Invasion of Flying Ants

Yesterday afternoon (Sunday) we had an invasion of flying ants in the lounge. It was Carol who noticed them, along the skirting board under the window and near where we store Alfie's toys in a basket next to the television unit. I can't think how they got in the house, but no doubt the recent warm weather has something to do with this invasion. It's supposed to happen annually when the queen ant of a colony sprouts wings ready to mate. They don't usually sting humans, but we weren't over-keen to find out one way or another and certainly didn't want them in the house. Carol doused the carpet with ant-killer powder, and we whisked Alfie out of the way into the kitchen, much to his dismay, but we weren't sure he wasn't likely to get bitten and didn't want him near the poison. They began to die as the poison took effect and I then used the vacuum cleaner to clear up the powder. Unfortunately Alfie's toys got covered in the powder, so the only solution was to put them in a black bin bag and put the whole lot out for the dustmen. We really didn't want him playing with them after they were doused in the ant killing powder. They were crawling along the skirting board and on the carpet. Panic over, we could then return to watching television.

Monday morning. I took out Alfie as usual for his walk. There were people in the children's playground area who had an alsatian which was not on a lead so I avoided that area and immediately put Alfie on his lead. I was concerned that the bigger dog might harm Alfie. He isn't scared of bigger dogs generally and always wants to make friends, but it's difficult to know whether this alsatian was going to be aggressive and wasn't keen to find out so to avoid at all costs seemed the best solution.

We drove over Woburn Abbey to drive through the park. The deer were not close to the road and having looked I could see them in the distance over towards the road leading to the Abbey. There is a sign up as you drive into the open park space which tells you the number of deer killed so far this year. It says 12. It seems crazy that drivers don't slow down to avoid the deer as they are large animals and do have a habit of wandering into the road, so how on earth do people manage to hit them and kill them? Surely not impossible to merely slow down, or are some drivers just too reckless when they drive through the park? We drove round the loop which we always take so as to make a return journey back through the park and then went to Wyevale Garden Centre at Woburn Sands to have a browse in The Works there as Carol wanted to buy glue sticks for her crafting. The Works always have a good range of not only books but also a wide range of other items such as for crafting and had Christmas stock in for those who make Christmas cards and decorations. Let's just say it's the first sign I've seen of Christmas, even though we're only in August.

Lots of children in the garden centre, because it's till the school holidays. Some very well behaved but  one or two screaming to get their own way. Some parents let their children get their own way and don't know how to discipline them. They don't know how to say 'no' when a child demands something. We avoided Frost's garden centre, which is the first garden centre you come to when driving from Woburn. I could see many cars in what must have been a carpark extension and we know from experience that they put on special events for children during the school holidays, such as a circus, so drove past to go to Wyevale instead.

We ended up in the café and had lattes and scones, jam and clotted cream. The scones were really fresh and were warm, straight from the oven. Almost like homemade. The latte was better than average and would seem to have a far higher coffee content than at most places we've been to.

We left Wyevale, heading back to Milton Keynes through Wavendon. There's lots of roadworks along this stretch of road and it looks as though they're building more houses on the piece of land between this road and the main road that leads out towards the M1, which is now lined by large warehouses, the biggest being for John Lewis. Very soon Wavendon will be totally engulfed by housing. The large roundabout which is on Staanding Way and which is the first roundabout you encounter as you come into Milton Keynes from the M1 has been totally transformed and expanded, with traffic lights on it which make it safer and easier to negotiate.

Snow (Almost) Gone . . . And A Drive Out

We woke this morning to find out that the snow had almost all gone, apart from a few stray bits. What do they say? If there's a bit of snow left, then there'll be more soon to join it, so there is the possibility that we will get more before the winter is over. It is a good deal milder, so I turned the central heating down. The lounge does get warm, particularly if the sun comes out, which makes a real saving on the gas bill. These houses were designed to be warmed by natural means, with larger windows facing the sun and the windows on the opposite side of the house much smaller.

At 8.30 a.m. there was a weak sun shining. Which meats the remaining snow would soon dissolve. Carol was still asleep and I heard Alfie coming downstairs and wanting no doubt to be let out into the garden.

I'm still reading 'Keeping On, Keeping On', Alan Bennett's latest book. It's mostly his diary entries, covering 2005-12. He mentions Miss Shepherd, the elderly lady who lived in a clapped-out van parked in his driveway for 15 years, and who provided the inspiration for his play 'The Lady In The Van' and the film version of the same. There's nothing particularly interesting about his ramblings, mostly about his visits to various churches, National Trust properties and so on, but I love his sense of humour, very dry, and his mentions of the people he's met in various roles, for example, writers and actors. You can't read these books of his as if they're a novel. You can read several pages, all bits and pieces covering several days, none really connected in any way. There's no narrative thread, so it's the type of thing you can pick up on occasion, although some bits are more interesting than others.

We've been trying out the new Tassimo machine. It's a good deal more sophisticated than the Dulce Gusto machine. There is a wider range of drinks. It will make teas, and branded drinks, Cadbury's chocolate, Twining's and Costa. It has taken a while to fathom out how to work the machine, which Carol has christened Hannibal because it sounds a bit like the sounds the character, Hannibal Lecter, played by Anthony Hopkins, makes in 'The Silence of The Lambs.'

We drove down the A5 towards Stockgrove Country Park. It's been such a sunny and warm morning, after about a week of snow and ice, it was great to be able to get out of the house. We saw some patches of snow, but not enough to make things difficult to drive. We parked in the carpark and saw that the main path down to the lake was still covered in ice and snow, so we gave it a miss. We walked around and saw people sitting outside the café with their dogs. We didn't have Alfie with us. If we had, he'd have got heavily covered in mud and most likely would have ingratiated himself with the dogs as he has a habit of doing. It was surprising to see so many people about on a Monday morning. We didn't remain at Stockgrove, and left, which was annoying as we had to pay £3 for the privilege, even though we were there for such a short time. Carol wanted to take photos with her iPhone of the drifting snow along the road going back to the roundabout on the A5. Some really weird and wonderful shapes carved out of the snow at the side of the road. Drove over the roundabout towards Woburn. The centre of Woburn was like a ghost town, compared with a weekend., when it's usually heaving with tourists. A pretty village, but it's been over-commercialised. Drove through the park, although we didn't see much of the deer. Drivers not over-appreciative of me driving slowly to take  in the scenery. Why should they? Why bother to keep your speed to a decent level, particularly if it means avoiding any deer who happen to be in the middle of the road, as they have a habit of doing? No point obeying the rules, as usual. I drove straight through and out the other side and theynround towards Steppingley and Ampthill and then round towards Ridgmont and they made a detour back towards Woburn Sands as we wanted somewhere to have a bight for lunch. We went into Frost's at first. Parked well away from any other vehicles, as I don't want a repetition of what happened the last time we were in Frost's carpark. We went into the main body of the garden centre, which, as usual is beautifully organised, new displays of items to buy for Mothering Sunday. (I hate that we have to Americanise it to 'Mother's Day.) Why do they seem to think mothers want everything to be a hideous pink in colour? Flowers as well as boxes of chocolates and other gifts?

The restaurant is heaving with those of a 'certain age.' You can hardly find room to sit, if you were proposing eating. We go into another area as Carol wants to sit down. I go and have a look for a simple sandwich or baguette, but I can find nothing that fits the bill. Plenty of other options, but it's been made so up-market with rockett rather than plain old lettuce, or posh food on a platter rather than a plate, over-priced and certainly putting off a certain section of the population. As we can find nothing suitable, we decide to leave and drive over the road to Wyevale Garden Centre. Frost's have lost our custom.

This amuses me; a garden centre, making every available type of plant for sale. We walk into Wyevale and one of the first stalls (if that's what they call them) we come across is made up to look like a vegetable patch, but with obvious artificial veg appearing to grow in some earth and then, further in, a huge display of artificial flowers of every shape and variety, looking amazingly realistic. It just seems crazy that a garden centre, of all places, should sell such things as plastic flowers. Though, thinking about it, some of these would have been useful to me when I was working in stage management and I needed to find such things as flowers to be used as props in some of the plays I worked on, particularly as real flowers were considered to be bad luck by some actors. Just that a lot of theatrical folks are superstitious. No mention of a play by Shakespeare, better known as 'The Scottish Play' (Macbeth.) as it's considered to be bad luck.

In Wyevale we go into the restaurant. We order tomato and cheese toasties and have to wait some considerable length of time for them to arrive at our table because we're told they only have one operative griddle. When they arrive, they are very tasty. Also, we share a portion of chips. The place is busy, mostly mothers and toddlers and babies, who seem very well behaved, apart from one child who seems to like to make a noise about everything. It's good that these places do cater for children and babies. Also, I notice that Wyevale as well as Dobbie's are now dog-friendly. I see no reason whey they shouldn't, provided all dogs are well behaved.

Left Wyevale and drove back towards Milton Keynes. We had intended driving back up towards Chaffron Way, but when we got to the traffic lights to turn left towards Kingston where Tesco is, the road was blocked off. So, where we to go? No advance warning of this,  or for what reason, so diverted inside the housing estate. It was like driving in some sort of maze of roads, not clear where I was to go exactly, but eventually got on to main road back towards Chaffron Way.  So we'd had quite a pleasant morning, quite a circuitous drive, but well worth it in the end.

Later. It's as well we went out when we did. It's late afternoon as I write this, 4.50 or thereabouts. The weather has changed. It's now raining and there's water running down the road outside. The snow is more or less gone, although there is a small amount left in the back garden.

Outing and a 'Little Bump' with The Car

Carol was determined to get out of the house. I couldn't blame her, as she hasn't been out for quite some time, except to go for hospital appointments, such as to the Oncology Suite and doctor's visits. We had to go somewhere which wouldn't compromise Carol's health as she can't get infected because of being on chemotherapy, so it wasn't a good idea to go somewhere which would mean she was likely to catch something nasty from someone or other. We headed off down the A5 and could have gone to Dobbie's at Bletchley, but when we got to the roundabout we decided to go the opposite way and headed for Woburn Sands and either Frost's or Wyevale garden centres. Carol has been looking for a diary so she can keep a track of her appointments, one with a page for each day. I had been into the city centre this morning and didn't find a decent diary for her in any of the shops but got a calendar in The Works. Generally a good place to browse in for not just books but also calendars and a wide range of odds and ends. We went into Wyevale first and had a good browse amongst the different stores within the garden centre and went into The Works (for me, again, although a different branch to this morning) and we found the ideal diary for Carol. She then had a desire to have cake (as you do) so we had a look round but found nothing, not so much as a crumb, unfortunately. So we left and went to Frost's only a few hundred yards back towards the centre of Woburn Sands. Not much room to park the car, but we did manage to eventually find a place and then went into the food hall. We wanted custard, and we found some in the food-hall, but we then discovered that it cost over £3. I hadn't noticed, but Carol pointed the cost out to me before we got to the till. I decided to put it back on the shelf. We could easily find ready-made or at least custard powder and make our own if we visited another shop. We couldn't find cake of any description, going into the restaurant in the main building of the garden centre. At more than £3  slice, we decided it was somewhat over-priced. Probably very nice, but you could find a whole Victoria sponge for less than that elsewhere. At which point we decided to leave.

We got back to the car, got in and I began to reverse out. A difficult enough manoeuvre at the best of times. You have to be sharp as there are always people walking past as well as other cars reversing and turning. I moved extremely slowly and, unfortunately, seemed to hit the car behind. The driver shouted that I'd hit his car. He wasn't going to let me go without making a scene. I got out of the car and spoke to him. I apologised and he asked me if I wanted to pay 'in cash' or claim 'on your insurance.' No possibility that he'd made an error with his driving? He had his iPhone out and was taking pictures with it of the damage to the rear of his car. Hardly a scratch. Also, taking shots of the rear of our car. Thinking about it now, I think he may just have been taking photos of the registration number. Only a slight scratch, if even that. I gave him my phone number and my name. There was something a bit odd about all this. How come he had his mobile out so quickly and taking shots only mere seconds after the 'crash'? You could hardly call it that. I was moving extremely slowly. I didn't hear any sound when the car ran into the other car. Neither did Carol. The other thing was, his wife was quickly on the scene with a note pad and pencil, taking down my name and phone number. Handy if she had a notebook and pencil so readily to hand.  I would contact our insurance company, Swinton, and they would deal with the claim, if indeed there was a claim. The other man said that he'd ring round to get a quote to have his car repaired. It was hardly worth bothering, to be honest. If I had been driving at speed, it would have made a far bigger dent in his car. What I saw on his car was hardly a dent, more like a tiny scratch, if that. Why couldn't he just accept that it was a minor accident and drive away without making any fuss? I reckon he'll get a quote and then hike up the amount and pocket the difference. There are people 'out there' who are quite determined to make money out of insurance claims, even staging car accidents deliberately just so they can claim on either their insurance or the other driver's. I reckon that driver could easily 'ring round' for a quote and then hike it and get me to 'pay in cash,' regardless of the actual quote he would be given. All these things adding up to be rather suspicious. It makes me wonder how many innocent drivers he's tried this sort of scam on.

On the way home we stopped at the Co-op in Broughton. This is a newly-opened estate which is growing fast. It's really incredible how much Milton Keynes has grown in the little over ten years that I've lived here. Out at Crownhill, where we lived when we were first married in 2007, the open fields going out along Watling Street towards Stony Stratford are now developed into more housing estates. The road into Milton Keynes from Junction 13 of the M1 has been extensively developed as a duel carriage way and a whole expanse of warehouses has grown up, mostly belonging to Waitrose and John Lewis. Anyway, we managed to find some suitable cake in the Co-op for Carol and also, when we got to the till to pay, the young man operating the checkout was a former pupil of Carol's which was nice for her. She was pleased to see him settled into a job and making a life for himself.

We'd been home a couple of hours when the telephone rang and the driver of the car spoke to me, asking for my insurance policy number. Well, I wasn't likely to have it immediately to hand, now was I? I hadn't bothered to look for it and had really no intention of doing so. I gave him my full name and told him that Swinton would deal with the matter. It was then that Carol was a bit suspicious. Was this man trying to make a claim which was really not much of a claim? It was odd that he had his mobile out so quickly and was taking photos of the 'damage', if you could call it that, to his precious car. I began to wonder if he wasn't trying to make a false claim on my insurance. Carol said to ring Swinton on Monday morning and tell them that this so-called claim seemed a bit suspicious, particularly as the damage, if you could even call it that, was so minimal, not even that, barely a scratch. We'll have to see what they had to say and let them decide. I have driven for very nearly 50 years and in all that time I think I've only had to claim on my insurance no more than half-a-dozen times. We watch daytime television programmes about such things as false insurance claims, or at least, some which are very suspicious. I have an idea that this person makes a habit of such things and would do anything to get money out of a car driver, when the damage is so minimal it can hardly be described as such. No more than what you'd expect if you were to brush against a branch of a tree or bush when you parked or if a cat or dog scratched it with it's paw. I imagine that the insurance company would send someone out to have a look the damage for themselves before they payed out to have the car repaired. We'll have to see what happens.

Birdfeeder Returned To It's Rightful Place

We've had a birdfeeder in our garden for the past couple of years (if you can honestly describe the space to the rear of our house as a 'garden.' More like a mere oblong of grass, brambles and other indescribable vegetation.) I bought Carol what they term a 'bird-feeding station' a couple of Christmases ago in Lidl, which consisted of a central pole which you stuck in the ground and it had metal arms which fitted onto it and you hung fat balls and other feeding material onto hooks on these arms. It's didn't last too long, probably because of the weather conditions and it was difficult to keep upright and so it got removed. Earlier this year we bought a new one. I think it came from Amazon. A good deal more durable, and it had a set of feeders to put peanuts and other food into and place on the arms, similar to the old one. This was a success up to a point, until we had some strong winds and it began to lean at a somewhat precarious angle. I removed it completely a couple of weeks ago as I had to mow the lawn as it was quite difficult to do properly with this thing in the way. We decided we wanted to reinstate it at some point but the problem was keeping it from falling over and so finding some form of solution which would make this possible. We had visited a Wyevale garden centre in Bicester some while ago and saw a device which you screwed into the ground and then put the upright pole of your bird feeding station into this screw-device which was designed to keep the pole in an upright position and hopefully prevent the thing falling over or at least getting pushed over at an angle. Last week we went to the Wyevale branch in Woburn Sands with the intention of finding this item but without success. We eventually found something in Frost's, also in Woburn Sands, a four-pronged thing which you fixed to the upright pole and the four prongs acted as sort of legs for the pole and allowing the pole to be far more secure. We purchased this thing and it is now fixed to our bird feeding station, and with new feeders as well as footballs and other items which birds seem to love. We re-sited it a good deal further from the house and not too close to the neighbour's shed roof as we don't want a repeat of the squirrels jumping onto it as we have had in the past.

It's taken a while to get birds to come back to feeding from the feeding station. I think it may just be that they need to trust that they won't be eaten by either cats or our little Yorkshire terrier, Alfie. He does have a dislike of any cats who tend to congregate (if that's the best way to describe two cats.) on the roof of the shed and saunter along the fence. He can't reach them, which they are fully aware of, but it gives him something to amuse himself, chasing up the garden barking madly and they peer at him with a look of disdain down their noses. The last time we had a feeding station set up we also had a couple of squirrels who came and did their party pieces by leaping from next door's shed onto the thing, managing to avoid being impaled on the spike-thing on the top of the feeder.

I recently purchased a tripod for my Canon digital camera. Again, from Amazon. Quite good value I thought for £35. I have set this up in the kitchen and, along with the zoom lens, trained it on the bird feeder with the hope of catching some good shots of some birds on the bird feeder. It's taken a day or two before we got a regular visit from one or more blue tits to the feeder. With the camera set up and focussed on the feeder and me sitting in the lounge and watching for any birds that visit, I have to then get to the camera before the birds fly away and attempt to get some reasonable shots without frightening the birds away in my attempts to get to the camera. Not an easy task.

Mixed Weather

It was a strange sort of weekend on the weather-front. It started out rather unsettled, rather over-cast, but by Sunday late afternoon it was quite sunny and warm. We didn't have to endure next door's D.I.Y. sounds. Whatever they were up to out there in their garden didn't make any sort of sound. Glimpsing from our bedroom window it looks a bit like a builder's yard with a pile of bricks in one corner and on the roof of their shed an up-turned wheelbarrow. Carol said, had I noticed the new shed? I replied, 'what shed?' There could hardly be room for another? The garden is about the same size as ours, around 15X25 feet at the most. Then she pointed out that there were sections of shed leant up against the lean-to near the house. I could see it when I had another look. Where on earth are they going to re-assemble it? There is hardly enough space. They have been putting down blocks to form a sort of patio area on one side and the remaining space is grass. Or is it turf? It must be turf, because how could grass seed suddenly sprout so quickly, and the other morning I saw a large lorry at the front of our house (it blocked us in completely) which has 'turf' written on it's side. It was one of those large flat-bed lorries which has it's own lift system built in, which would be used to unload whatever material it carried, in this case, turf. So I imagine this turf (it can't have been a particularly large amount, considering the small space left in their garden next door) was unloaded at some point in the day and which I didn't see. I just hope we don't have to endure more sounds next weekend. We were hoping for rain, so that they couldn't do any more work and spare us the constant noises. They have been laying more of the bricks for their patio/terrace (whatever you want to call it, I don't know.) The next thing well know, they have re-created Stowe Landscape Gardens with follies and lakes. Yes, that would be the last thing they'd have, a water feature, a fountain or something that makes a trickling sound. Plenty to choose from at any number of garden centres around Milton Keynes, such as Frost's or Wyevale in Woburn Sands or Dobbie's at Fenny Stratford.

Wet Weather

After the warm, almost springlike weather yesterday, it's a really miserable sort of day. I'm really glad I cut the grass yesterday because today it's pouring with rain. Infact it's a good deal colder and we have the central heating on. I refuse to call that patch of grass a 'lawn' because it's nothing of the sort. A lawn is reasonably good quality grass, cut with a mower which makes the traditional stripes. Think Wimbledon tennis (I don't as I'm not a fan, but you know what I mean.) I suppose I mean what we see when we visit a National Trust property and go into the various gardens attached to these properties. Indeed, as a young man living at home, particularly Malting Farm, I was usually in charge of mowing the lawn.  I wasn't over-keen about having the job, but you had no choice. You did what your were told and just got on with it. I can actually think of nothing more boring than mowing a lawn, walking up and down, pushing the benighted thing, which wasn't always eager to start. My father was particular about the thing, making sure you checked it for oil, and then having to fill the engine with two-stroke petrol. To this very day I don't understand what is meant by 'two-stroke' petrol. How does it differ from any other petrol? We had to go to a local petrol station with the can and get it filled before I could put the petrol in the lawn mower before I could even think of mowing the lawn. Then check the oil level with the dip-stick. I suppose it was good that I was instructed on how to properly care for a petrol engine, but it was a bit of a chore, all this fuss and bother. There was a large garden at Malting Farm, Cardington, and my father was somewhat particular about how the lawn was mown. It was done with a traditional lawn mower, you know, petrol-driven, you had to empty the bucket think on the front which caught the grass as it went along. Not many up-and-down lengths before you had to stop and empty the thing into a wheelbarrow and when that was full, push the thing the length of the garden to the pile that grew exponentially at the other end of the garden. Compost heap was the word I was looking for. It gave off a very distinctive odour. I don't know what happened to it. It steamed gently. Mysterious. I expect this compost was used to bed in plants, act as a sort of fertiliser. Anyway, I'm drifting from my main subject. What I'm attempting to say is that the grass patch at the rear of this house is more like a quagmire, particularly when it rains. It's excessively uneven, which makes cutting it much more difficult. It's tusky and difficult to cut, even more so if it's slightly wet. I don't think our electric, rotary mower was made to cut such poor quality grass. More likely intended for even, flat lawns, at those houses with pocket-handkerchief sized gardens and even smaller pieces of lawn, made of nicely rolled, tended turf, purchased for some garden centre such as Frost's at Woburn Sands, or Dobbie's or even Wyevale. The mower at Malting Farm was one of those green Atco models. It had a detachable bucket on the front and you had to pull a cord to get it started, making sure you didn't flood the engine otherwise it wouldn't start. It was something of an effort to pull that cord-thing, which had a sort of wooden cross piece handle and the cord sort of re-coiled itself after you'd pulled it. It began to really hurt every muscle in your pulling arm after the sixth or so attempt.

Baptisms and Sunshine

It's a perfectly beautiful sunny September day. It's just amazing that it's so warm and sunny. We went to church at Milton Keynes Christian Centre, going to the first of the three Sunday services, at 9 a.m. Thee were to be around 40 people being baptised during the service. It's always busy so it is advisable to arrive early in order to get a seat and we always like to get as close to the front as possible to be able to watch.

During the sermon, George Ridley said that £600 was needed to replace the roof of a church somewhere in India. As a result we went to the cashpoint at Tesco's in Oldbrook Boulevarde and returned to give it to George. When we returned, having had to park in the road opposite the entrance to M.K.C.C. which was actually coned off with yellow 'no parking cones' (because people aren't supposed to park in the neighbouring roads as part of the agreement which was made with the local council when planning permission was given to build the church.) we walked back towards the church building and as we got to the front door Carol saw one of her former pupils who was going to be baptised during the second service. We handed over the £10 to George Ridley who was with his wife Pam sitting in the coffee shop at the entrance of M.K.C.C. Carol said she wanted to stay and watch the baptisms during the next service (which was due to start in a little under 15 minutes.) I had to go back to the car and drive to the carpark at Milton Keynes College (where we had parked originally earlier in the morning before the first service at 9 o'clock.) I then drove over to the college car park through the busy traffic which was heading into the church carpark as well as out onto Chaffron Way. When I got to the carpark I had to walk back along the Redway and back to M.K.C.C. By the time I got there the service had started but I managed to walk in and found Carol. She had found us two seats near to the baptistry so we could watch the baptisms and I took some photographs with my mobile phone. It actually turned out that two of Carol's students from Milton Keynes Academy were baptised during the service.

We returned home, having left immediately after the baptisms. We then drove to Woburn Sands to visit the Wyevale Garden Centre there to have a break and something to eat in their restaurant for a lunch break. We were somewhat surprised to see Christmas stock being set up in the garden centre.It seemed far, far too early to be thinking about Christmas this early in September. Especially as it was so sunny this afternoon. It seems some people will buy the general tat that is considered acceptable Christmas fare, and usually very over-priced. It gives us a good laugh, looking at this sort of stuff. Now that B.H.S. has gone, affording us some considerable pleasure in the run-up to Christmas, when we had to visit the B.H.S. Christmas department to look at the offerings they sold, but, alas, this year, now they have closed down, our entertainment of this sort will have to be elsewhere. Singing Christmas trees and tacky tinsel, over-coloured tree ornaments and One Direction knick-necks will have to now be diverted elsewhere.