Fiona's Quiet Life

i sur­prised a frog lurk­ing beside my wheelie bin.…it sur­prised me too , i screamed which is silly really but i thought him upstairs might run over it by acci­dent. he didn’t he picked it up and popped it into the pond,people have been dis­be­liev­ing of its col­our and sug­ges­ted i had ‘photo shopped ‘it but no , i have one word for.… them Chro­mo­phores, and as my grand­mother told me fre­quently “look it up”.….easier these days, my poor dys­lexic younger self had to use a dic­tion­ary which was in alpha­bet­ical order, that might seem a good thing to some people but was of no help to me.

i had a sore ear, went to doc, he said noth­ing wrong with it , gave me drops just in case.….which made me deaf and dizzy.….….went to dent­ist just in case it was that , noth­ing wrong with teeth he said. so here i am two weeks later still with slightly sore ear and still dizzy.….not com­plain­ing about the dizzy , it is just like hav­ing too much champagne.…..or in fact any cham­pagne in my case as i get tipsy on even the smell of alcohol.

It is half past nine at night and i am eat­ing left over salads, today we ..him upstairs and me.…got round to hav­ing the party we have been going to have since last year, it had been post­poned twice and this time we said right, whatever the weather we are hav­ing a BBQ,

well it has rained very little in Glas­gow this year but the fore­cast was stormy weather , but we are BRITISH and it IS sum­mer so we WILL enjoy it outside.….….….and we did,the rain stopped an hour before hav­ing washed all the dust off the garden, the sun shone hotly for

old­est grand­son beside his mother and a friend

sev­eral hours and just as i was tired and wish­ing it all to stop the rain star­ted and off every­body went,

superb day, but oh so tired.

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I was dusting.….I know.….anyway.…i wondered why i cold feel cold air com­ing through the wooden sur­round of my nice double glazed win­dow. i was just about to phone the nice Everest guy when i thought i would invest­ig­ate further.somebody in the night had tried very hard to force the win­dow open,making a mess of the lovely wood. there are very strong locks on the win­dows and they can’t be opened more that three cms any­way. also the burg­lar alarm is very vis­ible so they must have been daft but scary nev­er­the­less. also on Sunday him upstairs came across a strange man in the garden, just came down the alley way says the man…what alley way says the man. any­way him upstairs who deals with strange people all the time.…told him in no uncer­tain terms not to come back. then drove me down the road so i could get a good look at him.…wish i had taken a photo now.

that was this week but last week i had a lovely time doing boy things.…..i had daugh­ters so it was all end­less dan­cing dis­plays and sew­ing small bal­let dresses.…..boys are dif­fer­ent. it is all rugby and mar­tial arts, i went down for the usual babysit while their mother popped up to Birm­ing­ham of ROSPA related busi­ness and stayed on for a rugby club BBQ , had to watch the game first .…..daddy Chris was playing.…..i have never seen him move so fast as when my yell aler­ted him to the fact the the 4 year old was about to stray into the path of sev­eral huge thun­der­ing play­ers bear­ing down on him. chris  was sud­denly there scoop­ing him up and set­ting him down some­where away from the touch line. BBQ lovely

the mar­tial arts demo in swin­don was most inter­est­ing, they were all get­ting their new belts… young A. went up two at once.…..proud grandma here.……

then they did a demo end­ing with a mock fight between two bad­dies and a dozen goodies.….then some­how small 6 yr old A. had got quietly un-noticed behind them with a long pole and quickly had the two large black belts on the floor. he raised both arms, turned towards his mas­ter and went quietly to sit down . the audi­ence erup­ted with applause, he wasn’t bothered, he had got the job done.

My favour­ite cam­era stopped work­ing, Canon 450d.… turned out to be the lens because it worked fine with the zoom lens and with my brother in law’s lens.

Queen’s park cam­era club took part in this year’s Art in the Park .….these are some of out work on the park rail­ings, it was a lovely hot day.…..i sup­pose the organ­isers didn’t expect the sun to come out in Glasgow.…most of the exhib­its were in the glass house…oh Gd it was hot.….ice creams were selling like …well hot cakes.

why are all this years shoes bor­ing col­ours, i want a pretty pair to go with new dress for JJ’s 21^st birth­day party. black white or grey seems to be the choice, or things that look like bond­age shoes.….got a pair of them

and

now that my legs are look­ing good due to all the Zumba, long dresses are appar­ently com­ing back into fashion.

ah well i have never been a fol­lower of fash­ion anyway.

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I have not been idle…well in fact i have but not all the time.
and the delay in blog­ging was because for some reason i couldn’t get it to work , so i put it on my yahoo pro­file but some­how made it dis­ap­pear just as i was about to post it , then was too lazy to type it all in again.
now i have for­got­ten all i was going to say , and for once is was inter­est­ing, so it is back to the bor­ing, got up ‚went to school type of entry.

My friend Sheena won a hol­i­day in Malta and invited me along…yippee. it seemed the gods were against the whole thing as firstly the vol­cano got in the act and messed up everybody’s move­ments and even worse Sheena got a really bad cel­lu­litis and was very very ill.….…a reminder to wear garden­ing gloves and to clean any small cut instantly with betadine or some­thing similar.……it was so bad they talked of remov­ing the muscle in her upper arm.
any­way she got the all clear the after­noon before we trav­elled and the vol­cano allowed approx 10 days in which every­body tried to get home or away at once.

Malta was won­der­ful, the people the nicest i have ever met…so far. but oh the buses the last time i trav­elled in a bus like that i was 7 in Kent on the way to school in 1956, they were lovely but the exhaust fumes were thick and black and oh they rattled on some of the rough roads. this will be rec­ti­fied soon though as the EEC has deman­ded they put in new engines, at last some­thing use­ful from Brussels.….not the i have any­thing against the Bel­gians, in fact had a lovely gentle flir­ta­tion across the break­fast tables with a Bel­gian person.….…

don’t worry still besot­ted with our Basil.

was saddened by the death of charm­ing neigh­bour , i have watched as ambu­lances arrived ever more fre­quently , to be fol­lowed by his wife to a hos­pital .….it took me right back to the years when it happened here ‚ that bit is over for her now but i know where she is at and it is not a happy place…she knows i am here for her.

Going back to Malta though asap as a week was not enough even though it seems a small island. The hotel in st. Paul’s bay was only 80 meters from the bus sta­tion and the fares were never more that £1

News of my pond had reached my friend across the road…she did know about it any­way as we have been gos­sip­ing over the wall ‚but she heard of it from a friend in Canada who had read it here, or on yahoo…small world or what.

So i am scoop­ing up fallen blos­som from the pond with a kit­chen sieve.….well i am too mean to buy a net and i have lots of sieves.….…..when i noticed small black wrig­gly things.….…yes i am the proud par­ent of some tad­poles

pond matur­ing nicely, with lots of plants and even a water Lilly.

16 thou­sand women ran past my front door yesterday…got a nice hug from the Marie Curie nurses again. the next door neigh­bours handed out wel­come drinks of water.

Zumba is so good for the legs that i might take to wear­ing mini skirts.….…or not.

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I am in a rage today…well not so much a rage as an upset­ness.….
With all the redo­ing of the garden and house him upstairs had 150 garden slabs to get rid of. i will advert­ise them on eBay says i.
all good fun , we watch as the bid­ding rises. even­tu­ally stop­ping at 1 a.m.. i had for­got­ten the clocks going for­ward… any­way stop­ping at £120 a good fair price.

but the guy two weeks later hasn’t paid or col­lec­ted them. what he did was, he advert­ised them on gumtree at a higher price all the while mak­ing excuses to me as to why he couldn’t col­lect them.
the per­son who lost out to him bid­ding, con­tac­ted him through gumtree and was given my post­code as the place to col­lect them. need­less to say he didn’t buy from the cheat.
but informed me.
so i am wait­ing till my mind is calm then ven­geance will be mine.….….eBay and gumtree will know in full just what a cheat this Kez is…yes that is his name.….
mean­while i have given him a time limit to pay up and collect…i hate the fact he knows my address though.

on a nice note though , hav­ing dug an hour a day for a week my pond is nice and deep, i lined it with car­pet and plastic sheet bought for th pur­pose and waited for it to rain …and waited …and waited.. i thought the west of Scot­land had a high rain fall, not at the moment is all i can say. in fact it has been low for three months because the cam­era club pro­jec­ted image sub­ject for three months run­ning was rain but none of it fell well not enough to pho­to­graph.The black plastic will dis­ap­pear under water and plants soon…i hope.

i wanted it to fill with rain­wa­ter but have added a few buck­ets of tap water, and bottles of pond water from down the road.….….….i do look a bit odd i must admit car­ry­ing pond water about the leafy sub­urb in which i live.

Him upstairs has donated a jam jar full of frog spawn to it , so i am hop­ing for the pat­ter of tiny tad­poles soon.

the zumba classes are still going strong , it is such a good excer­size regime a cross between salsa and bol­ly­wood and belly dan­cing, i am get­ting a nice defin­i­tion to my calf muscles.

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I have not been Idle.…..well i have quite a lot of the time but as the morn­ings get light and wake me up i have been rising earlier and get­ting things done.

All of a sud­den i got energy ., tidied up the house and turned my focus on the garden, there was this dead space under the syca­more tree,nothing much grows there and it is messy and bor­ing, so hav­ing con­tem­plated it for a while i decided to dig…and dig…and dig.

Out came my cata­logue from wig­g­ly­wig­glers .com and an order was placed for pond plants, so now i really had to dig before they arrived, also before the now rare rain to began fall. i did just over an hour a day for a week, him upstairs help­ing for the final deep bit at one end.

pho­to­graph here is of the hole

after an hour of digging.

i bought a huge bit of plastic sheet pond liner and after first put­ting some of the old mesh bags that the sand etc for the build­ing work came in, then put­ting in some old car­pet to make sure noth­ing sharp poked holes in the plastic.…put the plastic sheet in .leav­ing a big over­lap so it can settle down into the hole when the water goes in.

and that is where it is at , there is a wee bit of water in it and rain is prom­ised for tomorrow.…dont want to use tap water.…and a bucket of pond water from an old estab­lished pond to get it going, some plants arriv­ing soon and more deep water ones arriv­ing in May.

been back in Chip­pen­ham get­ting exer­cise run­ning after small boys on way to and from school.6year old teach­ing me mar­tial arts…he is good at it , i am not…yet.

hav­ing at last got the hang of salsa but still get­ting very short of breath with it i have now taken up Zumba, it is huge fun and excel­lent exer­cise, i can’t describe it , a cross between salsa and a belly dance on speed is the nearest i can come up with.

Inter­est­ing  anec­dote, two dif­fer­ent people had same thing hap­pen to them in local res­tur­ants recently. they were given a bill and on look­ing at it they real­ised it was wrong by a few pounds, the own­ers came and said they had been given another tables bill.……once maybe, but twice.….…

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