The trouble with . . .

jigsaws is that I become obsessed. I started a 1,000 piece one yesterday and have completed three-quarters of it. It's called Sweets of the 60s, but doesn't include the Mars bar. It does however feature a Marathon bar. So I checked: Marathon was indeed introduced in 1968 but Mars bars came into being in 1932!

Things you learn from jigsaws. I would have put Marathon in the 70s.

* * * * *

Lovely walk with Daughter today. I arrived at her house in my cardi accompanied by drops of rain. "Is it going to rain?" Daughter said.

"Nah, it'll be fine," said I, looking anxiously at the sky. Just before I left the house Husband had kindly told me there was a 38% chance of rain, but who believes weather forecasts anyway?

By the time we got to the beach, it was warm and sunny. Cardi off.

Walking back around the cliffs it was very windy. Cardi on. 

Cutting back through the village it was warm. Cardi off.

I can't remember where my cardi was by the time we got back.

* * * * *

Husband has tinnitus, a constant ringing in his ears. I seem to have developed Big Bennitis, an occasional bonging in my ear. It's a good job I'm seeing the audiologist next week.

Check the list

I didn't laze on a lace-covered ottoman, nor did I clean the toilet. I went for a walk with Elder Son instead.

Time with Daughter and family at the beach on Saturday, time with Elder Son and GrandSon3 in the woods on Sunday. I love my life.

The only thing missing is Younger Son and family. 

I have accepted their move to Italy (three years now!) and love my Italian holidays but I'll never stop wishing they lived nearby. 

* * * * *

After weather fit for a sea swim on Saturday we've returned to what has sadly become the norm: wet and cold and miserable. It really can't go on like this much longer. We must be due for some prolonged sunshine soon.

But it gives me an excuse to sit down and do a jigsaw, my first for ages.

* * * * *

Husband dressed for the gym this morning, went downstairs, and realised he'd forgotten his shorts. He was still in his boxers.

I am thinking of sticking a checklist next to the front door.

Are you dressed?
Zipped up (Husband)?
Have you got your keys/phone/wallet?
Do you know where you are going?

Me today

The sweetness of doing nothing. Poor woman. You can see the inner turmoil, the battle she is having with the voice in her head that is saying, "You can't just lie around and do nothing! You should be doing something!"

Will she win the fight? Or will she get up and clean the toilet?

Watch this space.

No Lights tonight

Binge-watched Grey's Anatomy last night until gone midnight. No Northern Lights. Hung on a bit longer but it was getting cloudy, that sort of hazy cloud that gives you hope that perhaps it's not cloud but is really. Went to bed.

But forgetting that disappointment, I went for a swim in the sea yesterday! Swim? Quick dip. It was very cold. Once your legs went numb it wasn't so bad though. Daughter and Son-in-law were braver than me and did have a good swim while I played in the shallows with the grands. 

The beach, Pobbles, was heaving with people. Not heaving in a sunny day at the seaside in Brighton way but in a beach where we're more used to being the only ones heaving.

What Pobbles is usually like

The water monitor said it was safe, by the way. 

Am I the only one?

I had a dreadful night's sleep last night, waking roughly once an hour - but I still managed to miss the Northern Lights!

Twitter and Facebook are full of amazing photos but, thankfully, also full of people asking, "Am I the only person who slept through this?"

A friend took this photo across the bay.

I can now say I slept through the Great Storm of 1987 and the Aurora Borealis of 2024.

Did they make an appearance in your area? Did you see them?

Apparently there is a faint chance they may appear tonight so I shall have to get a nap in this afternoon so I can be up and ready. But it's already clouding over . . .

Why do they hate me?

Why do plants hate me and weeds love me? (I know weeds are plants too!) I am kind to plants and mean to weeds but it makes no difference. The weeds flourish and my plants curl up their leaves and die.

Roses excepted. Roses love me, something I am very glad about. Here is one of the early reliable ones. I didn't plant it but I do love it.

We have this little corner in our garden. It's quite shady and has done a stint as a herb garden and failed, and now just gathers stuff.

I am thinking dragon but Jabblog had an interesting statue on her blog so I am pondering options. I don't want anything too naff - or perhaps I should go over-the-top naff?

I've picked some rhubarb and added it to frozen rhubarb for the crumble I'll cook this evening, and the gooseberry bushes are covered in babies. Last year, one day there were gooseberries; the next they had all disappeared, eaten by birds we assumed. Unless someone climbed over the gate and stole them all!

The grass is greener

Because Monday was a Bank Holiday my cleaner didn't come so I've had to resort to doing my own cleaning! Having got used to it looking nice I can't leave it until a week Monday when Bev returns.

I am so impressed with how much she gets through in two hours. Admittedly she doesn't stop after ten minutes because she's bored, or she's thought of something and needs to look it up, or, indeed, has to blog about it.

It's a fairly desultory clean I'm doing but the sun is shining so don't want to waste too much time indoors.

Husband mowed the lawn yesterday. It's amazing how much better everything in the garden looks with a neat lawn. Which brings me nicely to lawn mowers.

You wouldn't think a program about the history of lawn mowers would be interesting, would you? But it's fascinating. The rotary mower was invented almost two hundred years ago and the model that exists today is more or less the same as the original.

The inventor/manufacturer offered it as an alternative to scythes, and advertised it to men of the household, saying they need no longer get a man in to do the grass: they could do it themselves with the added benefits of getting fresh air and exercise. I suppose in those days people rich enough to afford lawns as opposed to growing their own veg could also afford to keep a gardener on hand.

The program is abridged from The Grass is Greener by Tom Fort.

Dumped!

Got to Zac's this morning to find someone had dumped an armchair outside. 

It wasn't there last night.

The other part is to be found further down the road.

I can't imagine where they were going or what they were hoping to do with the chair.

It's like the chair in the middle of the woods.

If you're just going to dump it why go right into the depths of the woods?

Anyway my new earrings arrived this morning. Aren't they fab?

Meanwhile I keep getting emails form Amazon suggesting I might enjoy my own books. If I don't enjoy them there's not much chance of anyone doing so I would have thought.

P.S. I have been a responsible trustee and reported the dumped chair to the Council.

P.P.S. I also emailed the Principality Stadium to ask what the sign was. 

What is it?

We spent a lot of time wandering to and fro in the Principality Stadium before the gig. First of all finding the way to our seats - it doesn't help that the stair numbers on the wall bear no relation to the numbers on the tickets - and then, having decided to get food before sitting down and trying to find an outlet that had moer interesting food that on offer as standard. 

Frustratingly there were food outlets outside the stadium but inside the ticket gates. We had walked past them on our way in but at that point hadn't made the food decision. Do you think we could get back to those outlets? Everywhere we tried, "No, you can't go through here." One old man on the gate was particularly stroppy. "There's food inside." 
"We don't want that food."
"It's the same on all the levels."
"We don't want that food. We just want to get through this level to access that bit I can see through the fence."
"You're not allowed in this level; your tickets are for level 6." (Which was complete rubbish as we'd walked through all the levels already.)

We gave up in the end and Husband had a hot dog - not as bad as it looked - and I had chicken strips. Just chicken strips. No option of chips or anything with it. They were okay just boring.

Anyway, rant over. I wasn't going to remind myself of that irritation before what was an amazing evening but I remembered a sign I saw. I didn't take a photo because I had my tickets on my phone and that was stressful enough, and I assumed I'd see it again on the way out, but didn't. So this is what I remember of the sign. 

It was sticking out from the wall and just along from it there was a sign for the ladies' toilets. It sort of looked like someone praying but not quite. (You may have to blur your eyes a bit to see it as a person at all.)

I've checked and there doesn't seem to be a prayer room in the stadium - could have come in useful during the last rugby season - so I don't know what it signifies. Any ideas?

Hermits

I knew Sean from Zac's was going to the concert too so when he tweeted he was looking forward to it I commented, "See you there!"

It was a joke because how likely was it that we'd see each other amongst the 50,000 people attending?

Husband and I were just heading for the gate of the stadium when a voice called, "Liz!"

Yes, it was Sean. 

We saw him again ten minutes later, inside the stadium this time. I also bumped into an old friend, Sue. 

What are the chances?

It was a largely grey and bald audience although quite a few young people in the mix too. We're all there waving our arms (or arm in my case) to "Tramps like us, baby, we were born to run," and I'm thinking, "A more unlikely bunch of tramps born to run you'd be hard-pressed to find than the doctors and teachers and respectable church-goers in the audience."

* * * * *

Yesterday I had a lovely walk with Elder Son and today I walked with Daughter. 

The tide was very low at Pobbles and in one of the rock pools I spotted a family of hermit crabs.

There was what looked like a film crew at Pobbles. We wondered if they were recording an item for the news about the sewage discharges that have been happening recently. The water companies are highly criticised for giving their executives bonuses while not repairing leaks.

It didn't deter several people from swimming though on this, one of the first really warm days of the year. Daughter and I will swim soon! (I am writing that here to make me do it.)