the woods, I knew she would find her way back so Fin and me just ambled on along the path. Only to find Betsy happily ahead of us chewing away on a long dead rabbit's leg! She is quarter the size of Fin and 4 times the bother! Bless her!
April 28 grills, rivets and early birthdaysFunny old day yesterday. The car went in for it's 60,000 mille service and to get MOTed at the same time. For whatever reason my car's headlights come with a grill across them, and a few weeks ago I misjudged whilst parking and cracked the nearside grill on a low wall. Thought not a lot about this as nothing else was damaged, but after 'the bairn' caught her leg on the fracture which resulted in a cut, I ordered a new grill from the Peugeot dealer and thanked God it was her that did it and no one else. I paid for the grill £83.60 and asked them to keep it for when the car came in for it's MOT so it could be done at the same time. Meanwhile, John had a look at it and managed to invert the fracture and with some material fuse it back together. I phoned and the dealer to ask if it was possible to cancel the order and reimburse the money to which they said NO, it was a special order! So in it went yesterday, but when I went to pick it up I noticed that the grill was the same. So whilst paying for the whole thing I mentioned that it hadn't been done and he said, wait for it.....It required special rivets and we didn't realise when the grill was ordered, so it will have to come back when they arrive. I said, I would rather the whole job be cancelled as it was no longer a problem, so he said, wait for it.....
'Well do you have the grill still complete in the box?'
I looked at him and said, 'But you have the grill'.
So off he went into the parts department and came back to assure me that I had the grill!
'Er, no, you have the grill' says I, 'otherwise how could you have tried to fit it today only to find you needed special rivets!'.
'Well the parts department say they definitely gave you the grill' says he.
'Right then,' says I. 'Go and ask your people back there, how did they try to fit a part today if I had it?'
He really wasn't getting it!
All this was going on and there was a queue of irrate customers forming who were waiting to pick up their serviced vehicles. He returned eventually with the parts man and hurrah! there was an apology and best of all I got my £83.60 back!
Possibly you will see a repeat of this tale in NLPH's blog....or not!
'The bairn' texed me yesterday morning to ask me to meet her after work at Smith's (stationers) where the Hairy Bikers were doing a book signing. As I was free I said yes and went along. The queue was to the back of the shop then up the stairs! We joined nevertheless and waited for our turn. The good thing about queing in a book shop is that you can read the books while waiting, and it was a good 40 minutes before we got to shake hands with the jolly pair. Particular favorites I might tell you of 'the bairn'.
Never, never have I seen my daughter lost for words, but there she was, just stood there grinning like a fool! So, dum dah da! saving the day, I said, 'well you have arrived in good time to sign this for her birthday'. Dave picked up the pen and wrote happy birthday Christine and they both signed and wished her a great day. She was of course more dumb struck than ever, her birthday not being until July 29th! As we walked away to the car park, she just kept saying , 'Why mam? Why?' Frankly I was far to far gone laughing be able to answer!
Why indeed! April 24 Margaret & MikeHope you are all feeling good and bright and clever on this changeble Tuesday. Doesn't know what to do, thundery clouds followed by brilliant and warm sunshine.
Our company ended up not coming. Margaret is in very poor health, she was down for a heart and lung transplant, but sadly for her there was no suitable donor before she deteriorated to the point where she was no longer a candidate. Now and other organs are rapidly following her poor old heart. Mike phoned on Sunday to say she was sleeping a lot of the time and was in a lot of discomfort because of water retention, and travelling up from Birmingham would be too tiring.
Mike is my cousin and we have alwways been great pals he being only 3 months older than me. He was an only child with a very overbearing and overprotective mother and father, and he liked nothing better than to visit us for holidays where he was allowed by my mam to do all of the things he wasn't allowed to do at home. He was the only child I ever knew who was made to wear their school uniform throughout the summer holidays. Me mother soon had him into shorts and T shirts when he visited us. He did things with our family that would have had his mother's hair standing on end, he adored my mam and because she had 6 girls, he was very special to her too. So although he was brought up in the Midlands, this has always been his second home.
So, whatever your persuasion, or not, please spare a thought and send out a bit of positive energy to Margaret, Mike and their lovely family David, Debbi and Steve.
Thanks.
Just a note on the brilliance of Margaret, she married one extremely clever if very nervous young man. His staple diet consisted of Tizer and crisps (I swear he invented salt and vinigar crisps) and weetabix. She turned his world around by recognising the man inside. And he now (almost) -as long as it has vinigar on it - eats anything. April 20 All thing technical, and heres me half asleep!Flippin heck! Friday again! This retirement lark makes the weeks fly over.
This week has been one of hunting out a printer for the dad, a new flat screen for me and trying to catch up on some housework after the lack of interest shown generally to the house through the flu thingy.
We decided on an HP all in one printer a) because of recommendations (thanks Anne and Mark) and b) after researching them on the web until our head hurt and we went with the first one we had looked at. So off to PC World to pick it up and we did, and as you do with all things shiny and new, took it out once we got home, followed the dead easy step by step guide to getting it going....and it was bust! After switching it on it just sat there and refused to go any further. So it was packed up again and taken back to PC World the following morning. They did not have another! Oh joy! So we came home with a different one, same price more or less but better specs and resolution for the picies. Shhh! It works and the pics are great!
However, later, the same day as I went to turn on the PC screen, I was met with nothing! I in my mind thought well that is going back under the gaurentee, I've only had it 5 minutes, but woe was me when I looked at the receipt to discover it was Jan 2006 when it was bought. Took it to my little local man who looked at it who declared it kaput.
So back to PC World and got another, so far so good!
As for the housework, I keep falling asleep. Well it's as good an excuse as any. That flu thingy really has left me so tired. I will have to extract my digit this weekend as my cousin Mike and Margaret his poorly wife are arriving from Birmingham on Monday to stay for a week. They are easy company thank the Lord, they are always happy to take us as we are, which is just as well really.
So toodle oo, just hope next week isn't as expensive as this week. April 13 Holy Easter Egg on my face!Thank you everyone for your good wishes, I feel today as though I have surfaced for the first time in a week from having had my head in a bucket of sawdust. Every breath in seems to have been full of some chest irritant, and every breath out I'm sure was pure butane. Not that I have ever sniffed butane, it just felt as though I was highly flamible for some reason. I don't know what it was and care even less, just glad it is on the wane. Although I still sound dog rough, I am feeling a lot better and really enjoyed my lunch today for the first time in a week.
Our dear friend Moira died just before Easter. We were expecting it so although it was no shock, it still was very sad. Her daughter called me to ask me to read at her funeral, apparently she had marked out who was to do what but the only thing she could come up with on my reading was that it it started with - and at this she gave me a short sentence which she thought was from the new Testament, not even a reference to where the passage came from. So I went in search and as is always the way, it was the last chapter of the last place I looked. Now I probably should have said no, not feeling 100% possibly not even feeling 1%, but I didn't. So after copying out the reading into nice big readable words on the WP, I set off for the funeral. Mine was the first reading and a lovely if somewhat complicated one from First Letter of John. I started well, in fact I got to the middle well, then all of a sudden there I was lost......had I skipped a line......missed a word, it just suddenly didn't seem to make sense, yet I knew exactly the meaning of the thing because I'd looked at it several times before starting. So, I just made it up, said the whole of the last paragraph as I had understood it, and didn't even try to read anymore. What a refief afterwards when even the Priest said he only noticed a small hesitation....So apologies to St John for rearranging his words, and I know with absolute certainty that Moira would have had a great laugh. I went back to bed!
Hope all is well with you good folk and that you are all enjoying this glorious weather.
Take care. April 04 Don't mention the cake!It was John's 70th birthday on Monday, (I was a child bride)! He wanted no fuss, and that is exactly what he got. We had a drive into Northumberland and a walk in the afternoon and the dad the bairn and I all went for a Chinese meal at our regular faithful in the evening. No fuss! That is until I decided that at the very least, he would have to have a cake. Mistake! I baked a small but very nice lemon cake for us but his sister who lives in a sheltered complex where everyone knows everyone else told her friends, consequently he recieved about 15 cards from her neighbours, so I baked another cherry cake and sent it down to share. Unexpectedly, all the 'wobbly walkers' we go walking with on Wednesdays sent him cards, so I have baked yet another large chocolate cake to take there this afternoon. I never bake these days, and now I'm all baked out! Having said that, we have 8 coming for Easter Sunday, so I had better wash and starch the pinny and start again.
As you can see (fingers toes and eyes crossed) the PC is working, I haven't yet caught up on other peoples blogs but promise to do so ASAP. It has had a good seeing to, so to speak, and is working at the moment like a dream. I don't think PCGuard which I buy from Blueyonder, has been very efficient, I am assured that all is well now.
Any advice on a decent photo printer for the dad to buy with his birthday money would be gratefully received. We have an Epson stylus PHOTO RX420, and it really is grainy and the colours are awful. He wants something he can stick his chip into (other than tomato ketchup) and edit and print up to A4. Thanks.
So fellow bloggers, thanks for bearing with me in my barren days, have to say, it's probably been just as well, I would have hated to glue up the keyboard with cake mixture.
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