Rain Rain Go Away

The snow has all gone at last, but now we have rain. I think I would rather have snow because I am so sick of rain, it seems as if it has rained with hardly any break for at least a year. I know I am exaggerating, but that is how it feels!

We drove to my mum's on Sunday, it was nice to be able to get around more easily but the rain had washed the snow away and the world looked very dull and bedraggled after the beauty of the snow. The winter jasmine which grows around our door had been looking splendid before the snow came but now 
some of the bright yellow flowers have lost their colour and they look very sorry for themselves. The flowers should stay until March, but it looks as if they are on the way out. 

The River Nene skirts one of the roads that we take on the way to my mum's house, then the road crosses the Nene and heads towards Bedford. The river was very high and in certain parts it had spilled over into the surrounding fields. This time last year we were worried that there had not been enough rainfall (and it has hardly stopped raining since!) but now we have the opposite worry, the last thing we need is more rain.

I don't want this post to seem like a catalogue of moans because there was one bright spot amid the damp and gloomy garden - new shoots! It is only the end of January and no doubt we can look forward to plenty more rain and perhaps more snow too, but we can also look forward to better days ahead because even in our bedraggled and neglected garden we can see the promise of spring!

Money Makes the World Go Around

I wasn't so concerned about the world going around, thanks to Robbie it was me who was going around in ever decreasing circles. He had an appointment somewhere north of here (I forgot to ask exactly where, but it involved heading towards Birmingham on a train). I altered my usual Monday routine so that I could drop him at the station at the time he wanted. I came back to the house to pick him up and he told me that he was ready, he just had to put his boots on, so I went out and waited in the car. Robbie turned up a few minutes later and I drove him to the station. He said a cheery goodbye and trundled off to buy a coffee for his journey and I drove back across town to the supermarket.

I parked the car in the supermarket car park and as I walked across to get a trolley I opened my handbag to get a pound coin out of my purse. My heart sank, there in my handbag was Robbie's wallet!! I turned around and went back to the car, I sent Robbie a text to let him know I was heading back to the station. I thought it would take me about half an hour to return the wallet and get back to the supermarket, after all Robbie couldn't go anywhere without money to buy a ticket. How wrong I was!! Baldrick Burgess had apparently bought his ticket for today's trip at the end of last week when he was at the station. So, when I arrived back at Northamptom station Robbie was just arriving at Rugby! I had to sit and wait, getting increasingly irritated while he travelled back from Rugby.

Finally he arrived looking very sheepish, I reunited him with his wallet and dashed back to the supermarket. I rushed around gathering the essentials in my trolley, but I didn't have time to do a proper shop because it was almost time for me to go to work. Men!! 

Take a deep breath and count to ten!

The title of this post sums up the the advice that I follow when Robbie is being irritating - a lot of deep breathing goes on in our house! This morning Robbie and I decided that the time has come to buy a new mattress and it is probably about time we had a new duvet and some new bedding as well. It will take a day or two to decide on the best mattress for us, but Robbie wanted to go and choose the duvet and the new bedding this afternoon. So when we had done all the routine jobs that couldn't be ignored, we set off to buy new bedding.

The first problem that we encountered was choosing the duvet. It wasn't as simple as just choosing a king size one, Robbie had to read and compare the information about each type of duvet. He decided on the 'bounce back' duvet - I wonder if that means that it will pick itself up off the floor and bounce back into place when it slips off the bed! 

Having chosen the duvet we then turned our attention to duvet covers and that was the way the trouble began. Robbie wanted designs with huge flowers all over them, but I don't 'do' flowers, I wanted a more simple design, stripes or a pattern but not flowers. Robbie moved from one hideous floral design to another and when his powers of persuasion failed he tried insults instead. Apparently I have no taste and I am stuck in the '80s - probably true on both counts, but all the insults in the world would not tempt me to buy a duvet cover covered in flowers.

Eventually he gave up on the flowers and decided that he wanted a duvet cover with embroidered butterflies - no way! More 'negotiations' followed and he gave up on the butterflies in favour of a duvet cover with pictures of buildings on it. Is it too much to ask to want a nice simple duvet cover that will not offend the eye? I used my veto on the buildings and directed his attention to a couple of other designs that I though he would like, they were not exactly my choice but if he liked them I could tolerated them. After in depth negotiations we settled on a design in the style of Cath Kidston, it was a bit fussy for my liking but at least it will not shout at me every time I walk into the bedroom.

I thought we were almost done but choosing a new bath mat proved almost as difficult as choosing a duvet cover!    

A Flying Fox?

I am fed up with the snow, it has stubbornly refused to go away and we have had ominous warnings of more snow for the weekend. Each morning this week I have paused on my early morning trip to the bathroom to look out of the landing window to check on the snow situation. The window looks across the flat roof of the utility and the garage towards our neighbour's garage and the side of their house. The snow has remained deep and undisturbed except for the tracks left on the surface of the snow by a passing bird. However today was different something had got on to the roof and walked from the front to the back. 

At first I assumed it must have been a cat, but when I thought more about it I was sure that the tracks were made by something a bit bigger and heavier than a cat. I took a closer look at the prints and having checked on the internet I realised that they were not feline prints, a fox had walked across our roof! It seems that the trellis and climbing rose near the utility room window make a perfect ladder. I didn't know that foxes could climb but there are plenty of clips on YouTube which prove that foxes are very determined and if they need to climb to get to their desired destination they will do so. 

Timing is Everything

Our Sky Box is making some very ominous noises and  every so often it decides to record oddly so that part of every sentence is silent. Clearly it is on it's last legs and we need to replace it very soon. Yesterday the Sky Box was humming again and Robbie decided that we couldn't go on like this, so he started to research the likely cost of a replacement. He mentioned that this would be a good time to move to Virgin but I wasn't convinced, we have our internet and home phone from Sky and I rather like them. We had such a bad time dealing with aol, and at least since we have been with Sky we can speak to people who speak English and who can respond to the problem without reading from a script. I told Robbie that I had to get on with my work and we would have to talk about it another time.

When I got home from work yesterday evening I spent two or three hours in the lounge with Robbie, then I went to bed because I was tired. At about 1.30am I woke up and went downstairs to get a drink, then on my way back to bed I took a detour via the the bathroom. Within a couple of seconds Robbie knocked on the door and asked what I was doing - what did he think I was doing in the bathroom at 1.30am for heaven sake! Surprisingly my response to him was polite, I explained through the door that I was 'using the facilities'. He replied that he thought now was a good time to discuss what to do about the Sky box. I am afraid that my response was somewhat short and tinged with menace. I reminded him what the time was and I told him in no uncertain terms to go away. He may be a slow learner, but he got the message loud and clear, when I got out of the bathroom he had vanished!

Bernard the Bathroom Cat

Yesterday after a rather frustrating day I sat down in the lounge to relax for a couple of hours before bed. Before long Bernard came into the lounge and settled down on my lap and began to purr. It may sound like a very ordinary thing, hardly worthy of comment, but for Bernard it represents a huge improvement since she became part of our family a year ago.

For those who don't usually read the blog we first became aware of the cat a couple of days before Christmas 2011 when the turkey that was left in the utility room to defrost was partially eaten by an animal. It turned out that a stray cat had broken in through a sealed cat flap. This is what I wrote about it early last year.

"The saga of the cat continues, every time we put her out she sits outside meowing all day and all night, then just when you notice that it has all gone quiet you realise that she has broken in again! We can't go on like this so I decided that today I was going to take her to the vet to see if she has been chipped. There were just two small problems, catching her and getting her into the cat carrier. 

Yesterday evening my son and daughter caught her - eventually! She had hidden herself behind the fittings in the utility room again and it took forever to coax her out. Finally she was confined to the kitchen (where we hoped she wouldn't be able too hide, but she had other plans. She made her escape and this morning she had to be coaxed out from under a bed! 

Once again she was confined to kitchen and when the rest of the family had been despatched to work and school, I was left to get her into the cat carrier. There was just one problem the cat had decided that there was no way that it was getting into the cat carrier. She grew several extra legs (or at least it seemed like that), she did some amazing gymnastics, the only thing she didn't do was get into the cat carrier. Then after about ten failed attempts I managed to get her in and lock the door of the carrier behind her. I took a few minutes to calm her and let her get used to the carrier before heading off to the vet.

According to the vet she is a female and aged about three. She is not significantly under weight, but she is timid. She is not on any missing lists, I have checked with every group in the area, so the vet thinks that the best thing to do is to look for another home for her."

We didn't plan to keep her, but she was so skittish that it was not easy to find anyone to take her. She has always been a very clean cat, never any accidents but she spent months hiding away from us, she just coming out to to eat before darting back into her hiding place. For some reason the bathroom was her favourite hiding place, she liked to scramble right behind the bath where no one could reach her. We were reluctant to give her a name or to get too attached in case we were able to rehome her and until we had taken her to the vet we didn't even know if she was male or female so we jokingly referred to her as Bernard (named after Nursie in Blackadder, a girl with a boy's name) and by the time we were ready to give her a name she had 'become' Bernard.

I think she will always be shy especially with strangers, but she has a family now and she seems happy. When she came to us her coat was dull and harsh to touch and she was always hungry, but now she is in lovely condition and her coat is soft and silky. We didn't intend to become a three cat family but it is nice to see what a bit of love and attention can do to change the life of a stray.

Worry often gives a small thing a big shadow - Swedish Proverb

Today was very frustrating, one of those days when everything seems more difficult than it should be. I had a hospital appointment this afternoon, I'd been looking forward to it and dreading it at the same time. I badly needed some answers but I wasn't sure that I was going to like what I heard, so I felt very anxious.

Robbie came with me and since parking at the hospital is challenging at the best of times, I decided to park in a nearby car park and walk the short distance to the hospital. We still have snow but as the hospital is very close to the town centre I was fairly sure that the pavements would be gritted - they weren't! We slipped and slid towards the hospital very slowly indeed, but we made it without any serious problems. The road and pavement leading to the hospital main entrance were treacherous, it beggars belief that the local authority take no responsibility for making sure that roads and paths leading to hospitals, schools and the like are cleared and made safe. Having negotiated the icy pavements I had to pass a huddle of smokers who blocked the pavement just outside the hospital grounds. I was on my way to the chest clinic and the last thing that I needed was their second hand smoke!

I didn't really get the answers I wanted, just lots more questions, more medication. To be fair he did take my problem seriously and he understood how debilitating this cough is, it makes every aspect of my life so much more difficult. He requested lots of tests including an MRI scan, blood tests (I think they took a whole arm full of blood!) and various breathing tests. I have to see the consultant again in 2 months, I really hope the increased medication will help because the thought of putting up with this for another two months makes me feel like giving up. 

We had to go to a different part of the hospital to get my blood tests don so we walked back towards town a different way, but the paths were just as bad and our progress was slow. We walked through St Giles churchyard, it is beautiful at any time of year but the snow against the white snow-laden skies made it look magical, for some reason it made me think of Narnia. I have happy memories of walking through the churchyard with my aunt when I was a child and it looked so beautiful today that I asked Robbie to take some photos for me with his new phone.

Robbie took me to the Cordwainer for something to eat because I had been too anxious to eat much at lunchtime. He likes Wetherspoons food but it didn't really 'float my boat' and it was so dark in there, I like to see what I am eating. It is scary, but I have to admit that I sound more like my grandma every day!
   

Everyone wants to escape sometimes

I am getting bored with this now, the snow is still here and it looks as if it intends to stay. My son's school was closed and my daughter was unable to drive to Leicester to get to university, so we had the pleasure of their company at home. My son wandered around with an air of disapproval and he resisted all my efforts to encourage him to do something useful. My daughter was less visible but it was clear that our weekday routine was getting in the way of her plans for the day

Robbie was up and ready for work very early this morning, he wanted to get all his work done so that he could finish early and go out this afternoon. The snow has kept him away from the railways for a few days and it doesn't take long for him to get withdrawal symptoms. So this afternoon I braved the weather and the roads to drive Robbie to the station. The main roads were not too bad but if you strayed on to the very icy side roads you had to take your life in your hands.  

I only had an hour of 'peace' without Robbie, then I had to go to work, but it least it gave my son and daughter a chance to watch television and take possession of the lounge for a few hours. Robbie returned late but happy, the train for his return journey was rather special (according to Robbie) so he had plenty to tell me about his afternoon. I'd been worried about him falling over in the snow, but thankfully he managed to stay upright thanks to his Dr Martens shoes.

Snowflakes are one of nature's most fragile things, but just look at what they can do when they stick together.

It snowed again on Sunday and by lunch time the roads were grim, so once again the snow dictated that we would not be going very far. My son and daughters decided to get the sledge out and enjoy the snow. They spent a happy but very cold afternoon at our local park going up and down the hills on their sledge as they have done so many times before during their childhood. In fact my brother and I enjoyed sledging in the park when we were young and probably many generations before us did so too.

Robbie and I occupied ourselves with more mundane tasks, clearing snow, sorting the car out and putting more grit down in a vain attempt to keep the path and the driveway clear. We took the car for a short drive to keep it going (I don't want a flat battery again!) but at least we managed to enjoy a quick coffee while we  were out. 

I like long walks, especially when they are taken by people who annoy me - Noel Coward

Robbie and I had planned to go out for the day today, but the snow dictated otherwise. It would have been madness to try to go very far today, but I wanted to get as far as the supermarket because we needed supplies and I didn't fancy trying to carry everything home. Robbie went out and cleared all the snow off the car, it proved to be a long and exhausting job. Then when I got in the car and attempted to start it, there was a tiny splutter and then nothing. That dratted car is definitely male - high maintenance and totally unreliable!

We had to jump start the car with the help of my daughter and her Yaris. Then I thought it would be best to take the car for a drive before going to the supermarket. It wasn't a very fast journey but at least we stayed safe. By the time we got to the supermarket Robbie was in a foul mood, I tried to ignore it and keep things pleasant, but it was hopeless. He was in the sort of mood where nothing was right, every item of food that I selected was wrong in some way and as we progressed around the store our trolley remained ominously empty. When we got to the pet food section he even criticised my choice of cat food - apparently he had appointed himself as spokesman for the cat! Having provided a detailed explanation of the cat's likes and dislikes he chose a selection of food that was more in keeping with the cat's (expensive) tastes! At least the trolley was filling up so we were making progress of sorts.

We got to the meat section and it seemed that nothing pleased him so I asked if he would like some gammon for a change. I suggested that it would be nice with new potatoes and vegetables but he said that he only likes gammon with egg and chips, so I said that we would have that instead. I went over to choose the gammon and he turned his nose up. That was the last straw, I abandoned the trolley and left him to have his strop on his own while I regained my composure in the magazine section. That is his favourite part of the shop so I knew he would turn up eventually. He appeared surprisingly quickly still with a face like thunder so I left him there looking at the railway magazines while I went off unhindered to pick up a few essentials.

The calming effect of railway magazines should not be underestimated. When I returned to collect Robbie he was 'mellowing' and by the time we got home he was keen to find a way back into my good books. It took me a little longer to 'thaw' but before long harmony was restored. The snow on the other hand showed no sign of thawing, in fact it looked as if there was plenty more to come.