Sick notes

I write this from my sickbed.  One thin, pale hand faintly gripping my quill pen, ink bespattering my fine lawn nightie as I scratch down my thoughts, the servants tiptoeing around me as they add more coals to the fire and bring me my morning gruel.

Well, almost.

I had to go into hospital last week for some non-life-threatening but fairly significant surgery, and am still very weak and feeble as a result.  I was kept in overnight, which is incredible - isn't it wonderful what they can do with keyhole surgery these days - and have only had to take paracetamol and Ibuprofen to manage the pain.  The single most tiresome after-effect is the tiredness, and physical inability to do Stuff.

I can't lift anything heavier than (for example) a half-full kettle, and bending over to try and pick something up from the floor is slow and painful.  I'm becoming adept at using my foot to flick things up to within hands reach.

Not everything, obvs.  Soft, flexible, grippable things like a sock, or a tea towel, or a tissue.  If I drop a book on the floor, there it stays until Mr WithaY can pick it up for me.

I'm not allowed to drive for a month, possibly 6 weeks, which is already becoming irksome.  Thankfully the weather since Christmas has been appalling, reducing my desire to go outside and stand in it.  I am hoping that by the middle of next week, after my stitches have been removed, I will be able to go out with Mr WithaY and the dog for short strolls.  I won't be able to hold the dog lead myself, as she instantly behaves like a world champion sled dog when put on the lead, but I will be able to accompany them.

Speaking of the weather, which of course I am, being British and all, hasn't it been wet? And windy?  The river out the back has been raging, and a couple of times has overspilled the banks onto the meadow which our back garden is bounded by.  According to The Internet, which is never wrong, most of Salisbury is under water, and the valley between here and there is now some sort of aquatic haven for all manner of waterfowl and (possibly) sea serpents.

Just to make things that bit more amusing, Mr WithaY has contracted the Village Cold, which all our neighbours had over the festive season. He is shuffling round the house, unable to breathe or hear properly, flushed of face and hoarse of voice.  I look forward to catching that myself in due course, but hopefully it won't make me sneeze too often, as that hurts my poor hole-punched tummy.

Also, the dog had to wear one of these for a few days as she managed to stab herself with a stick (we think) whilst cavorting through the woods like a maniac:

I might get one too if my stitches start to get itchy.

WaterWorld

Well yesterday was exciting.  Mr WithaY was off out working, and after we'd walked the dog, he headed off by about 9am.  So far so good.

I pottered around in the kitchen for an hour, doing the usual domestic drudgery stuff, but that came to a grinding halt when I realised that we had no water coming out of the taps.  To be specific, there was no hot water coming out of the kitchen tap, and the barest trickle of cold water.  There was no water at all upstairs.

I went over to the petrol station and asked if they still had water.  Yes they did.   I asked our immediate neighbours if they had water.  Yes they did.

Oh good. Just us without, then.

In the course of the conversation with the neighbour, he told me that there was a "huge leak" in the village somewhere, which the people at Wessex Water had been looking for for months.  My heart sank. I telephoned Wessex Water and told them that I had no running water, but the neighbours did. They were very helpful and said that they'd send someone out "soon."  

Sure enough, a short (ish) time later, a large smiley man knocked on the door.  I took him round to the back garden and showed him what I had discovered - namely that the hole in the patio where the main water stop-cock* is sited was completely full of water, and a small spring could be seen in one corner, making a pretty cascade across the garden.

He stripped off his high-vis coat and plunged an arm into the water to turn off the water at the mains.  A few moments later, his hand emerged, clutching the broken stop cock.

"Ah,"  he said.  "That's not supposed to happen."

We agreed that it was unfortunate, standing out in the rain as he tried to massage life back into his arm.  Apparently our cold water is really, really cold.

He sucked his teeth.  I hopped from foot to foot anxiously. Water continued to cascade across the patio into the lawn, making an impromptu bog garden feature.

"Well, the guys are on their way," he told me.  "I'll wait in the van till they arrive."  Off he went.

Some time later, two chaps arrived with a lot of digging equipment, and a small pump.  Things got noisy.  A large hole was dug.  More water was pumped out of the hole and across the garden.  The dog was beside herself with excitement, so I only took her out into the garden when she had her lead on, as I didn't want her to run into the way of the workmen, or, more worryingly, run out of the garden if the gate had been left open.

After a couple of hours, the workmen showed me the water pipe they had extricated.  It looked like a long cylindrical colander, peppered with small holes, one huge hole at the end.   Apparently it must have been leaking for years, which explains why the patio is in such a terrible state at that end of the house.  The good news was that the pipe can be replaced. The bad news is that there's more pipe, probably in a similar terrible state, running up into the house, and anything inside the house is our responsibility, not that of the Wessex Water people.

Arse.

Another prolonged period of drilling, pumping and stop-cock jiggery-pokery** followed, and the workmen told me that the water "ought to be working ok" now.

Nope.  They then tried to rejig the water softener that lives under the kitchen sink in case that was the problem.  Nope.  They sucked their teeth and hummed and hawed.  One of them said "This looks like a pretty new kitchen.  I don't suppose you'll want to have all these cabinets cut out, do you?"

No I fucking won't.

The long afternoon wore on, the rain continued to piss down relentlessly, and I was still without running water.  The workmen rigged up a sort of interim system involving long plastic tubes which at least allowed me to use all the taps in the house, and left, having called the Wessex Water plumber to come and "sort it out for you."

I took the dog for a walk, despite the monsoon that West Wiltshire was currently enjoying.

On our return, the plumber rang and said he'd be there in 15 minutes.  Sure enough, he arrived as promised, and I explained the situation to him.  He looked at the water softener, then at me.  


"I'm really not sure why they called me in, to be honest," he said.  "I don't think the water softener is the problem here."  I agreed, but for the look of the thing we went through a complex rigmarole of turning taps on and off as he fiddled with various stop-cocks under the sink.  After a few minutes of this, we agreed that the water softener was indeed functioning fine, and the real issue was the perforated water pipes under the house.


So, that's how things have been left.  The workmen promised that they'd be back today to finish up, but so far there's no sign of them.  My back garden is still a tangled mess of bright blue pipework, bags of cement, heaps of spoil, and of course all the crap we took out of the garage and stacked on the patio till we could find a home for it.


And of course, it's still pissing down.


In other news, the dog is brilliant.














*Sorry. It's hard to talk about this without using many, many double entendres.
**Told you.

Jubilant

So, what did everyone do over the long Jubilee weekend, eh?  Street parties?  Picnics in the park?  Champagne and strawberries under a glorious blue June sky?  Lining the streets of London to wave a flag and cheer at the Queen?

No, me neither.

I was in a field.  In Derbyshire.

Why oh why oh why was I in a field in Derbyshire?  You may well ask.  Well.  Mr WithaY's new chosen career is that of bushcraft instructor, and he had been asked to go along to the Bushcraft Show to help out with one of the trade stands - a company he has been training, and latterly working with.

He asked me if I'd like to come along, to meet his colleagues, look at all the other stands, and see what it was all about.  I said yes.  But only on the condition that I could book us into a local B&B, as I have decided that I am too old, too creaky, and in all likelihood too wheezy to camp much these days*.

I found a pub with rooms a few miles from the showground, booked us in for three nights, and off we went on Friday afternoon.  It was a hellish journey, inevitably.  A long Bank Holiday Weekend, plus the usual evening rush hour traffic meant that it took us probably two hours longer than we had expected, but we arrived eventually.  Mr WithaY rang his colleagues to find out if we were needed to go and help set things up, but they were only then leaving home, and weren't likely to arrive much before midnight, so we were free to go and grab some dinner and have an early night, ready for an early start on Saturday.

So.  Saturday morning - having left the pub too early to enjoy the included-in-the-room-cost breakfast chiz chiz chiz - we drove across to Elvaston Castle, and this is how the showground looked:

As you can probably tell, it was a bit damp.  I did like the giant three-point teepee though.  It had a big tv screen in it.

Saturday was successful, there were a lot of people wandering around, and there were many demonstrations of various skills going on.  Flint knapping proved very popular, and drew crowds every time the knapper started working.

See how he knaps.  I asked him what he does with all the broken bits of flint once he's finished, and apparently they all get placed in a special spoil heap at a university, to ensure that the archaeological record isn't polluted with 21st Century flint arrowheads.

There was also a lovely lady making willow baskets and things.  I watched her for ages.

It made me want to have another go, after the excellent day Mr WithaY and I had last Autumn in Somerset, basket weaving.

There was also a chap there who had made several canoes and kayaks.  He told us how he'd travelled to Canada, visited some Colonial re-enactment type place and asked them if he could learn to make a canoe in their workshop.  They considered it, finally told him he could, but only if he agreed to dress as a Voyageur while he did it, and talk to the public.  He spent three months dressed up, learning canoe-making, and said he loved every minute.

Unfortunately, all day on Sunday it pissed down.  The rain woke me in the night - did I mention we were staying in a pub, not a tent? - and it didn't let up for about 36 hours.  The numbers of people coming through the show were correspondingly low.  As I hadn't packed my wellies, by lunchtime my feet were soaked and I was cold and miserable.

I think this encapsulates the mood:

Hopelessly optimistic, offering strawberries and scones in a sea of mud and cold, cold rain.

I took myself off to the car and sat there in the dry, if not the warm, reading my book, playing Angry Birds and snoozing intermittently until it was time to leave.  One bright spot was a phone call from some lovely mates who live nearby, who were:

(a) miffed that we hadn't thought to ask them if we could stay at their house, and

(b) seeing if we'd like to meet them for dinner later.

That cheered me right up.  A wet, cold, grim day was thus lifted by a lively and good-humoured evening with our mates, and several large glasses of wine.  Mmmmm wine. These are the mates we went to Cornwall with a couple of years ago.  When Mr WithaY fell in the river. Yeah, you remember.

Monday was much better.  The sun shone, there were loads of people, and suddenly everything looked cheerful and interesting again, rather than just rain-sodden and squalid.

We left at about 6 in the evening, having helped to take down the tents and so on, and had an uneventful and much shorter journey home in the bright evening sunshine.

One other highlight of the trip was travelling over to Matlock to pick up my clock.  Remember I said I'd commissioned a clock as a "Congratulations on doing 23 Years in the Civil Service" present for myself?

It was ready for collection last weekend, so we went and collected it.  Readers, it is a thing of beauty, and I am completely thrilled with it.

Look, here it is in the box, about to be put up on the wall in pride of place.  The brush is for dusting it.

And here it is in situ:

It is keeping excellent time so far, but my genius clock-making mate assures me it will need to be adjusted sooner or later.  In the meantime, I am enjoying the look of it, and the rather reassuring tick-tock it makes.

It's joined my Rickenbacker on the list of Things I Will Save In A Fire.








*Although if we get one of those funky circular tents you can fit a wood-burner in, I might reconsider

Damp

So let's talk about the weather, shall we? It's, what, August now? When did we last have more than 4 consecutive hours of fine weather? Late June, was it? Come on...sort it out, weather gods.

Having said that, yesterday was reasonably dry in the morning, so we were able to get out in the garden. To be fair, we are always able to get out in the garden, it's not like the back door is bricked up or anything. We choose not to use it, much of the time, and prefer to spend our time gazing mournfully through the rain-spattered windows, making tea and bitching about the weather.

Well, we are British, after all.

But Sunday. Gardening. Yes.

The back hedge desperately needed cutting. It was looking like one of those gap year students who spends 3 months hitching round Australia and never quite masters hair management...all weird spikes and bulges and long floppity bits. Between the two of us, using the hedge trimmer, the stepladder and two extension cables we managed to get the majority of the hedge sorted. Sadly, however, there is one corner that was justout of reach, and remains defiantly sticky-uppy. We'll have to ask if we can get at if from next door's garden, if it stops raining for long enough.

Once the fun bit was over, the slash and burn element, we had the boring tiresome tidying up to do. This was enlivened by Mr WithaY dragging a huge tarpaulin out of the garage and laying it on the lawn, rather like someone about to do an impressive magic trick involving Folding.

Then the pair of us, using shovels and rakes and other implements of destruction*, dragged all the hedge cuttings onto it. We rolled the tarpaulin up like a giant swiss roll, and took turns laying on it to squash the cuttings down.

Eventually it was a manageable size, and Mr WithaY deployed his trusty para cord to tie it all together. I couldn't decide if it looked like the corpse of an elephant seal being taken for discreet disposal, or the world's worst Christmas gift ever.

We lugged it to the tip and dumped it, pretending we were Mafia hitmen.

A speedy trip to Homebase after that, where we bought a gazebo tent thing for when we have people over and it rains, as it has done every weekend for about 2 months. While we were there, I got some funky solar lights on sticks to put in the flower beds, and a set of fairy-type lights on a net to put in a tree or in the gazebo tent thing, also solar powered.

Every moth in Wiltshire will turn up, I'm sure.



*Thanks Arlo

Water on glass

Today it has been All About Rain. I see that the Met Office are revising their initial summer weather forecast from "Phew, what a scorcher" to "Fuck me, it's wet."

I was at home all day, and after a late night last night I slept ridiculously late this morning. I thought I'd have got home by 10.30 last night, but I hadn't taken into account the fact that the later trains do Different Stuff to the usual commuter trains I catch.

For example, the 8.20 from Waterloo stops at Salisbury, but instead of the FRONT three coaches carrying on down to Exeter, the BACK three do.

However, the announcements that they make as the train is sitting in Waterloo are a complete lie. They tell you that the front three coaches will continue after Salisbury, which is what the earlier trains do.

So, if you are a lady with many, many heavy bags, and a reserved seat in the BACK three coaches, and you move to the front after hearing that announcement, you would be mightily pissed off if after a couple of stops they then said that the BACK three coaches were going to continue after Salisbury.

She had to pick up all her many, many bags and drag them all the way back through the train, grumbling profusely. Can't say I blamed her.

Anyhoo, the point of this is that it takes much longer for them to sort the train out in Salisbury, so you sit there for bloody ages* till they finally decide that all is well and they can continue on their merry way.

In the end I was home by 11, but Mr WithaY was still up, watching TV and keen to hear how my exciting cosmopolitan evening in London had been. He is planning Great Things for the Virtual Village Fete, so I suspect this weekend we might have a flurry of creativity in the WithaY household.




*About 15 minutes

Stormy Weather

It's like the Apocalypse outside. Howling winds, crashing rain, trees blowing wildly, the occasional car sploshing along the road. All the lights went out a while ago, plunging the entire village (as far as I could see, at least) into pitch darkness. Which was fun.

The darkness only lasted for about a minute, quite long enough for me to decide to go and light candles, and start cooking supper, in case it happened again. So far so good.

I bet something bizarre happens to the house while Mr WithaY is away. It usually does, usually involving the boiler.

We have had the old TV aerial taken off the chimney, so that no longer reverberates through the whole house every time we get a gust of wind.

I thought about lighting the fire this evening but I am rubbish at getting the bloody thing to stay lit. All those years in the Girl Guides and nothing to show for it, except the ability to remember all the words to "Singin' In The Rain*," and to weave stupid, temporary, flimsy, pointless campsite gadgets out of twigs and string.

I wasn't very good at being a Guide, really. Not a team player.


*Which at least has the virtue of being relevant this evening.

Water

Next door's meadow is flooded. Something that has not happened in the almost 8 years we have lived here. The water is probably about 100 yards away from our house, which is scary.

The forecast says no more rain until next Tuesday, but it was torrential on Friday night, so it will take a while to drain into the river, I suppose.

I have moved my guitar upstairs for safety.

Water on the brain

I can't believe it's still raining. I am sick and tired of this bloody weather. Time to emigrate somewhere with blue skies, warm sunshine and friendly simple people. Like, oh, the summer of 1976.

Drove home from work tonight through some incredible Wrath Of God rain, some of which may in fact have been hail.

Discovered in the course of the journey that my windscreen wipers are buggered, so need to get some new blades pronto.

We had a pretty quiet weekend, hence the slight blog hiatus. I sat down a couple of times to do a posting but couldn't think of anything even halfway interesting, so didn't bother. What a slacker.

Trouble is, as soon as I start to try and think of stuff to post, my mind goes blank.

Like now.

Pigtastic

So, I've been to Bath today.

Look:



We thought about going to have a giant teacake there but we ate our own weight in chicken at Wagamama's for lunch, so were too full on the way back to the car. Maybe next time.

It was rainy and warm, a nightmare combination, because you're wearing a coat to stop you getting wet, then you're far too hot. Because you're wearing a big raincoat.

Why aren't scientists fixing stuff like that? Tch.

Bath is having some sort of pigfest . We spotted several.













I particularly like "Piggles" at the end there.

The one with the bandage had a little sign saying "I have been to hospital, please DO NOT sit on me." Maybe I was seeing things, but he had a worried look in his eye.

I have a lovely picture in my head of 25 foreign* tourists all piling on his back and trying to take an amusing photo, with hilarious consequences.

Other news: Remember my glorious raffle victory from the weekend? Yeah you do. When I played my guitar with the band. Did I mention that already?

Well, check this out, all you sad unlucky non-raffle winners:





How great is that, eh?

Also. Been shopping for anti-mole hardware.

The problem:





Bastards have dug trenches all over the front garden, and are now making mole hills. So, I took Eldest Niece into town to the ironmongers** where we both eyed up the handsome young man behind the counter while I asked his advice. I bought this:



It's been installed:



Having a top-of-the-range sonic disrupter in the garden hasn't stopped Mr WithaY jabbing the ground with his longbow arrow, muttering furiously.

Tomorrow we're off to Salisbury, to the cinema if we can all agree on a film. I want to see the X Files, but as I am the only geek in the house, I may get outvoted.

We are definitely going to the Thai restaurant to eat, and I expect we'll look at eye makeup for a few hours. Eldest Niece is a bit of an expert. I haven't used so much makeup since I was testing the new camo range at the AGC open day.

Oh yes. Bought some hair straighteners. Managed not to set my hair alight. A proud day. My hair looked pretty much the same, but lacking the interesting waves and curls which make it look a bit special. So. Money well spent there.

I am going to give Eldest Niece ringlets*** at some point. What larks. It's fun being a girl. I forget sometimes.


*Italian, probably

**She's having the time of her life.

***She asked me to, it's not a punishment.

Something for the weekend

Aaah, Friday. Praise be. There were times this week when I thought I'd never see the end of it, but here we are.

Today has actually been rather good. Drove to work in horrific monsoon-stylee* weather for our big team planning session. One of the team, in a fit of enthusiasm had said he'd bring in cakes**.

He brought cakes, in a variety of flavours, doughnuts, cookies, and a large bunch of bananas.

Also sausage rolls and chicken pies.

Not quite sure why he thought we needed so much delicious baked food at 9.30 in the morning, but I didn't hear anyone complaining about it.

We ate our way through the mountain of comestibles and did our planning, and it was actually rather good. I suggested to the team that we stop at lunchtime to go to the pub. They liked this idea, which evolved into a "why don't we just work through till we finish this, then go to the pub and have an early finish?" Which we did.

I think that we have all put in enough additional hours over the last few weeks to merit an early end to the week on a pissy wet Friday afternoon.

If anyone wants to complain about it, by all means*** email me.

Drove home in yet more pissing rain, skilfully avoiding the massive tailback on the A303 at Stonehenge. Managed to get stuck behind a car of terrified Japanese tourists as I traversed Salisbury Plain. I knew it was a car full of tourists because it was brand new and driving painfully slowly along the white line in the middle of the road.

I think when foreign tourists see a 40 sign, they think it means kilometers per hour, not miles per hour. Anyway, this lot were doing about 25 mph and creating a huge grumpy tailback behind them.

I overtook at a safe bit of road, causing them to panic unnecessarily and swerve into (and then back out of) a tank crossing (not my fault, they were just crap at driving). When I looked in my rear view mirror I saw that the car was full of Japanese people, all scared witless. The driver looked like someone trying to pilot a light aircraft to a jungle airstrip in a hurricane, all white knuckles and huge eyes.

I expect they were heading to Bath, 30 miles away. Good luck with that, then. They're probably still negotiating the one-way system as I type this, six hours later.

My lovely guitar teacher turned up at 6 and we had a great lesson. My rendition of the Police's "Can't Stand Losing You" is almost passable now. Yay me.

Just as he was leaving, Bro-in-Law WithaY arrived, and we amused ourselves for the next hour or so by eating cupcakes and putting the world to rights. Mr WithaY then arrived home, having driven all the way back from Richmond in Yorksire in the rain. Poor bugger.

Plans for the weekend include visiting father-in-law WithaY in hospital tomorrow and then possibly going to the pictures to see Hancock, if we can be arsed. And sleeping. And maybe making some more cupcakes.

I will probably also spend at least some of the weekend staring out at the rain, grumbling.

I am in the mood to buy some stuff from Amazon. I have no money, but that seldom stops me. I fancy a few new cds and at least one book.

Heard Steve Wright in the afternoon talking about a book which supposedly allows you to analyse a person's personality by their stuff.

Hmm, let me think about this theory.

If you came to my house and it was full of, say, railway memorabilia, you would draw some conclusions. Perhaps that I was interested in railways? Had always dreamed of being a train driver? Lived on my own and quite possibly had a railwayman's uniform up in my bedroom?

Likewise, if I came to your house and it was full of soft toys and pictures of unicorns, I would draw conclusions about you. Perhaps that you didn't get out much? Read too many sci-fantasy novels? Had issues around forming adult relationships?

I should write a book.

*The climate, not the chain store...it wasn't weather dressed in over-priced floppy dresses and teeny colourful cardigans.

**To help us think.

***And I will ignore you, you whinging bastards.

Rain

The rain today has been torrential and scary. In about 30 minutes at lunchtime we saw the garden develop several new water features. At one point I thought the shed might be flooded.



Check out all the apples on the tree. With any luck we'll be able to harvest a fair few later in the year.

In case you are wondering, the cage in the corner is not for Mr WithaY. Our dog used to stay there when we were out. He hated it.



Other news: My jam making went well. ALthough I think I may have made a couple of pounds of strawberry toffee as well as jam. Tastes nice though.

Broken II

Not to be outdone by the hand-fracturing antics of my gorgeous guitar teacher, Mr WithaY has today been diagnosed with a "deep-seated chest infection".

Does that mean it's in his arse, or what?

Anyway, he's on a ton of scary drugs and sounds like he is going to cough himself inside-out.

I have been working at home drafting a Concept of Analysis, which is every bit as dull and tiresome as it sounds. In between times I have eaten sandwiches, watched a couple of episodes of Futurama on DVD and looked gloomily out of the window at the pissing rain.

Oh, and I painted my toenails*. Woo fucking hoo.

Later that same day, I made the world's most disappointing pasta dish for supper, which, despite being full of lovely ingredients was dull and all but tasteless. The best part of the whole meal was the steamed broccoli. Fucking hell. What kind of a meal is that, where broccoli is the highlight, eh?

Still, other than that, it;s been a nice day.

Mr WithaY gave me a present, whcih was most unexpected and lovely. It's a book for me to take on holiday called "City of Laughter", and it's subtitled "Sex and Satire in Eighteenth-Century London". Brilliant.

I love social history. And the Eighteenth Century. I was a secret, slightly ashamed, fan of Georgette Heyer for years but now I know how many primary sources she used for her historical novels, I feel almost virtuous reading them.

It's making learning fun.

*Lilac, in case you were wondering.

Rain

I am hacked off with the weather. We had freaky snow on Friday, bloody torrential rain most of yesterday, and yet more rain and high winds all day today.

Still, am working at home tomorrow so will avoid any floods with a bit of luck.

Other news: Am learning to play Def Leppard's "Bringing on the Heartbreak" on my guitar.

Hurrah for me.

Visitors

We've got a visitor. He seems to have taken up residence in the front garden for the time being, under the Vibernum (sp?) bush.



He looks pretty grumpy, and is limping like a pirate, so I wonder if he's been winged on a shoot somewhere. He's safe enough in the garden though.

We have some other visitors in the back garden too. Not as cute as the pheasant, and a lot more destructive.



(Image nicked from here )

After months of picking the buggers off one at a time from the Window of Doom, Mr WithaY finally agreed to put down some poison.

So, a jolly trip in the pissing rain to the ironmongers, where he bought a huge box of Rat-B-Gone and I got some blue hyacinths in a basket. And some Christmas-tree-shaped biscuit cutters. And a sparkly candle.

Its a great shop. Everything you need, and then some.

Also went to the opticians where he was getting new lenses for his diving trip in January. I amused myself by trying on lots of glasses (one pair at a time, not all at once like Professor Branstawm ). Found some I may get after Christmas. I'll keep you informed.

While I was sat waiting patiently, flicking though one of the many magazines in there (and I noticed they all had small text - how cruel) a woman and a small boy came in. They were greeted by one of the staff, then sat down next to me to wait their turn.

The boy started messing about with the camera machine thingy - the one you can take on-screen photos of yourself with to see how you look in different glasses. He started off just pressing the buttons and making stupid faces.

Fair enough. I mean, I'd been doing the same thing myself not five minutes earlier.

But then, bored with this, he began messing about with the Zoom function, and jumping back from the camera, each time getting nearer and nearer the racks of glasses behind him.

Eventually, inevitably, he jumped back and crashed into one of the stands, knocking all the glasses to the floor. The woman (I assume his mother) leapt to her feet and rushed over saying "Oh! Have you hurt yourself?" To which the little oaf replied in a fake-sad voice "Yes, I have rather hurt my back."

I was dumbfounded.

In fact, I was sorely tempted to give him a sharp ding round the ear and say "And now your ears hurt too. Sit down, stop causing trouble and wait quietly."

However, I decided an afternoon being questioned by the police for assault and battery was not likely to be much fun, so thought better of it. But it was so, so tempting.

And then that bloody woman clucked and fussed around him, checking his back was alright (yes of course it is, he's faking it and is hoping not to get into trouble you stupid fool) before half-heartedly picking up some of the glasses. Gah.

And then we went to Lidl. I love that shop. If you've never been, go. They have more amusing sausages than is entirely reasonable.

Shed failure

In the office today. Very very tired. Once again failed to sleep well, which is my own fault for two reasons:

1) Spent much of Sunday sitting on my fat arse instead of getting any exercise.

2) Had cheese for supper. And crackers. And an apple. But mostly lots of cheese.

I had intended to give the enormo-shed in the back garden a coat of wood preserver but it was pissing down with rain for a lot of the morning. By the time it stopped I was outside of a splendid roast chicken Sunday lunch, and frankly couldn't be bothered any more.

Will go to Homebase this week to get a huge vat of green wood stain stuff though. Then if the weather does dry up enough, I can get out there and get painting. No excuses. Unless I can't be arsed.

I have to get it done soon because Kevin the Decorator is due back soon to sort out our downstairs loo, and he'll tell me off if the shed still isn't painted. I promised to get it done after he fixed the roof, a month ago.

Other news: Mr WithaY had to travel bloody miles on Saturday to pick up one of his dive cylinders. Very sadly, the shop in Westbury where he used to go to buy mysteriously expensive but apparently essential diving kit, and get his tanks cleaned and filled, has gone into receivership.

Annoyingly, they had one of his tanks at the time. He got a letter from the adminstrators (Solicitors? Receivers? Whatever) telling him if he wanted it back he had to contact the sub-contractor and go and fetch it. So, he rang them, found out they were on some industrial estate between Exeter and Taunton (look on a map, American readers) and off he went on a jaunt down to the West Country on Saturday.

I elected to stay home and get on with a few domestic chores* as I didn't fancy sitting in the Landrover all the way to nearly Exeter.

And then I watched the BLOODY rugby whilst ironing. Gah. Was a great game though.

Was told a fab story about one of Mr WithaY's colleagues. He was meeting a mate in a layby one evening to go stalking (deer, not celebrities). As he sat in his car waiting, a chap came and tapped on the window.

Colleague (opening window): Yes?

Mysterious layby stranger: You here for some cock?

Colleague: No! Thank you.

MLS: Oh. Ok. (Exit stage left)

Time passes, colleague still waits patiently. MLS returns and taps on the window again.

Colleague: Yes, what?

MLS: Want to give it a try anyway?



*wasting my life on the Internet, emptying the dishwasher, drinking tea, thinking about cleaning the windows

Rain. Again.

Well, it's pissing down again. So, that'll be summer over and done with then. A week and a half of sun, in between 5 months of Weather From Hell.

Driving to work earlier, there were big chunks of the road surface washing away on the roads across Salisbury Plain.

I'm betting we'll have flash flooding over the next 24 hours if it keeps raining, as the drains are all overflowing.

In the village there were huge pools of standing water around each drain, and there was a new stream running down from the fields into the road.

All a bit worrying.

Things at work are pretty slow at the moment. It's summer holiday season, so loads of people are out of the office, but even so things seem to have all but stopped in their tracks. Not quite sure why, so have spent the morning deploying my finest and sturdiest poking stick to get things moving again. We shall see.

Found out last week that the party we're going to on Friday has my lovely guitar teacher's band playing. Excellent.

And we had an invite to another mate's party in September. A weekend of camping, eating, drinking, singing and playing the fool (I expect). Really looking forward to it. I might chicken out and see if we can book a B&B though, if it keeps bloody raining.

Many years ago, whilst camping with a huge load of mates, one of said mates rather over-refreshed himself. He was carefully put in the recovery position, outside his tent (it was a warm night), and left to sleep it off. Much later, after everyone had gone to bed, he woke up, realised he was going to be sick, grabbed the zip of the tent door, opened it, stuck his head inside and threw up lavishly.

Heh.

Rain. And yet more rain.

Working at home this morning, watching the rain heaving down outside. It is really beyond a joke now, this summer weather. Those poor bastards who keep getting flooded.

Mr WithaY met a bloke in the hotel he was staying at in the Midlands this week who had had his house flooded out a few weeks ago. He was living in the hotel while his house got dried out and he tried to decide what to do next. As if that wasn't bad enough, he had only just finished decorating the house when his wife died.

Made all the things I grump about seem a bit less important.

On a more cheerful note, I have been very diligent practicing my blues riffs and they sound pretty good now, which is encouraging. I have asked a colleague if I can go over to his house and play with his son after work some time. His son is a pretty decent drummer, apparently, and my colleague is another aspiring guitarist, so that might be fun.

I have also been messing about with a bit of software called Audacity which allows me to record and edit stuff. I did a couple of songs the other night which sounded ok, so I will mess about with them a bit. Then I'll see if I can get the web broadcast software to work, so I can let some of my lovely online mates hear me in all my glory. Heh.

My three-dimensional mates are all sick to the back teeth with listening to me, so it will be nice to have a new audience to torment.

It is STILL pissing down out there. Bloody hell. It's more like October than July.

Maybe I'll make a cake later. At least the house would smell nice, rather than a bit damp and jungly, like it does at the moment. It's too warm to keep the windows closed, but as soon as you open them, it smells like Belize* in here.

*I assume. I've never been there.

Mud

Took me almost 2 hours to get home last night. There was an accident on the A303 so the police diverted everyone onto the "back" road across Salisbury Plain. Fine. But that then led to a nose-to-tail 20mph queue of traffic lumbering along small roads which were not designed for huge trucks.

I finally hit a tailback at a junction which I knew must be at least 4 miles long, so I did a 3-point-turn in the road and legged it along a different set of tiny lanes to get back onto the main road, and cleverly avoid the worst of the jams.

Well, that was the plan.

Sadly the main road was in just as bad a state, what with floodwater and more accidents, so it took me just as long to get home as it would have done if I'd sat in the tailback.

One entertaining aspect was watching the traffic heading home from Glastonbury, looking as though it had been rallying. Several of the cars were completely covered, the only clean bit being where the windscreen wipers had cleared the mud away. The drivers looked shell shocked. It seems there were queues for 8 hours for some of the people trying to get off the site. Bloody nightmare.

Been watching the news with increasing disbelief...villages evacuated, bridges collaping, people drowning in drains...this is the kind of thing that happens on the other side of the world, not here. And it's June! I mean, 6 weeks ago we were being warned about the possibility of water shortages and drought, now entire communities are watching their neighbourhoods being deluged. It's bizarre.

And I'm off to stand in a field in Bedfordshire for the next two days. Hoo-bloody-rah.

No one thing

Have had a constructive morning in the office, with a cheerful impromptu team meeting over a drink of hot chocolate, which is always a bonus.

Drove to work in a complete daze, which I only realized when I got to the site and hadn't got my pass out of my bag (plan ahead, that's my motto). The chap on the gate watched me rummaging in my bag for a while, then quite obviously just gave up and waved at me to carry on through. I ignored his waving and sat there until I had found my pass, determined to show it to him.

And it was at that point I realised that I didn't remember much of the drive in. No idea why, as I slept quite well and feel less gloomy and despondant than I have done for a few days.

I had a couple of colleagues a few years ago who ran a "Bizarrest Pass" contest. Each week they both had to try and get into work by waving something at the security blokes that was NOT their pass.

They used library cards, credit cards, driving licenses, bits of paper, you get the picture. The winner was declared on the day that one of them was waved through after presenting a bit of toast with Marmite on.

That was a great office to work in. I still have photos of our "Thickie of the Week" sign we used to award to whoever had done the stupidest thing that week. We told our boss it was a teambuilding thing.

He was ok with that, but when we also created the "Finger of Blame" - a cardboard hand, pointing a finger at whoever was being blamed by the rest of the team - he got a bit suspicous and told us to take it down. He didn't like the sign on the filing cabinet that said "Toy Cupboard" either. Tch.

I put the curtains back up in the spare room last night, and will dust and polish all the furniture when I get home, and restock the Gothic bookcase. It looks great in there. Kevin the decorator is a prince among men.

My WithaY sent me a text saying he'll be home by "eightish - in time for the pub". Excellent.

I am sat at my desk, and was just wondering what the odd smell in the office is. I realised that it is now pissing down with rain and I can smell wet concrete from the road outside. It's been so long that I'd forgotten what it smells like.

Mmmm. Summer.

Roses

Been to Mottisfont Abbey today, National Trust owned home of the English Old Rose Collection. It was gorgeous. Bloody huge amounts of driving though - 250 miles plus due to complex family logistics.

If you've never been there, go. It's beautiful. There are acres of grounds with a spring, which is unbelievably cold, a river full of enormous brown trout, a circle of (I think) beech trees, an ice house, the Abbey itself, and of course the walled garden full of roses.

And the cafe sells rose petal ice cream. Mmmmm.

Mum and I rode up to the garden in a little electric cart thingy. Mr WithaY elected to walk, more from the shame of being seen on the back of a tiny milk float than any real excess of energy I suspect. It was great because it meant Mum wasn't tired out by the time we got there, and really enjoyed the flowers. Plus we got to ride a tiny milk float. Like a theme park for very old people.

On the way there our trip up the M27 was enlivened by the sound of something huge and hard whacking the front of the car. A stone, we believe. And now there's what looks like a bullet hole in the windscreen and a long creeping crack below it. So I have to ring the insurance people tomorrow and pay £50 excess to get it fixed.

Arse.

Back to work tomorrow after a week and a bit on holiday. Not looking forward to an early start, but I hope to get a guitar lesson organised if I can which will make the day more bearable. Better text my lovely teacher tonight and find out if he's free.

Driving along, seeing all the brilliant white, rain washed sheep reminded me of something one of my Scots mates said, years ago, after he'd been to the South of England for the first time. He commented on how fat, clean and healthy all the animals in the fields looked as he drove further and further South, remarking "I expect the farmers put all the best looking ones near the roads."

I love that idea, and also the logical extension of that, which is that there are fields full of hideous, scrawny, filthy, miserable Dorian Grey animals hidden away from the roads, concealing the farmers' shame.