25th April

I am so fed up with looking like Stig of the Dump that today, Saturday I decided I would make the effort to tidy myself up.  The weather today was awful so with no prospect of water heated by the sun we bit the bullet and put the immersion on and I had a nice hot shower, did my hair, put on a bit of slap and found out my blingy flip-flops - only trouble was I had some leftover nail varnish on my toes and no remover so the overall effect was not as good as it should have been!!!

I am getting bored and looking for things to do - John reckons this is dangerous and he is right!!!  I want my potting bench finished so that I can dress it up but that isn't going to happen until we can get the stone for the cladding and the doors.  This has left me with no alternative but to collect ideas and inspiration and pin it to my Pinterest boards.

This is where the watering can idea came from.  I had some battery operated lights loafing and just needed John to provide me with a hook and to drill a larger hole in the spout and with the aid of some string and a pokey stick I was able to feed the lights through - the only trouble is it was daylight when I took the photograph.

I have plans for making something larger as a sculpture for outside once I have access to Jumbos - I will need a larger watering can and a nice pole to hang it from and then I need to find some blingy beads to hang from the spout so it looks like water droplets.  John keeps looking at me and raising his eyebrows and shaking his head poor thing but not all my ideas are completely barking and I try not to ask him to do too many things for no reason.

It was a day of rolling mists.  The weather in the UK is infinitely better than it is here today - and being forced to be indoors isn't as nice as just wanting to be indoors.  We are quite glad that Lakis, Argy, Kia and the family aren't actually here at the moment because this isn't the conditions that they would have wanted for the grandchildren to enjoy.  We did have a video call with them today which was rudely interrupted by a power outage, thankfully not for too long.

This weather is good for the garden but I failed miserably to rescue some of the cushions before the rains came so they will need to dry out or else they will go mouldy - still the damp brings out all the colours and this area is looking lovely with the dark blue irises that have come out.

We managed a brief chat with Rob when he called in to drop off some post he had collected and for John to give him some beers.  We had arranged to see him from the conservatory if he came through the gate.  He has a full beard!!!  It seems like an age since we were last together - in fact if would have been my birthday so that is over 6 weeks ago.  I so wanted to see Di but she didn't come in - it is such an awful time for her at the moment and all I want to do is give her a hug.

Not much to report save that we had the remainder of last night's Chinese for our tea and I didn't think it was going to be enough so as we had some baby sweetcorn in the fridge left over from the noodles I did the other day I found a recipe which used them - it was called Asian sticky sweetcorn with honey and peanut sauce and at first John was a bit dubious - particularly as I had gone a little off piste as I didn't have all the ingredients but it was delicious and he really enjoyed it.  Only trouble was it filled us up a bit too much and we still ended up with Kung Po chicken and Rice left over!

The Ration Book says...
Things did not improve as soon as the war was over - in fact there was new bread rationing implemented which included cakes, buns and scones too.  The ordinary man in the street could expect just six slices of bread a day - whilst this might seem rather more than you might have expected remember there was little else to go with it.