Blogger's Block

I haven't posted for over a week now.

Partly due to not having any time to do so (or perhaps to think about what to post).
I have been so very busy at work and also my 86 y/o mother who lives almost 250 miles away has been very poorly, so I went to visit last weekend. That in turn made me extremely tired when I came home and even less inclined to post. She seems to be making some sort of recovery but it has left her very weak and without the will to go on.
I suspect that I will travel to see her again this weekend so will probably not post again for a few days. However if she is truly feeling better and my brother who lives only 45 miles away can cope with caring for her, I may just go and work on my allotment, get away from everything and lose myself in my own thoughts.

These are silly - but harmless fun

*my name*-- [noun]: A real life muppet 'How will you be defined in the dictionary?' at QuizGalaxy.com

It's a good job we can laugh at ourselves isn't it!

Do I really have to go to school (WORK) today Mum??

I really did NOT want to come in to the office today.

After a fantastic almost summer like weekend the temptation was to stay at home to get what looks like a repeat performance today.

On Saturday I continued the cultivation of my allotment with the sowing of cabbage, parsnip, broad bean and carrot seeds. I also planted 60 onion sets. The spinach that I sowed last weekend is already showing through.

Yesterday after a pretty strenuous Spinning workout at the gym, I decided that minimal extra effort was to be the order of the day, so I simply applied a weed & feed dressing to my lawn and then sat in the garden, read the papers and my book with of course the obligatory glass or two of wine. We even had the first BBQ of the year for dinner yesterday evening.

And to cap it all what about the boy Toseland? Made my journey to work on the bike a lot quicker this morning :-)

Number 72 has arrived

You may remember my post a couple of weeks ago about Lambing Day, well last night Number72 arrived!
The nice farmer's wife delivered him (her?) to our door nicely wrapped and presented in various cuts (shoulders, whole and half legs, single chops, butterfly chops etc.). He now has a whole freezer drawer all to himself.
Roll on Sunday lunch!

I don't really know if it is Number 72 that we have but it does just personalise that roast a little bit doesn't it?

Easter bunnies and chicks

I know Easter symbols are bunnies and chicks, but walking along the Royal Military Canal this weekend I had to take a photo of these serene birds.

A fascinating fact about the RMC is that it is built in stretches of straight canal of equal length of about a quarter of a mile before there is a bend. This is because when it was built as a defence, the maximum distance between the bends was just greater than that at which a musket could shoot, thus protecting the defenders from attack.

Watch this space for news of the imminent arrival of 'number 72' later this week!

It was worth the effort

3 weekends worth of pretty hard digging and the allotment is now ready for planting. In fact I have already started.
The 1st and 2nd early potatoes have gone in as well as beetroot and spinach seeds.
Next week I need to get some farmyard manure for the unplanted part ready for the main crop of potatoes in about 3-4 weeks time and many more seeds.
The raspberry and gooseberry bushes are already showing signs of new leaf so they managed to survive the winter and so did the rhubarb.

SHIT!!!

I dropped my fucking bike this morning!

Another lovely day here today, so I got my bike out of the garage, parked it on the side stand while I put on helmet etc and then when I took hold of the handlebar to get on - it bloody fell over. I obviously did not put the stand down properly.
Of course 218 kg even without the full tank of fuel is not easy to lift so I had to embarrassingly enlist the help of my neighbout to get it upright again.
Not only have I broken the nearside mirror and added a few scrapes to the fairing, it was stuck in gear so I must have damaged the gear change lever some how. I managed to eventually get it out of gear and back into the garage but NOW I can't get it in gear so can't ride it to my dealer for repair.
I suppose I will have to call out the AA rescue services - on a Bank Holiday weekend!!! - to get me to the dealer.

I am NOT fucking happy.

Apologies

Sorry for not blogging much recently guys, but I really haven't had much to write about. Believe it or not - I still don't!
I seem to be working far too hard and getting way too uptight about it at the moment. The project I have been working on as a European thing only, with a small team, has just gone global and I feel that we are losing control to so many new people who seem to be re-inventing the wheel that we designed and have been rolling for the last 18 months.

I made a major decision last night not to stand for re-election to our local parish council this month. I have served on it for 5 years now, with a primary role of communications and publicity. 5 years ago I introduced and produced a quarterly newsletter that goes to all 5000 residents and launched a parish council website. I will miss that bit and also the work that I led on the Village Design Statment that has been accepted by our planners as regulations that underpin any planning permission in the village. I won't however miss the time that I spent each week and have now regained to do something for myself, or the in-fighting between the councillors that seems to have increased over the past 18 months. We used to argue and debate but we would all go with the majority decision at the end. Now, several of them just seem to harbour grudges that they didn't get their own way.

My last 'duties' will be to host the mayor of Therouanne, our twinned village in France, when a party of about 20 visit our village in May for a weekend. There will be lots of wine drunk over those two days!!