Been AWOL for weeks!!

It's been a while since I have written anything but we have been away. A week in my home town Porthcawl in Wales. We enjoyed ourselves even though we had rain some days, Nell didn't care, she loves the beach.

Since home I have done some one handed weeding, quite difficult as I always feel I will over balance. but the garden is beginning to look really nice again.

On the landing windowsill my orchids have continued to flower...

 

 

 

And this is our first lettuce from the garden, a Webbs Wonder which hearted up and was crunchy and delish. We ate it tonight with cold chicken, and English toms, grated carrot, cucumber finely sliced, sweet corn and crushed new potato, very nice.

We left our tomatoes in the green house when we went away with upside down lemonade bottles, with a needle hole in each neck, filled them with water and they were fine, so we won't mind leaving them again.

I haven't sewn my quilt,  but have knitted a pr of socks and have one done of a second pair. I suddenly had this urge to finish my knitting WIPs

My arm is more or less the same, still useless, so depressing. I have blood tests tomorrow checking on my vit.D and B12 levels. I have taken the 4 week dose of vit D3. so hope that shows improvement. It is now 14 1/2 months since I broke my right arm!!

 

So  now we're out of the EU but life goes on; I am walking every day and have a new pretty walking stick as my third leg,  as I kept feeling I would fall again,  so this has given me confidence and I can fairly fly along with it.  My new pedometer records my steps, aerobic steps, miles and calories.. the most I did in one day was 1.4 miles but had a few rests through the walk. And although I managed to lose a pound in weight when we were away, I put on 2 1/2 the week we came back!  

It's been lovely to read all your blogs, sorry I haven't commented but I have admired the work you all do and love all the .... we're trying to save and be frugal blogs.. it makes me feel we're blasé about shopping, we buy what we like regardless of cost most  weeks.

Stay happy.

 

XX

 

My Real Children ( Book review)

‘My Real Children’ by Jo Walton

If I had looked fully at the description of this book as being Sc-fi Fantasy I wouldn’t have picked it up at the library. I just looked at the author bit and read she was from Wales, but now living in Canada born 1964, the same year as my daughter, who is also called Jo, although I always call her Joanne and she too was born in Wales. I have silly reasons why I chose certain books. But omgosh I really liked this book. Even before the story started to unfold, I knew it was a book I would enjoy, because it was written well, no silly long facile descriptions of what people were wearing, which I hate and is often found in some books which I close unread after the first few pages.

It opens with the old Patricia very confused,  in a nursing home remembering her life but which life pathway was real? Patricia, Patty, Patsy, Pat or Tricia, Trish, all the same woman. But two different lives, all decided by an answer to a question, one answer ‘yes’, the other ‘never. That really is the crux of this story; how one decision, one answer, can shape a whole lifetime, and the lives of those who come next. How generations of one family can be formed because of what one single person decided to do. The two stories then run concurrently, a chapter at a time.

Who is Patricia? Is she Trish, or is she Pat? Was she married with a family, a supply teacher and homemaker, or was she a bohemian travel writer, fighting for her rights and determined to live her life as she wants to? Both of these women have a wonderfully intricate story to tell and Jo Walton has so cleverly created two hugely different lives. I loved both Pat, lesbian with partner Bee and Tricia down trodden wife of a sod of a husband. It is cleverly interweaved with the history of the fifties through to present time, but also fiction, which are absolutely fascinating. For example, we read of Pat struggling to get a mortgage in the 1950’s as a single woman; of her liberation from her husband, Mark and childbirth with the introduction of the contraceptive pill in 1961 but also of ‘Prince Charles and Princess Camilla’ and of couples getting married on the moon.
In one narrative we are in a world where John F. Kennedy was killed by a bomb in 1963, and in the other, transported to a world where Kennedy chose not to run in 1964 after an escalated Cuban Missile Crisis led to the nuclear obliteration of Miami and Kiev. In one, by 1985, AIDS and leukaemia could be cured. In the other, Pat loses a son to AIDS and because of the fallout from the nuclear bombs people die of cancers. For me, this is a story that is unique and original and beautiful. It's intriguing and it's confusing, yet it is filled with emotion and passion and characters who are forward-thinking and beyond the norm, yet are realistically portrayed.

A book well worth reading, perhaps more than once, in case some little details are missed. I think Jo Walton must know Italy well as her descriptions are completely delicious and along with Pat and Bee, I absolutely revelled in the art, the architecture, the scenery and the food. I am so glad I chanced upon this book.  I found this a completely fascinating, rich and enthralling read. I think I might look at other books by Jo Walton.

XX

Not good news..

Last week I couldn't sleep one night, there was something wrong with my arm. Dh helped me sit up with pillows propping me up so that my arm was resting on two pillows. It felt as though something had moved in my arm and it was pressing just by my under arm. I could feel something hard and so could Dh. When I phoned the hospital I was given an appointment to see the Consultant that afternoon. The x-rays showed the 'ironmongery' in my arm had not moved, it wasn't that causing the pain, but my shoulder has dislocated! The surgeon explained that my muscles in my arm have gone to 'sleep' and can't hold the joint in place. What else can go wrong? I am in despair and wonder will I ever be well again, I have been very weepy again.  Once again I have to wait, there is no treatment, just to wait again.. grrrrrr!!
But to cheer myself up I popped in to see my sewing group and chatting to them on Saturday morning, did me the world of good, so I am going to go back and join them in a couple of weeks time. One of my wips is a BOM I paid a lot for and I could quietly sew that with the help of paracetamol!!! Thank for all your comments and prayers.. and thank you too to my church which is praying for my recovery.
This is the BOM called 'Down in the Garden.'

There are 9 blocks and I had completed two, so quite a lot to keep me busy!

XX