A lovely day in January

As you will have read poor little Bobby has a poorly finger - joking aside it really is rather nasty and will take some time to repair which will drive Bobby nuts and as a result Diana even nuttier!!!  We decided to call in today to catch him before his big op and provide some moral support - visits to anything medical here is rather different to going to your local GP in the UK.  When Rob went yesterday he said the doctor seemed a little harassed and whilst Rob had some questions about the procedure he didn't get many satisfactory answers because, as the doctor pointed out, it was only a finger but it was Rob's finger and he is rather attached to it!!  We are sure all will go well and it will only be a matter of time before he is back fully functioning.  In the meantime I have my gynae gloves ready in case I am called on at any time to give him a hand!!

We sat outside for our coffee - it was absolutely glorious out the back of their bungalow in the sun and this weather is such a welcome change to the weeks of rain we have had.  I feel so sorry for Jane and John that they returned to the UK and the weather changed.  Still hopefully they will be back again this year when the weather is better.

I don't know if you can read the weather station but even with the outdoors transmitter located in the shade the temperature was creeping up and was over 20 degrees.   We have had a bit of a bumper few days with regard to our electric generation which is also good news as we certainly needed to rely on our banked kilowatt hours to see us through the coldest days before Christmas.  We are not being complacent though as generally the worst of our weather occurs in January and February.

We were able to eat our brunch outside - we had pickleball and badminton this afternoon so we never want to be running around on too full a stomach!  Good news was that Di felt able to return to pickleball after pulling something in her leg the other week - even better news we had a full house of six players today and I have managed to get five for Thursday so we should be able to cover the rent this month even with Jeff, Wendy and Bill all sailing the seven seas somewhere in the world.

I went down with Di to show her the way but waited for John to pick me up and take me home as I thought Di would want to get back to Bobby and she wont always want to stay the extra couple of hours after we finish playing so needs to familiarise herself with the route - in fact there are many ways to get to the place where we play and if we are driving we will change our route depending on whether or not we have shopping to do on the way down.

Pleased to report that Fred is doing well - his injury is more or less healed and as a result I think he will always have a bit of a lopsided face as he has a full shield on one side and not on the other.  He doesn't seem to be desperate to make a bid for freedom but drives Mum and Dad nuts because he constantly wants feeding - we know that feeling as Charlie is exactly the same and this morning I noticed that he got slightly wedged whilst trying to get through the catflap and it took rather more effort to haul his bulk through.  We are going to have to keep an eye on that because with the extra weight and the extra thick winter coat that he sports he is looking huge the only trouble is that he will eat anything and everything and will gladly mooch on up the road to Sharon and Sean's and hoover up anything that their animals might have left lying around.

Everything is springing to life and looking green and healthy - at least they are now that the flood waters in Mum and Dads front garden have subsided.  I hope the plants are not being lulled into a false sense of security with the current sunshine.