A pretty normal Sunday!

We are hopeful that today will be the last day that Chivers has to be confined to the house.  He has really been so good since the first evening he came home when he was struggling to settle.  Since then he has slept through the night, used his tray without too much moaning and allowed us to deal with his wound.  Today he has managed to stretch his leg sufficiently far that the one remaining staple has popped out and so we have had to remove it otherwise it was going to catch in something and he might have done himself more damage.  We have one area still causing us some concern but it doesn't seem to be bothering Chivs so fingers crossed tomorrow we will get some good news.

We woke to a beautiful day - which meant that Mum would have a pleasant drive up to us for lunch today.  We had had to warn her to give us some warning that she had arrived so that we could let her in without letting Chivers out.

I have picked the last of the freesias from the garden to put a small posy of flowers on the dining table and padded it out with some stems from the Vinca Major which is absolutely fabulous this year.

We are having freezer surprise today - I desperately needed to make some room so it will be an eclectic mix for our meal today.

Mum arrived safe and sound but said that there was a lot more traffic on the roads today than there has been recently when she has come up.  I guess we are approaching tourist season now with UK Easter this coming weekend and Cypriot Easter the following weekend.

As I was waiting for her to arrive it reminded me that I must go and sort out the two flower beds that are in front of Gregoris and Dora's house - they had cleared them last year of everything save the lavender and put in some succulents which they had hoped would keep the weeds down but I think shortly afterwards the goats came into the estate and helped themselves and so the beds have now been populated by some yellow flowering rape (or mustard) which has gone bananas.

We started our lunch with some home-made soup - I think this must have been leftover from Christmas so it was a squash, sweet potato, ginger concoction - or at least I think it was!!!  It was just enough for us to have a coffee cup each.

I always enjoy a nice home-made soup and I really don't make enough of it - I have no excuse really - I have two pressure cookers but I think I dislike cleaning the liquidiser after I have done the blending.  I tend to find most recipes I want on the internet these days but I have kept hold of my three New Covent Garden soup cookbooks because they are lovely books and I always check them out first before I go to the internet.

I have to thank Mum for our main course because this was a pasty pie she had made some time ago and donated for a Sunday lunch and I have to thank Savvas the Tyreman for his super yellow yolked egg which I used to provide a glaze on the pastry.  Pasty Pie is a traditional Cornish Pasty but with less pastry as it only has a top.  We would normally eat this on its own but John cant get his head around that so to keep him happy we had some minted new potatoes, minted peas and a red wine gravy - I swear I almost heard Dad groaning at the prospect - that is just not how pasty pie should be eaten!!!  and worse I had mine with a glass of white wine and traditionally we always had pasty with a sweet cup of tea - now I swear I can hear my Nanny Nincome groaning!

As we had to keep Chivers confined and it was a sunny day the temperature in the conservatory began to soar as we could not open the windows for fear that Chivers might escape.  It became so warm that I just had to retreat to the cooler temperatures of the lounge and so we stayed in there to play a game of Noms.   There must have been something badly wrong today because for once the scorer (John) was not the winner and I was victorious - this is not what normally happens!!!  Mum set off home around 4.00pm and we had a text to let us know that she had got back without any problem so then we settled down to watch some TV.

We managed to get in all four parts of this TV drama which was excellent and it has been a very long time since we managed to sit and binge watch something.  We are going to move onto Baptiste tomorrow and crack that out before we have more visitors.

Fingers firmly crossed for Chivers who seems none the worse for his injury.  He is with his Dad and we are so happy for that - it could have been so much worse.