Busy, always busy.

The life of a retiree.  Always busy.  

When we arrived home we found that the weeds had not grown, just a few dandelions in the lawn, and a shrub that needed trimming.  Very little rain apparently, although the skies opened up last week and we experienced a couple of days of very miserable weather, wet and leaden skies. 

No moles in the garden either, no doubt they are buried deep down in the soil.  But there were piles of fox poo, and tunnels through the hedge.  When I looked into the garden behind us I saw a healthy fox cub running around on the lawn.  Very cute. They must have a den there.  Luckily I managed to not step in the poo when I cleaned the garden up.  No photos of fox poo.

But I do have a photo of some spiders in the bathroom.   I know one is only a daddy long legs, and the black one is small, but spiders get larger during the next few months and they seem to be breeding in our house.  I have been killing them.  My apologies to the spider lovers.  Normally I make Walter carry them outside, but I have no patience with the current ones in the house.  I check under my pillow every night just to make sure there are no spiders there.   One cannot be too sure. 

I have a new electronic toy.  I do love gadgets.  This one is a heart rate monitor, with associated fitness data.  And can be used when swimming.  The idea is to increase my fitness levels, rather than play around with it, but it is fascinating and I guess it keeps the mind active.  Good exerecise in itself.

And this brings me onto the next subject.  Keeping the mind active.  I finished off the course on the European Union, a very difficult subject to understand, but I added my marks up and it looks like another distinction is on the way.  The lecturer had fascinating eyebrows, which was slightly distracting, but I managed to get through the course, and the workings of the EU are less of a mystery.  And most importantly I take an interest in what is happening in the EU.

And now I have started another course, through a university in Amsterdam, called Introduction to Communication Science.  Very interesting.  The courses, all run by universities, are free.  The address is www.coursera.org if anyone is interested in studying one.

As a bit of light relief and a desperate attempt to improve my very poor French I have been practising the language through an app called Duolingo.  A fun course.

Some jam has been made, thanks to the kind donation of rhubarb, from Emma and Steve, ours being so woeful this year.   So we now have jars of strawberry, rhubarb and blackcurrant jam.  The blackcurrants were picked on the day we left to go to the south of France in June, and then stored in the freezer.   No apricot jam of course.  But the stewed apricots were delicious.

At the moment we are waiting on the carpet.  We have the underlay down.  Monday morning did not start well.  First the man turned up to lay the lino, without the hardboard to go underneath it.  He maintained the hardboard was not ordered by us, which was not true of course.  He came back yesterday with the hardboard and lino. Full of apologies. The carpet for the lounge room had a tear in the corner and the carpet for the hallway was not long enough.  We were not impressed.  Come on Carpetright, you can do better than that.

Today I touched up some of the new white paint, slightly damaged in the removal of carpet and laminate boards, painted all the white edging in the conservatory, painted the woodwork in the front entrance and painted the inside of the cupboard in the bathroom.   We have been using the cupboard for twenty three years, and never painted it.  Now I feel embarrassed as our guests have seen how bad it looked when they got their bath towels out.   Why do these jobs take so long to complete?

We nearly bought a jaguar, one of the really good ones, an automatic diesel.  Perfect for cruising down the motorway to the campsite.  We thought longingly about it, but reason got in the way of needing a luxury car.  We require a practical car to load the garden rubbish into, fill with granchildren, and our assortment of bits and pieces, including two cushions.  Plus the parcel tray at the back is very useful as a table to make our lunches enroute to and from the south of France.   But mostly, the bicycle rack would look silly on the back of a jag.  

But we are serious about buying a new motor home. One without a luton.  And something a little narrower too. We do not need the living space anymore, and most of the granchildren are old enough to sleep in a tent.  We have been looking at panel van conversions and found someone today that would do the job for us, once we purchased a long wheel base panel van.

In the meantime our damaged van is waiting on the assessor to make a decision.  Damage has amounted to £14,000 or more.  The luton needs to be reconstructed. I must have really had my foot down hard on the accelerator.  Scott was right when he said that we no longer need to wash the bugs off the front of the van.   It certainly was an expensive way to get rid of them.

On a brighter note, our hydrangea bush has a mass of flowers.  I pruned it so hard in 2012 that it did not flower last year but certainly has made up for it this season.

And so life goes on.  Looking forward to catching up with friends during the next two weeks, then it is off to the south of France again.   The life of a retiree.