One week more of work. It feels really strange to be an almost-retired person. How on earth did I manage 43 years of full-time employment...

It looks even stranger, written down. :)

First thing this morning (09.30) I rang bells for 20minutes, for The Wedding. Then back home for a late breakfast and a catch-up on what all the pretty dresses for TW were like. Then off to Canterbury for both of us for eye-tests (no difficulty getting an appt today, I wonder why...) at 12.30. The town was almost deserted, apart from crowds of ( Read more... )

If possible, in life, try to avoid tripping over the hearthrug and toppling forward so that you save yourself by (inadvertently) putting a hand on the top of the wood-burning stove...

*whimpers*

End of the second day of the beekeeping course today. A solid 14 hours of - mostly - theory, with a bit of frame-making for light relief. Bees are amazing creatures and I'm looking forward to caring for my own hive from this Spring but, my goodness, there are so many things to look out for. What with checking to make sure the colony is building up ( Read more... )

Day One of the 'Learning without Frontiers' conference is now over. I'm exhausted - and tomorrow there's more of it. It's very interesting and stimulating, and it's great to hear all about the various mobile learning projects/refining of paradigms that's going on but...my brain hurts.

Smudge (our big young black & white cat) brought a young (but almost grown) rat into the house today while the back door was open. He apparently chased it round the sitting room and the kerfuffle alerted R. Just as R got there, Smudge disabled it. So it was left on the sitting room floor, squeaking. R had to take it outside and, out of mercy, put ( Read more... )

I'm having a lovely time this weekend. A couple of hours at 'ringing school' in Dover this morning, then up to the campus kitchen garden for a BBQ with fellow gardeners and a discussion about how we're going to spend some grant money for the garden. Then this evening we're going out for supper to a local pub (Read more... )

Tabbs has been very restless in the house at night for several weeks now, so much so that in desperation we have started putting her on a comfortable chair in the greenhouse to sleep. She has her bowl of water and a bowl of snacks for the night and she seems to quite enjoy settling down out there. I'm not sure what's going to happen as the autumn ( Read more... )

So, after several weeks made hideous by mega amounts of decorating/housekeeping/worrying, our guest (b_twin_1 ) finally arrived for the weekend on Friday and it was lovely to see her. We all went to both Hever and Leeds castles on Saturday, while yesterday we had been invited by the Canterbury Cathedral bell-ringers to come and watch their Sunday ( Read more... )

Both cats have gone mad with Spring-fever. This is unfortunate, to put it mildly, because they both want to keep going out and coming in again through the early hours of the morning. Tabbs is the worst. Smudge will at least settle down eventually but Tabbs has, for the last three nights, demanded very noisily to be let in (through our bedroom ( Read more... )