We are a "one in ten"
We have had some gorgeous winter weather this weekend. The skies have been clear for the most part, and the sun has been warm, especially yesterday. Lunch has been taken outside on the north-east patio, me wearing shorts and T-shirt and thinking to myself “meteorologically, this is mid-winter!” I had an amble up to the cemetery yesterday afternoon and thought the trees were looking rather good even without their foliage:
Now that the sewing room is more organised we can access the blind and the window on the western wall. It is the only window on that side of the house that doesn’t have obscured glass, and I enjoyed the view this morning when opening the blind and was pleased to still be able to see the river over the fence:
The majority of my week has been very quiet with no billable work and having my second Covid-19 vaccination on Tuesday morning. By late afternoon Tuesday I was starting to ache, and this got worse on Wednesday so spent the day consuming paracetamol. By Thursday I just felt unwell, by Friday tired, and Saturday quite drained. Today is the first day I have had periods of feeling normal again. The “enforced” resting has enabled me to get through two books - Alexander McCall-Smith’s “The Man with the Silver Saab” and Michael Connelly’s “The Law of Innocence”. Very different, but both enjoyable. This also means that Nicky and I are in the currently 10% of the population to be fully vaccinated.
We started a jigsaw on Monday because we had some heavy showers. Fortunately Nicky got her additional water management work done before the worst of the rain came. In the evening we enjoyed a film, Arctic, about a man who’s plane had crashed in the Arctic and then his rescuers helicopter crashed, so he had to rescue one of the rescuers.
Nicky did laundry as and when the weather allowed, went to Life Group on Tuesday afternoon. On Wednesday we had a friend of Nicky’s (Frances) from Women’s Breakfast /Life Group over for lunch. Nicky made some tomato soup and I baked walnut soda bread, and we had a good chat. We also meet some more locals from up the road as they had received two copies of The Listener in the post on Tuesday - theirs and ours, so they very kindly delivered ours to us. Nicky also contacted an arborist called Des about our elm tree, and he came over on Thursday and gave it some TLC. It looks much better now:
Nicky popped into town on Friday to do some errands and buy some more compost. We had arranged Simon the Builder to come over in the afternoon to discuss the fence situation with Jacqui, so when there was a knock on the door I assumed it was him. It wasn’t. It was Richard Landers, the glass artist who designed and constructed our stained glass windows. We hadn’t seen him since last year and he hadn’t seen our home since fitting the windows last December. Richard had a wander round the house while we talked to Simon (who had arrived a couple of minutes later) and Jacqui. A way forward with the fence and the prevention of water and debris washing onto to her section from ours during heavy rain was formulated. Simon also delivered his quote for pedestrian and vehicle gates which turned out to be more expensive than we were hoping. We were reminded how lucky we have been to get our house built at 2019 prices.
It was very good to see Richard and his obvious joy at how well the windows fit with the house. He also bowled us over with a house warming gift which he made for us - a sculpture of our home in recycled glass:
He actually went to the trouble of getting a set of elevation plans for the house so that he could get the dimensions and proportions of the house and carport correct. It’s just lovely.
We had a chilly, misty start yesterday, and Nicky was up early to make scones to take with her to the St. John’s working bee. She returned early afternoon weary from the gardening just before Eleanor called in for a chat, so Nicky ended up having a very late lunch. We watched some of the Olympics Opening Ceremony that we had recorded, then in the evening watched the end of the mens cycling road race.
While Nicky was at church this morning I had a walk down the road. This afternoon while Nicky was mowing the front berm, our new neighbours at 414 (Elaine and Michael Hampson) invited us round to join them and some of their friends for nibbles and bubbles. Apparently Elaine wants the land to grow heritage beans, so they will probably rent out the house. We will not be surprised if they sell off some of their land for development.
Take care, Rick
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