Diary

A rare day of peace! Sue’s last shift before her 2 weeks off. I was going to paint the kitchen today but my back was aching quite a bit from 2 days of digging bushes out. I slept on the sofa last night. Sue had gone to bed early and so woke up at 3:30! I went upstairs to bed. I hadn’t wanted to disturb her sleep with my snoring. I still felt pretty rough having gone to sleep with a massive headache but after two and a half hours in bed I felt a bit better.

I dropped Sue off at the hospital around 6:30. I was starting to feel a lot better and by the time I had got home and had some breakfast and a cuppa I was feeling more human.

Webbs is a garden centre and it was posted on Facebook that they were turning up at the hospital at 11:30 with free bedding plants. Sue asked me if I would try to get some. I never get a totally free day. I said I would go down at 11 and try to be first in line. That turned out to be pretty naive. I arrived before 11 and the queue was already crazily long. She had said she wouldn’t really be able to get them herself as she would have to change out of her uniform but there were loads of NHS staff in uniforms. Even worse though was that the NHS staff were all bunched together. I know they can’t always keep social distance at work but it was a terrible example to set to the public. The rest of the queue were not leaving space between themselves and the next person. As I drove past I could see that the guy from Webbs didn’t have even close to enough plants for everyone. I joined the queue as I was there but a family of trolls were behind me and were at most 2 ft away from me. I asked them to back up. I didn’t really understand their response. I could tell they were pissed and the smell was quite similar to the tramps that used to come into store during my food retail days. The guy’s grunt was possibly something like, “Fuckin dunt madder”. For those non UK residents that means, ” I don’t believe that is entirely necessary”. I left the queue muttering under my breath that they were all going to die.

When I got home I did a bit of housework. I didn’t really want to do much else. Sue had left me a shopping list. I told you, I never get a full day for me! I usually go down around 6pm before I pick her up from work at 7:30. There usually isn’t a queue at that time.

I had the root clumps to dispose off. The small ones were’t heavy but were quite awkward to get hold off. Two in each hand for the first trip. I didn’t have to walk quite as far as I had to with the bush clippings as the clumps could be thrown. The 2 heavy one were on the next trip. An intelligent person would have split them over 2 trips in combination with small ones. Thinking is for wimps. Two more trips and everything had gone.

I watched the BBC Corona Virus update. Before the Downing Street bit started they were interviewing a guy who used to be Cabinet Secretary for many years. He and some others had been looking at when the country might be able to relax the lockdown and he said they had come up with a date in the middle of June. That would be ideal. Fingers crossed.

I was surprised yesterday when I took the dogs out at how many people were out. They all seemed to be legitimately exercising but there wouldn’t be that many out in normal pre virus times. To be fair I hadn’t been that way for a while and at that time of day. We were on our way to the dog field. When we got there there was a kid riding a bike so I waited for him to leave before I let the dogs off. Charlie would probably have herded the kid into the pond (his party trick with other dogs). The dogs loved being able to stretch their legs. They have spent very little time off lead. Before the corona virus came along we had a really long spell of wet weather and the field was just not usable. I did take them down there a week or so ago and their recall had all but disappeared. Charlie was the worst although to be fair to him it was the first time he had the chance to play with another dog and it was one that he knew. Angus’ owners are pretty odd and they weren’t happy about Charlie running up to them. I can usually turn both my dogs on a sixpence but they’re out of practise. This time I had some treats in my pocket and we spent a little time on recall drills. They were soon back in the swing.

Anyway, back to today! I went to Tesco’s around 5:45 and as I pulled into the carpark I saw there was more of a queue than normal. It ony took 15 minutes or so to get inside and I didn’t have a huge list. I was home around 10 past 6. It is quite funny to see people hiding from other shoppers who aren’t quite as aware that there are other people in this world. One woman complained loudly to her husband when he asked what the hell she was doing. As she was almost climbing into one of those roll cages that the staff move the stock about in. She said at the top of her voice that HER and HIM aren’t going the right way. There are ARROWS!!

I think the security guard was following me. Pretty much everywhere I went he was there. Maybe it was because I forgot the sweet potatoes and went down the checkout aisle to get back to the veg aisle. Perhaps he thought I was trying to get out without paying. They’re pretty clueless in there. You get what you pay for.

I have put an offer on the Trading Guide of 1 month’s trading tips email free. Every little helps!

Chinese for supper!

Stay safe.

 

Over the last couple of days I have been clearing some bushes from the front garden. The first day I used my hedge trimmer. That obviously meant that the bits were quite small and it took as long to clear up afterwards as it did to cut the bushes down. I then used secateurs to cut them down as low as I could to make digging out the roots a bit easier. I was up before 6am the next morning and took the 14 bin bags of clippings to the local woods. It obviously took a few trips. I found a good spot that was out of the way to empty the bags out.

There were 2 bushes left. I decided to make life a little easier for myself and went straight in with the secateurs to leave bigger branches that I could pick up and carry loose to the woods. That just left the root clumps. There were around 10. I left the ones near the tree until last as I figured the roots might be tangled with the tree roots. The first one must have taken 30 or 40 minutes to dig out. it just didn’t want to move. I had forgotten that I broke the garden fork last year when I made a space to bury one of the cats. The fork would have made life a little easier although I have a pretty good spade with a sharp blade. After wrestling with that first one I needed break. The hot weather is fantastic if you’re sitting out in it but not ideal for anything physical. The next one came out in about 20 seconds! Maybe this wasn’t going to be that hard after all. That proved to be the only easy one. The last 2 were closest to the tree. The ground was like concrete plus there seemed to be a lot of stones around there. I was close to giving up. My back was ready for a rest. I tried putting 4 or 5 buckets of water on the bigger of the two root clumps. That worked like a charm. Both the remaining clumps came out relatively easily after a soaking.

I had drunk a lot of water during the day but had been working in the sun for too long and started with a pretty bad headache. Sue went to bed around 7pm as she is working on Friday. She always goes to bed early before a shift but it has been earlier than normal recently. Most people round here aren’t getting up for work and are in their gardens until the early hours.

I felt like shit and laid on the sofa. I must have fallen asleep pretty quickly. I was woken at 8pm when the Key Worker Clap started. Some prick sets a firework off each week. My dogs used to be fine with fireworks until the local school started using bigger and bigger fireworks in their November 5th displays. They literally shake the house and after 3 years of that the dogs are pretty sensitive to loud bangs. Charlie always barks at the noise and then comes to us for comfort. Molly isn’t really a barker (although barks in her sleep!) . Charlie’s bark woke me and he was trying to get on the sofa. Molly was laying full length on top of me licking my face. She isn’t the smallest of dogs!

I decided to stay on the sofa so that I didn’t disturb Sue’s sleep. When I am knackered I tend to snore a lot. She didn’t have a great day yesterday and I copped for it. Quite a bit of abuse was thrown my way. All quite nasty and unwarranted. She apologised later ( to make herself feel better). I told her it was OK, I understood and it didn’t matter (to make her feel better). I guess I’ll just get over it. She is off work for 2 weeks after Friday. At least I now have space in the front garden to bury her if necessary. The back garden’s full of cats.

Stay safe.