It's A Lovely Day Today!

Saturday. 9.50 a.m. I've been constructing a bookshelf, which I bought on Amazon. I ordered it earlier in the week and was expecting it to arrive next week, probably Wednesday or Thursday. I got back from the doctor's appointment yesterday and there was this large parcel left outside my front door, so I left it unopened until around 7.30 this morning and have been working on putting it together. It is now finished and it's in the kitchen, but it will eventually be put in my walk-in cupboard, which will then contain all the cooking ingredients which are still awaiting a home since before the kitchen was ungraded.

12.35 p.m.  Amoxicillin is making me feel very sleepy. I was told to stop taking the Piriton, which I have done, and the remainder of the packet is now stored in my medication drawer. Well, I presume it's the new medication making me sleepy.

So, we have a new Prime Minister in Liz Truss. Well, I use the term 'Prime Minister' lightly. She's only been in office barely a month, and it seems the wheels are falling off the wagon. She's made more U-turns than a learner driver in a cul-de-sac. Seems likely she's going to have the shortest Premiership in history. It can't be long before there's a vote of no confidence, and we have a General Election. If you thought Boris Johnson was a disaster as PM, then Trussy takes the biscuit. She has the authority of an inept primary school teacher who can't get her class to behave. If she is forced out, which seems likely, does it mean we'll have to go through the ridiculous circus which is the Tory party system of voting for it's leader, which took around two months last time. Who would replace her? There can't be many candidates left.

A great deal seems to have happened in only a few days, but, as someone said so succinctly, 'A week is a long time in politics.' How true. Apparently attributed to Harold Wilson, former Labour Prime Minister.

Kwasi Kwarteng must have had the shortest time in office as Chancellor of The Exchequer and is now replaced by Jeremy Hunt. The contents of the disastrous 'mini budget' have been more or less totally replaced by new tax rates and goodness knows what else. They should install and revolving door to Number 11 Downing Street. How many Chancellors have we had in the last year? 

It seems the Conservative Party has been responsible for several disasters. So many splits within it's membership regarding the EU ('Euro Sceptics, I think the term is.) which led to the craziness of Brexit,  and now splits regarding the former Chancellor's 'Mini Budget' is likely to bring the whole house of cards tumbling down. Meanwhile, we have had two years of lockdowns due to the COVID-19 pandemic and now a war in Ukraine. Has nobody thought that closing down the economy for two years and paying people to sit at home doing nothing, would lead to soaring inflation, which is exactly what we have at the moment? Then, attempting to get people to go back to work, usually those in offices, when they've been told to 'stay at home and protect the N.H.S., and using scare tactics to prevent people from meeting up, and not understanding that you can't expect things to return to any sort of normal when people have been filled with this sort of stuff.

Monday. 8.05 a.m. My cough is certainly showing signs of disappearing. The medication must be working. 

4.45 p.m. I've done a considerable amount more writing. What I have created has already been word processed and there is far more. Things in that department are going surprisingly well.

Tenth Chemotherapy Cycle Postponed

It's another really beautiful warm spring day. We've been to the oncology suite so that Carol could have the usual blood test so that she can have the tenth chemotherapy cycle beginning tomorrow morning (Wednesday), depending on whether the test is as it should be.

As it happened, at around 6 o'clock on Wednesday evening we had a telephone call from oncology to say that there were not enough neutrophils in Carol's blood, which are the blood cells that fight infection. Which now means the tenth chemotherapy cycle has to be postponed until next week. This happened a couple of weeks ago and the next chemotherapy cycle was postponed for two weeks because Carols parents came to visit for a couple of days (see earlier blog post.)

So, I'm a bit lost as to what to write to make this blog post worthwhile. Well, we've been watching more episodes of 'The Woman In White', the current BBC1 classic adaptation. It seems to have really taken off after the third episode (of 5) but there's so many plots overlapping and so much going on it can be somewhat confusing. I don't think it will be particularly clear what's going on until we've seen the final episode (which was shown on May Bank Holiday Monday.)

I'm currently reading 'White Heat' by Dominic Sandbrook, part of his mammoth cycle of books tracing British history from Suez in 1956 up until the election of Margaret Thatcher. It's an extremely detailed account of the period, this particular volume covering the '60's, Harold Wilson, The Beatles, Mary Quant and other personalities.

It's been a really warm night. As a result, it's difficult to sleep, particularly when you have to keep the bedroom cool with the windows open.  You get the sound of cars along the A5 making a lot of sounds, racing, revving their engines. A lot of loud noises. During the day, then having bees and other flying insects buzzing in and out of the house.

Later. The Christmas tree, which is currently in the garden, in it's original pot from when it was bought in Dobbie's garden centre two Christmasses ago, is growing rapidly. It desperately needs re-potting before it dies off, which usually happens when we buy a 'live' Christmas tree. We have been meaning to find a suitable size pot so it can be transferred so that it can happily grow. In the current plastic pot it's likely to get pot-bound and then the roots will start to rot which will end with it dying which would be a shame since it's growing so successfully. We've seen suitable pots but hadn't got round to actually buying one, so this morning we went to Bunnings (which has taken over the Homebase branch in Winter Hill.) They had a quite spectacular selection of very suitable pots, one of which we purchased, along with a fuchsia  plant which Carol bought, along with potting compost and gravel to put in the pots. We had to use a trolley to convey our purchases to the till to pay and then out to the carpark, but the thing proved quite difficult to manoeuvre through the store and, once at the car, it took some effort to fit the various items in the interior of the vehicle.

We drove home to unload the posts, plants and bags of gravel and potting compost and then went out, first to drive through Woburn park, which is one of our favourite 'go-to' places when the weather is fine, searching out first rhododendrons which have begun flowering along the side of the road leading up to the cattle grids you have to go over on entering the open spaces of the deer park. We could see a few deer straggling across the road ahead of us, with one car stopped, no doubt to get a close-up view of these animals. Unfortunately we hadn't remembered to bring either of our cameras with us, because we might have got some really good shots had we got them with us.

We had to decide on somewhere suitable to have lunch so decided on Dobbie's at Bletchley, which has a good restaurant and we  had lattes, baguettes, panninis and cake. Carol had a rather nice slice of chocolate cake and I had a really tasty lemon frangipani tartlet, absolutely delicious. One of the best cakes I've had in a while. We must return at some time in the not-too distant future to partake of such delights again. We bought some plants which Carol wants to use in a bottle garden which she intends to construct in the former fish tank we have sitting in the garden.

Having finished in Dobbie's we drove back into Milton Keynes, to go to Marks and Spencer's at the football stadium where we bought milk and garlic bread which we needed.

My least-favourite job has to be done, mowing the grass. The grass seems to grow at unprecedented speed once we get any sun. It was cut a few weeks ago, and was somewhat difficult as I'd let it get too long and the mower, not really designed to cut such tough grass, really struggled. I think it's intended for those gardens which possess nice, neat turf and not the type of grass we have to contend with, more suitable to be eaten by horses, sheep and cattle and perhaps not mown at all.