A belated update

We’ve been a bit shoddy on the BLOG front just recently. This is mainly because Ian promised he would write the next one and is reluctant to do so unless he has something interesting or funny to write about. Now when did that ever stop me! It could be a long wait….

We were in Swanage last weekend, Sunday we had a family lunch and Monday we were taking Dad into hospital as he was being admitted for his radio therapy & Mum was magistrating. The latest, however is that Dad has been discharged and will be travelling in as an outpatient. It is impossible to say how Dad is going to find the RT so if he needs to be readmitted then the hospital will arrange this. It was great to see Dad on such good form and we have to believe that this will put him in good stead to face the coming weeks.

Basil has been very naughty over the last couple of weeks, he ‘liberated’ our sausage casserole from the work surface, and then tried to pin this on poor Davy, by also knocking his feed dish on the floor and thus confusing the issue. This gave him stomach ache which entailed him wimpering in the night. Basil also had a night away at Jim and Vivs when we were in Swanage and woke up the household at 4.00 when he wanted to go out, but on the plus side at least he let it be known. It would have been better though if he had kept his legs crossed. Today, when it was extremely wet outside, he pulled me over in the woods, and I ended up doing some sort of comedy dive, being dragged by Basil, Tinkerbelle (but not Bob who was busy sniffing a leaf) face down in the mud. I must hand it to Ian though, he didn’t laugh – or even smile, as I was spreadeagled looking down at a puddle of mud, instead helped me up – dusted me off, and then collapsed in a heap of laughter.

Bob has to go back to the vets as he is still passing blood. He is happy & well and there is no infection so it could be bladder stones, but the vet says that this is unusual without pain. I do wonder what would have happened days before insurance, as if an animal is not in pain etc, it is sensible to do these expensive procedures? We think that Bob could be in shock as he heard on the news that in Italy they were making walking of dogs compulsory, we did note Bob shudder when he heard this and he had to have a lie down to recover from his lucky escape. At least in Spain walking is not yet law, and he is looking forward to siestas. He has to go to the vet on Tuesday, so we’ll know more then.

I’ve also had some ‘mystery shopping’. We dressed up in false noses and moustaches and looked very mysterious for our first assignment – however as it appeared that I only had to look at an HSBC cash machine and assess whether the LINK sign was showing, looking quite so mysterious was probably unnecessary. We probaly also drew attention to ourselves as we were arguing about the precise meaning of the one question that I had to answer. I’ll probably do the other visits on my own!! You are only allowed to do three of these, the pay was £4.50 per cash machine, so if I could have done all theLINK machines locally that would have been quite good, but as it is – we can probably only look forward to a fish and chip supper without the fish. However I also have a project going into some shops in Bath asking for a demonstration on the latest email/ web enabled mobile phones. Ian is shuddering at the thought of me getting demos on supreme gadgets without buying anything. I have assured him that those days are past, and it is only rare now that I get the urge to buy something extremely necessary like night vision glasses. The mobile phone mystery shops are paid at £7.00 each, so they add up, and are quite interesting to do.

We’ve also been sorting out mortgages. How is it, that you hear all the time about evil lenders lending irresponsibly to lendees? Well, a simple thing like no income seems to be causing us all sorts of problems and that we certainly have not experienced people trying to coerce us into borrowing irresponsible amounts of money. I suppose that the people who get these loans with no or low income must lie. We have a mortgage found though with a division of General Motors, and Ian is hoping they may though in a car. As our potential move is now start of December we have a few weeks to sort it.

Talking of cars, Ian has the volvo working – sort of. It is working well enough that we have to make a decision about what car we take, whether we get a trailor etc. We need to do this by Tuesday.

Ian has been working on my website, the new venture is called ‘Make Breaks’ and I will be offering a range of courses that will range from weekends to longer duration, and that will cover hand dyeing yarns, knitting, feltmaking etc. The website isn’t up yet, but it looks good and I hope will present a good image.

I have high hopes for the hand dyeing course. There is a lot of interest for hand made and unusual wools at the moment. A good example is Colinette wools (www.colinette.com – look at ‘yarns’) and these can be quite easily created using undyed wools and dyes. I have also been planning a knit or crochet with beads course and have used http://www.beadwrangler.com/workshop.htm#Crochet as a good reference site. However I need to adapt this rather as they use a tiny crochet hook and I don’t want our guests to go home cross eyed!

Hopefully we’ll have some more information about the date we take on the house this week so we can do some proper planning. It is getting quite close to Christmas now, and the last ‘long’ ferry is mid December and then doesn’t run again before March. But we’ are trying to get into the Manana spirit and not to worry unduely.