Sky Blue

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I think the highlight of this week must be the weather. Starting on Monday it gave us four glorious days of autumn sunshine. Thursday took a leave of absence with heavy rain, and Friday couldn’t make its mind up, but the cloudless skies yesterday and very light breeze were just wonderful. It’s really helped with the browning on the knees. The last couple of nights have been much cooler. We started the week with overnight lows in the low teens, but we are now down to single figures.

Nicky’s week has been busy. On Monday a trip to a German café with Doris finally came to fruition. This has been planned and aborted for a number of months, but then ended up not delivering on expectations as the chosen café turned out to be closed on Mondays! An alternative (non-German) was found. After lunch she went up to Armanasco House to see what happened at the Mah Jong group. It turned out their style of play is very different from ours. They have pages of “set hands” which they go for, instead of chows, pungs and kongs. Nicky isn’t sure if she will return.

With the good weather she spent Tues and Wed doing major bed cleaning and continuing sorting the garden planters, along with holy communion on Wednesday morning. She had a disappointing trip to the library in Henderson on Thursday, after discovering the tuition she had been given for the voluntary work was incorrect, and what she need to do was much more complex. She ended the day with Prayer for Prisons in Greenlane which was much better. Friday was consumed with making palm crosses. There was no one else at church when she went up so she brought palms leaves home and set to - until bedtime!

I have had a quieter week with work, just doing three on-site visits. I managed a swim at Herne Bay on Tuesday, and had a good MeetUp session on Thursday evening. My kitchen duties have included making bacon, egg and spud salad, smoked fish pie, and on Friday mighty pancake stacks (with bacon, banana and maple syrup).

We took advantage of the gorgeous sunshine and slightly cooler temperatures yesterday by spending most of the morning reading on The Rattigan. By lunchtime Nicky roused herself and after a couple of trips to the local supermarket produced an interesting wholemeal fruit loaf, and a dark chocolate birthday cake for Steve. Both were cut into when he and Stella came over for Scrabble in the afternoon, and Steve appeared to appreciate and enjoy the cake. I was no where near as motivated and continued reading Sovereign by CJ Sansom. It is historical fiction, this one set in 1541, very well written and plotted, and with very useful end notes explaining which parts of the story were fabricated, and which based on real events. This is great for readers such as myself who’s grasp on history is not good.

While Nicky was at church this morning I went for a walk locally before settling down with a mug of coffee and my book, which I finished shortly after lunch. It was also prison weekend for Nicky, which went well.

Our domestic routines are changing a little, with the washing and ironing now being much more of a joint effort. We are also getting up about an hour later and therefore neither of us feel quite as tired as we did before Nicky retired. This also helps with tellyboxing most evenings!

Take care, Rick

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