Droushia/Drouseia Dits: Hands that do dishes...

Not my hand but it is beginning to look similar

I can tell that Winter is on the way by the state of my hands as my blood must be getting thicker and during the night some of my fingers go numb - numb rather than go to sleep because when the life comes back to them there are no pins and needles. It is a bit irritating and can be a bit painful at times but I guess it is thanks to years of keyboard work - it is more than likely carpal tunnel syndrome and so I will have to keep an eye on it - at the moment it is just about confined to the night time and rarely if ever bothers me during the day but what with that any my would-be ganglion and my sore fingers from basket weaving my hands are in a right old state. They say that your hands are a give away to your age in which case I must be about 93 by the looks of it. On the subject of the ganglion mum lent me a wrist support for when I play pickleball and I wore it today and couldn't understand why it itched so much - I thought it must have been that I was sweating but when I took it off I had obviously trapped something underneath like a mozzie or something which had taken a bloody great bite out of my wrist!

And on the subject of things getting trapped... We are having a move around with the curtains and so I decided to take down a pair in our bedroom which are full length and get caught behind the dressing table and replace them with a shorter pair and put the long ones into wash. When I got them down one of the curtains had a small mark on the inside which looked like a spider had got inside and made a nest and left a stain. On closer inspection I could see that it was something a little larger than that and as I held it up to the light I could see the outline of something between the lining and the curtain. It was a crispy shrew. One of the cats must have brought it in, let it go and it shot up the curtain - got so far and either died from shock, injury or suffocated. Bloody cats just aren't doing their jobs properly that is all I can say. This is not the first time we have had a dead rodent in our bedroom but at least this time it was not so horrific as rat-gate and the maggots.

John was for some reason up and about at 6.00 this morning - coffee'd up and reading the paper so I decided it really was time to tackle the garden so that I could do some severe haircutting and there would still be enough nice weather for the plants to put on some new growth and prepare themselves for the winter. It was also time to evict the wasps from the Morning Glory. There were now only a handful of wasps left keeping guard over the mouldy leaf inside. I wasn't planning on investigating but I have a sneaky feeling that the Queen was no longer there or had died and these few wasps were just carrying on regardless because they didn't know what else to do. I managed to cut down the old plant with them still inside and lobbed it over the wall so they are probably still there clinging to that leaf thinking they are protecting their leader. These little wasps really posed no great threat unlike the ma-hoo-sive hornet that John gave a severe cuffing to and which then fell into the empty pool and which two days later was still alive. These are nasty - nasty enough that if you get stung you are advised to go to hospital and just the sort of thing the cats will try and play with. This had to go.

Before the haircut

I did two hours in the garden working away like Edward Scissorhands until something got up my nose and the sneezing got the better of me - I think it was probably the sage that and the fact that they were giving out dust warnings for the Island today. The solanums got a right old haircut and look all the better for it - even though they were in flower and it seems a shame to cut the flowers off you never get them all so they still have some colour and now a much better shape. There are all sorts of things growing at the moment and it is difficult to differentiate between weeds and seedlings especially seedlings of something you may not have grown previously.

After the haircut

We took coffee together in the conservatory talking through our plans for the house and our diary for the week before setting off for Paphos - there is a real advantage to getting up earlier - we are not rushing and we are not getting stressed!

If anyone is down in the Tomb of the Kings area can I recommend that they go down to the Elysium Hotel and check out the Christmas decorations - maybe leave it a couple of days because they are only half way through putting them up. Mum and I needed to call in today and were just blown away by how beautiful the hotel is looking. I only had my phone with me so apologise for the photographs but I hope it gives some idea as to how they are going to look. This really is a first class hotel in every sense. It is so beautiful and the staff are so friendly - when I went to organise for my Mum and Dad to stay earlier in the year (thanks to Jane and John who paid for the visit) I dealt with a woman called Liza who could not have been more helpful and I saw her again today and she greeted us like old friends.

On our way home we called in to see Elena and Bassam as I had picked something up for Elena in Paphos. I know that she is miffed that she didn't get onto the basket weaving course but there was no need to sabotage me this morning by feeding me large glasses of red wine on an empty stomach so I am nursing a baggy head today before going off to class!!