8 Years of Blogging

I find it difficult to believe that I've let the anniversary of starting this blog pass by, but it was on the 27th September 2009 that I began writing this and I would never imagine that when I began it all that time ago that I'd be still finding things to say in 2017. In only a handful of posts I will reach the 1,000th post, which I will make quite a big thing of when the time comes. So keep an eye-out for the momentous day. Neither can I imagine that Carol's health would be so precarious so many years later. I'm not going to discuss it on here as it's far too difficult for me to even mention it. My heart attack was bad enough, and I managed to get through that and tell the tale so the same will happen with Carol's cancer. As a couple we've endured some real problems, the worst of which was when we had to move house from Crownhill to Eaglestone, which is described in fairly vivid detail in some of my earlier posts. I know some of what I've written is just waffle but that was actually the whole point of the blog, to record the insignificant things that happens in our life, the details and observations of life and all that goes on around our life. Some boring, I know, but all the same, interesting in some way or other.

We are  now, amazing at it might seem, into October. The weather is currently playing tricks. It is actually quite mild and it's deceptive when you go out because it might seem you need to put on a heavy jumper or coat but then when you've been out a while and the sun comes out you find you're far too hot and you don't need such a thick item of clothing.

Howling Gale and Getting Dark

I'm writing this at around 4 o'clock in the afternoon. I don't usually write this blog so late in the day, but why not break a habit? I suppose it's because I have something to write early in the morning. I don't altogether like it when the clocks change in October. I don't particularly enjoy the winter, although I enjoy Christmas. Dark evenings and getting up in the dark. And today there's the howling gale.  Storm Barnaby. Or so I'm told. Why have they started giving storms names? The first one last week was called Abigail or something. It seems they are to be alternately female and then male. But what on earth is the point of giving it a name in the first place? In America they give hurricanes names. So why do we have to copy everything that America does? And if we must have names for storms, can they have better names? Barney just makes me think of that awful mauve dinosaur thingy that used to be on television. Awful. Barney just doesn't suggest a storm of any magnitude to me at all. And what are they going to use for the next batch of bad weather? Camilla? Perhaps not. Cathy? Dennis? Edith? Fred? Gladys? Harold? Anyway, the wind is getting far stonger and at this rate the fence the opposite side of the garden to the side that got blown down last winter looks as if it' going to land up the same way.

Season Of Mists

Keats was right when he said that Autumn was the 'season of mists and mellow fruitfulness.' Driving around Milton Keynes you can see the trees changing colour. They are quite striking in their colour change, and it is almost daily that another grade of colour is added. Milton Keynes may be a modern city, but whoever designed the layout got it right when you see only trees as you drive along the grid roads. It is almost like living in a forest. I don't know about the mists, although we are almost into October. Some early mornings are quite misty and overcast, but there are none of those drifting mists you sometimes get near water early in the morning. There have been some really dramatic skies over Milton Keynes lately, really worth the time and effort to photograph (that is, when I can remember to take my digital camera with me in the car.)

My small Yorkie, Alfie (that's him in the photograph at the beginning of this post and who, I am certain, is going to feature in these writings in the future) has caught a mouse and deposited it on our bed! It was something of a shock, to say the least, but that is what Yorkshire terriers were bred to do, so he is only doing his job. I wasn't cross with him, but when he saw that I'd seen the dead mouse he ran downstairs and tried to hide, but I tried to make out that he'd been a good boy. Who wants the house over-run with vermin anyway, although I'm not sure whether he had caught it inside or outside in the garden.