Novelties

The low boredom threshold was crossed this week. So steps had to be taken to liven things up a bit.

Tried some mealtime variety - the mixed saute vegetables were very good, as was the home-grown rhubarb, but the dhal and veggie hot dogs with lettuce was a digestive disaster. Any food tends to produce wind these days, but this particular combination was dynamite. Let's move on....

And, BTW, have you noticed how this is the phrase of the moment? After some nasty incident like murder, they all used to have to "come to terms with it", but now they "move on".

With retirement coming up over the horizon (well, at the end of the year), there's the prospect of all that lovely time to get on with lots of projects. The family history might get converted into a book properly, and there'll be plenty of time for spinning and knitting. As an extension to this, there is now a new toy crammed into my small workroom (what an estate agent might call a child's bedroom).

It's a Spriggs Patented Tri Loom, made to order in Columbia, Missouri. Essentially three large pieces of wood and a box of nails, for making triangular pieces of weaving in various sizes up to 7 feet along the diagonal. A preliminary attempt has worked very well, and it looks like it'll be a great toy.

Its journey here could be followed on the UPS website by entering its tracking number - it was checked in to Columbia, Missouri at 7.25 p.m. USA Eastern Time on 24th May (they are 5 hours behind us, so that would be 12.25 a.m. on 25th May our time), went to St. Louis, Missouri that evening with adverse weather conditions causing a delay; adverse weather affected its onward journey to Louisville, Kentucky; it left Louisville at 6.49 a.m. on 25th May, travelling to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, leaving there at 9.56 a.m. for Cologne, Germany; by 2.11 a.m. (local time) on 26th May it was leaving Cologne bound for the East Midlands Airport in England; by 3.09 a.m. (again our local time) it was setting out from the East Midlands to the local County Durham depot, and it was delivered here before lunch on the 26th May. Under 36 hours for the whole distance, including delays. Perhaps UPS could advise the Royal Mail?

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Although it was such a bad spring for our garden birds, we have a family of 3 fledged sparrowlings accompanying their parents to our bird feeders, and the house martins in their nest above the bathroom window make their foreign burbling noises in the early mornings; they have either eggs or chicks in there.

The jogging has been shelved for the time being (lovely mixed metaphor there) for the sake of my poorly knee. I'll have to find another way of combatting the middle-age spread. Actually, going to Tesco's is quite good - compared with all the tubs of lard pushing trolleys full of pies, lager and crisps, I feel positively svelte. And when I think about it, I'm only 2 sizes bigger than I was when I was 16.