She's so twentieth century

Ah, happy memories! Enjoy!

(PS - you'll score better if you turn your speakers on!)

I scored a Far Out
80% on theQuiz by SheGoddess: Quick Weight Loss

Would you have liked a present too?

This village is jolly kind, you know. Without being told they seemed to somehow know that it was Ned's birthday and they laid on a lovely weekend. Yesterday there was a beer festival at the Sports and Social Club (17 beers - we only tried 6) and then today the church tower was open for visitors.

The narrow wooden stairs from the ground to the ringing platform was fine, if steep; the banisters made it easy though. The ladder from there through the trapdoor to the clock level was unnerving, because it went over the void of the stairs - okay if you hold the rungs and don't look down. Then there was the very narrow spiral stair - very worn treads of a maximum width of 7 inches - first to the bells themselves then onwards and upwards again, finally emerging on hands and knees through a small opening onto the roof itself. Isn't it odd how it's a lot further down than it is looking up? Funny how an episode of Inspector Morse kept coming into my mind; the one where Richard Briers was a murderer and ended up jumping off a church roof ...



Looks like rush hour.


The (very) small white building on the right of the road, in the middle of the picture, is where I work.



And the village even managed to lay on some lovely weather too.

I never thought it would happen

Oh joy. The NHS has realised that I've reached a certain age and have arranged an appointment for my first mammogram - in a local village hall. This sounds as though it's going to be soooooooo much fun.

Somethin' always happens whenever we're together

Tonight's supper is brought to us courtesy of Piglet. If a partridge,
that's capable of flight and has access to the whole sky, chooses to try to outrun a fit dog with very high prey drive then it's a prime candidate for a Darwin Award. And what a good boy he was to bring it back so professionally, straight to hand.

They seek him here, they seek him there

A while back the Boy asked me to get him some more pants and some particular work gloves when I was shopping, which I duly did. Of course the gloves were the wrong type, and the pants the wrong design, but I still had the receipts to return them and get my hard-earned money back. However for some reason I just can't manage to do it. I do the in-town shopping when I've finished my weekly morning accounting before I come home for the afternoon shift at the vet, and the first week I left the bag with the goods in by the computer where I'd put them to remind me to take them. The next week I decided to be clever and put the bag on my handbag so I couldn't forget them; but I was in a rush that morning and just grabbed my bag, leaving the carrier bag behind on the kitchen table. This week I knew I couldn't fail - I put the bag into my handbag last night so there was no chance of me leaving them behind. And it worked! When I reached work I carefully put the bag of gloves and pants on the car seat and went to juggle invoices.

It was a trickier job than usual, it being the start of a new financial year so a new spreadsheet was required (luckily Paul had prepared most of it in advance) and items transferred from last year's to this year's, repeating items listed, details of Purchase Orders added, and so on, as well as putting on the invoices that had come in during the week. So it took a while but all looked lovely when I clicked Save and went to do the same for the other company. Once that was done the post arrived and there was a new invoice to add to the first spreadsheet before I logged off and went to do the shopping. I clicked on the link to take me to the spreadsheet - and it had gone. The link had somehow turned into a shortcut to itself, not to the file. With rising panic I looked everywhere - how the hell could a file just vanish?

It didn't take long for me to realise I was beaten. "Paul, something seems to have gone horribly wrong here", and he came to see. And he searched fruitlessly too - on my computer and on his where he knows the layout better. Zilch. So we went to the server and explored the innards of the backup. Nada. It reluctantly acknowledged that yes, there had been a file of that name opened and edited this morning but no, it wasn't going to say what had become of it. We conceded defeat and rang our tame IT advisor, who talked us through the internal workings of the server and managed to locate a file with that name and it was duly returned to our computers. We tentatively opened it and ... oh joy! ...it was the right one! Except that all the morning's work I'd so carefully saved had been removed and it was back to the beginning again.

So by the time I'd re-input all the data it was far too late to do the shopping so the gloves and pants came home again. Maybe next week ....

The lunatics are on the grass

Yesterday I said that I'd have to mow the lawn another day because it was under all that beautiful snow. This morning the snow had all gone (making the occasional random snowman in people's gardens look very surreal) so I mowed it today.

Woke up this morning, feeling fine

I wasn't expecting this! Just so beautiful!




I'll mow the lawn another day, then.

Thank you for the days

Sometimes, just sometimes, things just go well. Yesterday was a Good Day. The sun was shining. The car's oil leak was enmendified very quickly (and cheaply! Even better). The Boy passed his chainsaw maintenance, felling and cross-cutting exams. The dogs did what I wanted them to. I got some weeding and log-splitting done. Ned's back felt much less achy. Did I say the sun was shining? Oh yes I did. Sorry. And eventually the Boy managed to get a ticket for Reading, so he was happy too. Hurrah for March 31st!