Bank Holiday Shenanigans

Hello! It feels like an age since I last checked in. Hope all's well in your world. Here's how I've been filling my time.

Saturday was another glorious day and after a Mushroom Benedict breakfast, courtesy of Lord Jon as opposed to Wetherspoons, I pulled on a pair of shorts and tackled a corner of the garden which, during Lockdown, I'd attempted to make into a wild flower bed but has been taken over by Green Alkanet, a pretty but invasive weed. Fortunately the roots are shallow so by midday the area was clear and I spent the day reading in the sunshine watching Jon labouring away on Gilbert.

Tea was a very tasty yellow-stickered curried chickpea pie from Lidl with carrots, peas and some roasted red onions and potatoes.

The previous evening we'd started watching Faking Hitler (Walter Presents) the subtitled German series based on the true story of the notorious Hitler Diaries of the 1980s and watched the rest with rum & cola later.

On Sunday morning, buoyed up by the glorious weather, I had a reshuffle of my wardrobe and wore this Seventies Soul Dahlia block printed Indian cotton dress for the first time since we visited Malaga for my birthday in December. 

 I caught the sun over the weekend....hooray...I'm always more "me" with a tan.

Also feeling Spring-like, Jon wore a short-sleeved fine knit.

We walked down to 'Spoons, Tony, working in retail, had got a rare Sunday off and an all-dayer was well overdue.

The pub was surprisingly quiet, we spent the day chatting, downing pints of lager and feasting on their fabulous pizzas. Their vegan pizzas are particularly delicious.

I'll hold my hands up and admit to having become one of those annoying people with a mobile phone taking selfies and food photos (although I don't immediately post them on social media - just on my blog a few days later!)

We emerged from the pub six hours later, blinking in the daylight like newly-hatched Easter chicks!

On Monday I was up at the crack of dawn, checked into the Wii Fit and brought mugs of tea back to bed where I lay and read for a couple of hours.

Despite Monday's forecast for atrocious weather, the rain had the decency to stop for a couple of hours enabling me to turn over the soil in the bed I'd cleared on Saturday. These G Brand American-made "Houlihan" combats retail at £199 but as I only paid £2 I'm not too precious about gardening in them (I tucked them into my wellies). No, I didn't wear these Morris & Co espadrilles for digging!

After a bowl of noodles I took myself upstairs, tuned into 6Music and photographed my Spring capsule wardrobe.....

Eight tops, four skirts....

Five jackets, four waistcoats....

And twenty-two dresses.

There's also my four suede coats as it's the UK and coats are pretty much essential all year round and I haven't bothered photographing my combats, shorts or jeans - they aren't very photogenic!

I've left eight pairs of boots on the shelf and looked out some of my canvas pumps/espadrilles to fill the gaps. There's also a brand new pair of sandals, bought from Clarks clearance sale, I'm hoping I can break them in ready for our next escape.

My Lotta from Stockholm collection hangs from the door all year round, hopefully I'll be wearing them before too long.

Tea was a Lidl vegetarian Wellington Jon found lurking in the freezer along with salad.

Our viewing was this gobsmacking true-life documentary currently on Amazon Prime (we've got a moth's free trial) - well worth a watch.

 

I finished my Pat Barker book in bed and selected my next read in readiness.

Tuesday (it feels like Monday) kicked off with a half-mile swim and breakfast in Spoons before popping into an almost deserted Lidl for a Waste Not box. This week £1.50 will buy you asparagus, mushrooms, sweetcorn, sugar snap peas, blueberries and black grapes - yum! 

At 7.45am it was mild enough to walk down to the baths in a cotton midi dress (Dilli Grey via eBay) with my denim jacket over the top. I even left my leggings off.

My Reactions lenses mean I can wear my varifocals out and about in all weathers.

Back at home I swapped the Timberland boots for wellies, scraped my hair into a topknot, tucked my skirt in my knickers and got cracking in the garden.

I've decided to take inspiration from the Victorians and create a stumpery and with so many trees, it didn't take me long to fill the area with old tree stumps and discarded branches gathered from elsewhere in the garden.

People often ask me if I should be doing heavy lifting with a prosthetic hip, which makes me smile, 

I'm not disabled, I'm bionic!

Once in situ, I wandered around the garden, digging up some ferns, a Fatsia, a couple of foxgloves and some cyclamens and planted them in the gaps. When the rain lets up I shall try daubing some of the wood with yogurt to encourage some moss and lichen. 

This boy has been a regular visitor all weekend. We seem to have turned a corner and he's now coming into the kitchen for his food rather than gobbling it down on the doorstep. He loves being cuddled, kneads like a crazy thing and sticks his tongue out when he purrs.

Right, I'm off to catch up with Blogland before I meet up with the gang in the pub. A cheeky Indo-Nepali feast awaits!

See you soon.