So Much To Do - So Little Time...

I have become a human hormonal hot-water bottle.  It has its advantages - I have dispensed with the electric blanket and spend most of the night seeking out freezing cold bits of the bed for my feet.  John is not so impressed he feels like he is on a survival course a la Bear Grylls - this might account for the facial hair that he is cultivating but which is not yet in a position to be photographed.

He may have taken this 'man the survivor' thing a little too far!!!  When he goes out to fetch wood for the stove you would think he had been mining the depths by the looks of him!  The head torch we bought Dad for the nights we eat at Duomo (can't see the bloody food the lights are so dim) has been very useful.

I can' t tell you how much we love that wood burner and although we both smell like burgers it is a small price to pay for being warm and cosy and we are saving on electricity by heating our washing up water on the top of the stove during the course of the evening.

I had cooked (sorry my vegetarian friends) a chicken liver dish for tea and used the leftover gravy from the stifado, we had it with jacket potatoes and peas and thoroughly enjoyed it.

Pudding was some of my orange cake with ice-cream which drove the cats absolutely bonkers!!  Serves us right for not sitting at the table to eat it.  As far as MM and C are concerned food eaten at the sofa is fair game!  We don't feed them from our food - it is the rocky road to ruin and makes them a pest which we don't want - the trouble is they are so interested in EVERYTHING!

Both John and I fell asleep in front of the fire with a thunder storm raging outside.  We had to drag ourselves to bed thinking how lucky the cats were to be tucked up in bed with the remains of the fire burning itself out- cosy and warm.

We woke this morning to sunshine trying to break through a heavy mist.  It took quite a while for the sun to burn it off but it did eventually and for a while we had some very very pleasant sunshine.

My job was painting the panels in the 'downstairs' loo whilst John dealt with the guys who had come to measure up for the 'conservatory'  - this is very exciting as hopefully we will create a stunning space between the two buildings that will capture the sunshine in the winter and stop us getting a soaking running between the buildings when there is a storm raging.

Unfortunately they cannot get the job done before Mrs Hazzell comes and stays with us so sorry Vix you will have to wait to see it the next time you are over.  We are hopeful that it should be done before Mrs Pamment comes to visit so if we get some sunny days in March that will the be place to sit and relax.

Once the guys had measured up and we had agreed on windows and openings John wanted to sort out some of our logs to split them ready for burning.  

The logs we had delivered last week came with a termite infestation so we cannot keep them indoors and need to burn those which are active first - having had a live termite problem in one of the door frames we cannot afford to exacerbate the situation but John was not prepared for what he found today.

One of the logs had quite a large hole in it and inside John could see the head of a rather large white grub - in fact we are convinced that it was some sort of Witchetty Grub and if not then a very close relation.  It was bloody humungous and was still alive with a black mouth with pincers.  John didn't want to kill it although I am not entirely sure why except it would have made a real old mess if we had tried to crush it!!!  

John very carefully got it to grab hold of a bit of wood and then carefully picked it up and lobbed it as far as he could into the field next door.  No doubt someone will tell us what it is/was but now we are peering very carefully at all the logs before we lob them into the burner - can you imagine what sort of mess this would make if you cooked it till it exploded??

Our final job before calling it a day (and the rain coming back) was to change the overflow that John had built for the water butt.  We have dug out a soakaway and filled it with sand so hopefully that will be better than what we had before.  We have had so much rain coming down that the water butt hasn't been able to cope and that bit of the front garden has been flooded night after night. 

We were both exhausted - who said retirement was a doddle??  so we have lit the fire, had a hot shower and are about to have some tea - another day done in Droushia!