Monthly Archives: March 2010

I’m taking a short break from the Internet.  Not sure today how long but I doubt if it’ll be more than a month.  Personal reasons.

Meantime, keep well and play safe.

Graham was on shopping duty in Neath with his mother today, so after my chauffeur duty, I hopped on over to Morrison’s for tomatoes, ciggies, and breakfast.

I’d woken all heavy and reluctant this morning, far too close to the General Law of Gravity for comfort, and had almost decided not to do the breakfast trip.  It had turned to rain overnight and my joints were not happy chappies, not happy at all.  However, having allowed good sense to drive me out, I scoffed my breakfast with a will, and felt much better for it.

Getting back home, I yelled up the stair to Dolly “I’m home.  Hang on a minute and I’ll join you for a good restorative nap.”

Which, after checking my email and having a quick ciggie in the garden, is what I did.

During the course of the extended nap, Dolly snuggled closer and closer, until she was fair wrapped around me at 16:00, when I woke, told her and the world at large that I was feeling better again, and poddled down into the kitchen for coffee.

The six steps we call a stairway that separate the living from the sleeping halves of the bungalow are a bonus I’d not expected.  It’s more natural to me, somehow, to go up to bed, and down to live.  I’ve never much liked mixing the two.

And then, shortly after 17:00, Graham called me over to Rhos to fetch him.

The day is complete.  Not exciting, but full of pleasure.

We’d sorta planned to have an ordinary stop-at-home day today, and it did start that way.  And then the ParcelForce48 man came bearing a box.  “The plants are here!”

See, day before yesterday, we ordered 100 bare-root beech plants, in anticipation of making a good dense hedge along the back and right-hand side of the garden.  But we hadn’t expected them to arrive until early next week, by which time Graham had planned to have the trench excavated, manured, and ready to receive them.

So, not to panic, we bathed, dressed, and girded our loins ready for a trip over to the big B&Q store in Llansamllett.  The one that has a garden centre attached on one side.

“Will you be alright?” Graham asked, knowing I’d only just taken my morning diuretic pills.

“Oh, sure.  Unless we get stuck in a traffic jam and then we’re in for interesting times.”

We made it just in time.  Graham headed off to the garden centre area and I plodded through the store to the loo.  Relief.

When I found Graham he had a trolley laden down with two giant packs each of soil improver and farmyard manure.

By the time we’d checked out I was feeling salt depletion, and begged for something savoury and a mug of coffee to set me to rights.  “And I don’t want to go to Starbucks.”

We settled for the in-store coffee shop at B&Q where I had a sausage roll and a mug of black, unsweetened coffee.

Balance was soon restored and we took ourselves, the car, its slightly pongy load, and a tray of brightly coloured polyanthus back home.

“I need a pee!” I said as we pulled up outside the house.  “Now!”

So Graham unloaded the car while I attended to my urgent needs.

By the time we’d finished with the daylight and, more importantly, it had finished with us, Graham had dug out well over half the trench, the beech tree saplings were safely lodged in a large pot with loose compost and plenty of water, and I was ready for my evening wine.

Busy, busy.

I was sitting on a bench in the pedestrian area just opposite Starbucks this morning, waiting for Graham to come back from Marks & Spencer.   It was busy, but not too busy. Through the not-crowd came two black-clad policemen, all geared up with accoutrement and stern attention to duty.  I caught the eye of one of them, he smiled, and said: “Hello!”

Be still my foolish [old] heart.