An addition to our new kitchen.

Our new kitchen blind, bright cherries as the kitchen is a very pale cream.

And the amazing thing is DH put it up the day it arrived!

Not a very bright photo, but the clock in the alcove was made by my youngest son in his first year in Comprehensive School so about 40 plus years ago.

Loving our new kitchen.

Chrisxx

 

Did you watch it?

An age gone by, 40 years and it's ending.  But this became my favourite song.

https://youtu.be/aGuNsiSZ9RI?t=12

I once caused a 'people jam' in a shop doorway.. I'd gone there because a friend had said they had a good selection of pure wool. As I was leaving, the in store music changed to this song, 'Especially for You,' by Kylie and Jason and I stopped to sing along with people building up behind trying to get out!

When my daughter who was then in Uni, probably 1988 came home in her first break, she had to watch 'Neighbours' because everyone in her Halls all watched it. I didn't even know there was day time tele! As soon as I got home from work, she'd have a cup of tea ready for us to watch at the 5:30 slot, she had already seen it earlier in the day!

And now after  40 years the very last episode is tomorrow evening, will I watch it? I didn't follow it years ago, but yes I will watch it, it is the end of an era, and good memories of watching it with my daughter.

Did you ever watch it?

Chrisxx

PS The anti-biotics have kicked in and it so good not to have to go to the loo umpteen times day and night!

A surprise and a result!

Surprise, surprise the new tab was rubbish, I was in and out of bed like a yoyo. At 2:55am I gave in and took one of my old tablets, 2 paracetamol and a cystitis relief and I slept for 2 hours before I had to get up again and then slept till just after 7:00am. 

So I feel wrecked again today.. but........

When ever I feel a bit down I look at this little sweetie and she brightens my day.

So we decided to go out for a coffee, getting out and about does help my miserable feelings.

But then, while in Costa coming out of the loo, (where else would I be,) wonders of wonders I had a phone call from the surgery as my sample came up as positive of pathogens and the Dr had written me up a prescription for ant-biotics! Yeh I might get a night's sleep. 

Chrisxx

What I want for Rishi and Liz.

 I had such a miserable day yesterday. I'd had a very bad night, up to the loo about 6 or maybe 7 times, I lost count, so I was tired and I was 'snippy!' I decided enough was enough and phoned the surgery. It took 8 minutes to get through as it was continuously engaged, then,  when I did get through, I was number 11 in the queue; 48 minutes later I spoke to a 'call handler.'

A Dr would phone me I was told, that was 9:05am I waited all morning, she phoned at 3:15pm. Not my usual Dr a new female one.

I explained, but she had my records there in front of her so knew my problem or did she? It was as though she couldn't get off the phone fast enough. She said I could try a different tablet. 

 She has given me, tablets I had years ago and half that dose! What!!! What help will that do?

I'd like Rishi Sunak and Liz Trust to be a patient of the NHS for one week and have a problem. They would not be allowed to have anything more than one of us ordinary patients. I'd like them to them to have to wait on the phone for ages, talk to someone who has no real idea what it's like to suffer, be someone, who is anxious and old and fed up to the teeth of an onward going problem. I want them to have pain, inconvenience and be so tired that even crying is too exhausting.. And the treatment? Just some tablets that probably were cheaper than the regular tabs. 

Yes I think the NHS is failing me and hundreds more.. and what do MPs do, they go privately. 

Chrisxx

The Archers Lullaby

 https://youtu.be/whKw72731L8?t=2

I listen to The Archers and have done for years.

Tom and Natasha have had twin girls, and Natashia and her mam sing this song.

This version is by Cai Thomas a 12 year old with an amazing voice

Hope it plays and you enjoy it

Chrisxx

Thought provoking!

 

Just by chance I've come across poems by Mary Oliver.

The last lines of this one really hit home, and I stopped to think what

have I done with my 'wild and precious life'? 

I can't say at this moment in time, it needs some thinking time.

''The Summer Day”

Who made the world?

Who made the swan, and the black bear?

Who made the grasshopper?

This grasshopper, I mean—

the one who has flung herself out of the grass,

the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,

who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down-

who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.

Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.

Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.

I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.

I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down

into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,

how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,

which is what I have been doing all day.

Tell me, what else should I have done?

Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?

Tell me, what is it you plan to do

with your one wild and precious life?

Thought provoking? I'll get back to this on another day, perhaps. What about you?

Chrisxx

Enjoy, where I live.

 We live just 10 minutes walk from this beach, which looks across to Devon. The views here in the evening are stunning. I take longer than 10 minutes to walk there, so get driven down! It has a boat slipway so easy to get onto the beach.

It's a dog friendly beach so used by the locals, but also in early mornings by the 'Blue Tits' which is a ladies swimming group; they swim all year round, hence the name! Before we moved back here to the town where I was born, we stayed in a B&B every year, which over looked this beach, they allowed dogs, so Nell knows here well!

Rhych point is a stoney out crop which is currently being built up as the relict dunes are shifting. It seems 'blown sand' is a big problem and there is presently a scheme to prevent the dunes shifting. An old lookout a place, now used by bird watchers and fishermen. It stands between Sandy beach, the most popular beach and where I used to play and swim when growing up and Trecco bay where the caravan park is. 

          And look what people leave behind, isn't it clever.

And these were visiting this past week!

             Not a bad place to live, is it? What do you think?

                                                   Chrisxx

How things change.

Phew tis 'ot, so yesterday we struggled to have our Monday 'Diane' session. Diane was our cleaner in Suffolk, she was ok and it helped to have her, when we were first there, as I had those two operations on my arm and shoulder and could do very little, so any cleaning was better than none. She was a very pleasant young woman and brought us the gossip of the town!

But here we can do our own cleaning and apart from the lounge we have laminate flooring, so this little mop is ideal and as it is light I can use it left handed. My step daughter who has laminate flooring agreed it was a 'whizz' to use. I laughed so much when she said how she loved hers. A young woman agreeing to like a floor clearing mop!

40 years ago when I was in College as a Mature student studying for my degree, the young straight out of school girls were horrified, when I said I'd had a food mixer as my Christmas present.  Little did they know, I was grateful my then husband had given me anything, and thinking about it now, there is a good probability he was given it by a firm he did business with.

They thought it was awful that my present was a household one. 

In my eyes it was a dream come true, a food mixer!! As far as I was concerned I'd reached the dizzy heights of the upper classes! And it made super Victoria Sponges.

How things have changed,  my young step daughter loving  a floor mop! What about you, would you mind a present that was a household one?

Chrisxx

 

 

Not the visit they expected..

 Sunflowers, roses and agapanthus, a beautiful bouquet from my young step daughter and her husband, but it wasn't the only gift they gave us, when they visited at the weekend. 

It's nearly a year since we've seen them, so they were amazed to see all the changes. We would have had more than one picture up on  the walls too, except as Dh explained our drill gave up the ghost Friday when he was re-doing the house number on the outside wall. I had bought the drill, when I bought my first house, after my divorce over 30 years ago, so I've had my moneys worth from it.

While they were looking around and admiring the garden, they saw the shed parts waiting to be built.

Right away T said he'd help to build it. So they picked up a drill we ordered on the Sunday morning and Dh and T built the shed and K and I cooked the Sunday dinner! 

Such a help to us to get that shed done, Dh would never had been able to do it himself.

My stepdaughter and I got on fine in the kitchen together, a bit like old times! And the roast pork dinner was delicious!

Chrisxx

'Wool Gathering'

I've sat in my garden enjoying my flowers 'wool gathering' just thinking and dreaming. A lot of the flowers and plants are from seed or cuttings, but some have come with me across the years from other gardens and I love it.

 One of my favourites is penstemon, I have five! And I love the scent of phlox

I dream 'what ifs'; would my life have been very different if my mother had lived? I hope so, my childhood was pretty miserable, but I loved school, especially in my senior school, where because my aunt paid for me, I was a boarder.. I laugh thinking about it, because I read the Girls Friend comic where the girls were in a boarding school. Very very middle class but I wasn't at all, very far from it.

  My grandmother ran a B&B and there were occasions when all the bedrooms were let out to the visitors and my aunty and I slept on camp beds in the shed, which leaked!! So we had rubber mats, (no plastic in 1940s) over us and umbrellas!!

But it was the life I knew and for all its difficulties, I'm here now and living the rewards of that education. 

I've enjoyed my 'wool gathering,' do you day dream?

Chrisxx