5 OS pleasures in your day today - part 3

DigForVictory

Frith - always good to keep siblings well supplied with their preferred reading. Courgette roasted with sumac and cinnamon - sounds delicious! Sighting bigger son - an unexpected perk. Hoping you are better, and that sleeper trains are as much fun in reality as in the planning. Ooops hayfever.

LaineyT - harvest gathered Already? Wow! Quizzing Mondays? Hurrah! Aw grey beauty admiring handsome grey thoroughbred stablemate! Ah, summer pudding! Deadheading lavender? (Now mine has decide to flower At All, clearly I should encourage it!) TMS blancmange as well as cake? (Even I have heard of the cakes!) Ooh, the arrival anticipation... She Is Gorgeous! 

ampersand - It's an absolute belter of a book. Ye gods yes, the details on a guinea pig are hassle, at least they don't have tails.

mhagster - you merwoman! Famdram - brilliant word, often gruesome situation. Yikes antibiotics and antihistamines. Invaded by sweetpeas (what a way to go!) then doing the Scandanavian cleaning so your children don't have to. Lovely to still have the cards & letters - we moved & didn't. Ah hindsight. Then photos.

Purple kitten - fingers crossed for interview & love ferret defending garden from invader pigeons! Had to Google 'hummingbird moths', stunning! Glad gardening a happy place - I have leafy triumphs on windowsills & regularly round up everything that hasn't "got the idea" off to the compost heap - mum thinks I'm an amazing gardener when fact I just hide the evidence. 

topsyturphy - the North Yorkshire moors, with sunlight, butterflies & sheep = beautiful place if for heartbreaking reason. Chickpea & green lentil curry sounds yumm!

Highdays - Think of the Fat Rascals & how much easier they will be to enjoy once all the dental stuff is sorted. I missed the primary school nativity something rotten - enjoy the socks off this last year? 'More than initially thought' - yes but you'll be able to eat an apple in another two decades. 

PaulieHerts - I adore your photos. The downside of wonderful escapes, the laundry on return...

Happycas - leavers' assembly can be a real wrenching empotional event. Oooh VCM! Run out of washing?!

OS Pleasures recently

Colleague is reading ‘My Family & other animals’ with her book club - I remember bits of it across decades, snorting with laughter & relief that bad though they are, at least my lot don’t attain assort Durrell family heights.

Fire engine hurtled past our house - very shocking but mass speculation & surge of collective hope.

Youngest has his eye on a potential course. I have read the small print & know he needs to contact them for details of the portfolio. It is very hard not being a pushy mother.

Somehow, Youngest & I have an occasional role reversal & I brew up & take him a mug. Often in bed, so I get to see him in a nest of bedding, charmingly drowsy but sharpening to ‘alert enough to get manage mug’.

Washed & line dried bedlinen. There’s a pleasure in doing & a pleasure to look forward to! Not least as tomorrow, no way are we going to avoid rain.

The white lavender is starting to blossom! All that sunlight. The rain will wash through - odd how lavender is nearly a desert plant yet it’s “so English”.

One of Mum’s care team took her to the local reservoir today, and took a photo of her enjoying the sunlight & the view of the water & a coffee - and WhatsApped us the photo. Wonderful to see her happy & outside!

Sometimes I bump into lines by Pratchett that catch me all over again. “The Bursar himself in any normal society would have been considered more unglued than a used stamp in a downpour.” It’s only taken me decades to realise that’s the iambic pentameter of Shakespeare (& others) sitting there, waiting for me to realise. (Some circle of life, I want to go to the Unseen University. As a visiting academic, their approach to students being diligent in minimising waste.)

Just how did we come to have at least 7 types of plastic razor? I have decluttered the bathroom & now need to go to the pharmacy to hand off two bags for disposal (& lay down a cellar of cough mixtures for autumn). The bathroom looks dusty but rather less like a junkyard. I am promised the vomit pail will be cleaned (just dusty at present). {The cost of a bottle of cough mixture, even a generic! Off to eyeball Home Bargains offerings, having jotted the PL numbers - the same old mischief reported in 2016….}

Ye gods. Called mum to check visiting cousins well & happy, got passed around like a dessert trolley. Still, everyone seems in good form, coffee was imminent so I wished them all well as it’s not sensible to get between mum & her coffee.

Hadn’t realised Rob Brydon was a Springsteen fan! Much amused he wants to know What Supplements the Boss is taking, as they clearly work…!

Oh the joys of communal living. I’ve a guaranteed cheap LED light in the hall so people moving floors can do so in safety. Some young idiot turned it off & I descended into relative darkness. (Still demanded & for my bedtime hug, even as I grumbled. I am unspeakably lucky.)

A birthday book has arrived & I have my family out to first cousins inscribed. And realising that I need a different pen to track the death days, as you can always send a belated birthday card or message, but death days not so much. Off to refill my fountain pen.

At the family zoom we somehow got into the Tham Luang cave rescue which rightly has a Wikipedia page. I remain in awe of the efforts & the sheer survival rate (& had forgotten the suggestion the team be left with food & educational material til after the monsoon season.) I just hope all the Young Boars team are living normal happy healthy lives now. The divers I affectionately regard as heroically bonkers - caving is adrenaline packed without knowing there’s more rain forecast & you’re hoped to emerge with a football-mad schoolboy under your arm. People forget that as the last lad was brought out, the water behind them was rising half a metre every 10 minutes - the rescuers abandoned kit to get the heck up & out.

Anyone heard of a Burgers Drinks & Salsa Music party? I found a to-be-hoped fake message from mother to offspring asking why had they misled their father, who has now invited neighbours over - “we are not done talking about this” & I’m just giggling helplessly.

“I’ll soak it in formaldehyde.” “It’s a little early; I’m still breathing.” (Youngest & I debating what to do with remaining pizza.)

“Brotherly episodes” - the offspring version of the Labrador “bitey-face”….

Fingers crossed for the Lionesses tonight in Geneva. (Rousing cheers!) [And now keeping an eye and trying not to gnaw fingernails. Penalties, eep.]

Glorious morning quiet, after the rubbish truck has been. Birds chirping, doves cooing, & there’s even a cool breeze!

PG Wodehouse - especially the Gutenberg miscellany. Deeply amused by indoor golf, where “you may lose a stroke through hitting the maid” - a local rule apparently.

Just had a winter heating allowance message, & blinking somewhat, checked. Still a bit young to be eligible, but then realised it’s a scam & reported it.

Awww! Heard the ice cream van, briefly. Unusually, thanks to noise-cancelling headphones, no thudding boots as family give pursuit. (They’re so grown up, they rummage the freezer. Happily, this year’s annual fingertip weeding & laying down of bark chippings is complete.)

Chuckling with sisters over exercise we like, one walks (two Labradors), one does tae kwon do, I do yoga. Doesn’t make me slim, doesn’t get the heart rate pounding, but I keep going back for more.

Ah scout planning meeting & yes, we will have a Burns Night ceilidh - of a sort!

Google distracted me with the new format of Bourneville. Yikes! Still, if it helps me buy the supermarket own brand (winner of the blind taste test) instead, onwards with this “progress”.

Dear me. After thirty five years of Imperial Blue, Denby have stopped making eggcups. Not wholly, there’s the studio blue chalk egg cup for the very traditional breakfast egg, but then it’s soju cups all the way (& soju appears to be Korea’s National version of vodka - oh Denby…)

Trying to embroider and listen to ISIHAC at the same time. Gosh, in my next life I want to come back as Samantha. Smitten with ‘the Glyndeborne Identity’ - is that what to call the wedding guest frock?!

More linen on the line, baby oaks weeded, and a handful of plums pulled from the tree, stones carefully bagged in the fridge. All washed & back to embroidery.

Had my memory updated - Stoke Mandeville is the spinal specialist hospital & so if Middleson or his mates come a purler off the via ferrata, I know which hospital in the UK to route them through. (Whilst head injuries go direct to Queen Square London for neurosurgery & neurology.) The more research & vocabulary I prep, the less should be needed & luck is boosted with a suggested plan. [Middleson rolling eyes but still not learning any Italian. Or updating his first aid.]

I do hope only in the Dig household but “dear, why is there an assortment of torches laid out on your father’s side of the bed, and why have you not put the others back?” Swiftly followed by a “but by all means focus on the stew first” (oh my priorities.)

Youngest happily wrestling with his new DVD player. Wholly aware his brother schemes to rid the family home of all these space-hogging discs...

Replacement shaver charger cable has arrived & Youngest all hopeful “I don’t want to look all uncouth for the honeys”… me laughing harder when my email tells me it’s been left “in a safe place” - yep, the front doorstep.

Grinning at disgruntled bishop ruthlessly wrong footed on social media (memo to self, to exercise authority, dress for it).

Shopping with (immaculately clean shaven) Youngest, we dicker the protocol of clearing out a shop’s stock of tea. I opine you should always leave one item on the shelf (if only to inform the staff to refill it), his view is ‘they know I’m coming for the lot’ no further information is needed.

There are days (indeed, possibly weeks) where you can’t win. I have spent five days Annual Leave embroidering (half cross stitching, nothing exotic!) a cushion cover for my mum. I have done this sat on the floor, to get the best light & easy access to all the wools etc. Today (Sunday) I thought I’ll sit on a toolbox & my back won’t ache as much. (Rightly.) Just my knees are now straightening with near pistol-shot noises, & there’s still a good three more days sewing.

Health Strength Love & Courage to all as have need, huge welcomes to a lovely Labrador, and the very best of luck with the coming week.

mhagster

I love it when dfv summarises my fortnight 😆

And welcome new doggyLainey ! I look forward to hearing all about her new adventures. 

Up early and down to CP…rainy walk. 

Lazy morning at caravan. Read. Snoozed. Read some more. Bit of weeding. Came home around 3ish.

Made a chilli and then sat and read my library book until I finished it.

Chat to friend on phone.