Mr Tweedy’s Gulls

We have had a couple of animal encounters this week. The first was on Thursday morning, when we opened the bedroom blinds and discovered a flock of gulls (more than in the photo) on top of Dawn’s roof. This is usually the domain of a pair of Mynah birds, so that in itself was unusual, but even more so was the fact that they were all looking in the same direction, as if someone was walking past eating fish & chips (interesting breakfast I thought). Within seconds of taking this photo, they were all off:

Our second encounter was on Friday, with what I think is a skink. It fell out of the sliding door into the laundry when I went to put some washing on. It was 8-10cm long, part of the lizard family if I am correct. We tried to catch it so that we could pop it outside, but it was too fast for us. However, it re-appeared in the kitchen on Saturday when I was making my lunch, quickly ran off, only to be next observed emerging from behind the TV while I was eating my lunch. It was heading for the sunshine on the lounge carpet and I eventually managed to catch it and take it outside in the hope that it would have a more suitable diet in the vegetation. It was a cute wee thing:

Our social highlight of the week was taking Mary (of quilting fame) out to lunch for a belated birthday celebration. We had planned to do it on the day, but Mary fell and broke her arm the day before so we had to re-arrange. We went over the bridge to the Chelsea Sugar Factory in Birkenhead where there is a cafe with a good reputation. The views were lovely, and we enjoyed the food. We all ordered sandwiches which turned out to be mightier than expected. Nicky and I both went for corned beef with sauerkraut on rye (never having had sauerkraut before) and Mary brioche with bacon, which she enjoyed. I would say our choice was more interesting than fantastic, and Nicky needed a doggie bag for half of hers. We had space for exciting desserts though:

They were all a bit sweet, which we should have expected.

After a bit of a stroll round some of the grounds, and admiring the use of pink everywhere (even the car park lines are pink) we had tea and lemon drizzle cake (which Nicky had made) back at Marys:

I had two on-site jobs (Mon & Tues), but other than that no work this week. We had another culinary treat when I bough hazelnut croissants on the way home form work on Tuesday morning. They made for a very nice morning tea.

The dishwasher has been declared terminal by a dishwasher repair man, so Dawn will replace it, but this may be after we have left. Bert the builder sent us the results of the engineer's report which require some re-designing of the foundations to be done. We are very pleased to find this out now, rather than later!

On Thursday morning we met up with Kate and her squeeze Jack at a local café. We had a really good chat and took to Jack straight away.

Nicky has had a quiet week pottering round the house. She went up to the optician on Friday to get her left eye checked out after having a burst blood vessel that didn’t seem to right itself in the usual way, but all appeared OK. Yesterday was back to BHB Quilters - first time since February! Attendance was a little lower than usual but I think everyone felt pleased to be getting back to normal. Church was also back to normal this morning, though due to the rain I stayed at home to continue with the jigsaw which I started yesterday. After coming home for some lunch and to help with the puzzle Nicky went over to Stella's for Scrabble with the usual suspects this afternoon. We will be watching the last episode of The Luminaries this evening, in the hope it will make the last 5 weeks worth it. I’m not convinced.

Take care, Rick