The Rug Doctor

Is there no peace?  The daughter hired a rug doctor from Tesco for 48 hours as her carpets were looking pretty shot after Wispa had 7 puppies.  6 of the puppies have gone to lovely homes so that leaves one, Lola and her mum.  Having cleaned her carpets she decided to get the most for her money so came to my house to give the carpets a clean.  Well what can I tell you, the carpets have been down for 40 years, good old Wilton stuff - she arrived at 8.30 this morning, before I had barely had time to eat my breakfast.  The carpets look amazing, just like new, even the stair carpet looks like new after 40 years of trudging up and down.  She even cleaned my Persian rugs.  They now look a completely different colour! The problem now is that all my furniture is all over the place and I can see dust everywhere, on the skirting boards, on the pictures, everywhere. That's what lockdown does for you.  Admittedly for the last 3 months of having nothing much to do, I could have cleaned the house instead of going out cycling and tending to a vegetable garden.  My friends on Facebook were diligently cleaning out their cupboards, cleaning the boot room, cleaning everything in sight while I was happily cycling with Mildred.  So now it is my turn to put the house into some sort of new order.
Mildred did ring just now to see if would like to go for a ride today. No chance, I am exhausted, but we have decided to go tomorrow, so I had better get a shift on the put the house straight.

This gardening lark is all very well but all my crops seems to be ready together.  I am now overrun with cucumbers, and there is a limit to how many runner beans, french beans, snap peas, courgettes and lettuce a person can eat in one sitting!  I have onions coming along, not quite sure what to do with these in due course - they were given to me as onion sets by my friend.  I think when they are ready I shall dry them out or whatever you do with them and string them up like the Johnny onion man who used to deliver them to me on his bicycle, although I do believe that things have moved on as Susanne gets them from a Frenchman but he has a van! C'est la vie!

Hidden Gems

I went on a cycle ride a few days ago with Mildred.  Her partner is not terribly well and it does her good to get out.  I am busy covering areas which I knew existed but had never had the time to go and explore.  Mildred did make the observation that while she was walking the dog in all these special places for the last 40 years I was busy working to fund my retirement, the end result is that I am very comfortably situated and she is not!  Well now I have the time  and we peddled to visit one of her friends in a little village about 10 miles away.  What a charming spot.  I am not very easily impressed but this house and garden was quite idyllic and reminded me of what you would expect to see in Ireland.  Beautiful rambling garden with enchanting little hidden bits.  Oh what I would give to remodel the garden as it's present incumbents are not that way inclined and at some time will have to get the professionals in.  After a blissful hour there we moved on and by the time I got home I had covered 30 miles and hardly saw a sole on the journey.  In contrast, all the filthy scum had come from who knows where as lockdown was loosened, to visit our beaches and leave their rubbish and the like behind.  There were so many of these people that the roads had to be closed and there was gridlock everywhere.  I have no intention of visiting the coast at all as this is obviously going to be the trend this summer as people will be doing staycations with all this virus going on.

I have purchased a motorhome!  This is the way forward in these weird times - I can go where I like, stay where I like and not have to bother with all the restrictions of Coronavirus!

This morning I am up early as I want to get in a 20 mile cycle ride before I go off to have lunch with her Ladyship.  Hopefully it will not rain.

New beginnings

It is now 2020

It is 7 years since I last did a blog and in the interim I have been widowed and now find myself living alone which I must say I rather like.  I did have a lodger at one point, a married professional, ex Navy security person who lodged Monday to Friday and went back to his wife for the weekends.  He stayed for sometime but in the end I told him to get on his bike ................

And so, talking of bikes my dear friend Mildred suggested that we bought bikes at the beginning of lockdown.  We went to the local cycle shop and did just that.  What a joy.  Whilst lockdown had everyone isolating at home, Mildred and I were peddling all over the place.  Who would have thought that 65 years after I had my first bike I would now be the proud owner of 2 bikes!  I purchased the first one in February.  This lives at my home on the other side of the Atlantic on a little island in the sun.  I decided to buy that bike as there is not much to do on the island so exercise is rather necessary at my time of life, and the island is flat, which makes the job a whole lot easier!  I arrived on this side of the pond just as lockdown was about to begin.

There appears to be a certain snobbery amongst bike riders or cyclists depending on what one wishes to be called.  At first Mildred and I set off in our jeans and tee shirts for our little trips but these were not very comfortable for long journeys and gel padding was clearly necessary.  I was minding my own business one day peddling along when a chap sped by, the cheek of it, so I upped the anti until I got up behind him with the specific purpose of trying to read the make of his pants which was clearly shown on his backside! Rapha - got it, then I let him disappear out of my sights.  He looked like a "proper" cyclist so if they worked for him, they were going to work for me.  I duly ordered my shorts and Hi Viz top from the company, which I love and now I look like a "proper" cyclist.  The hilarious thing is that when I was peddling about looking like a pleb, all the plebs acknowledged me, now I look like a proper cyclist, all the plebs ignore me and all the cyclists acknowledge me.  Who knew!

It seemed sensible that at my age and all this peddling, I should purchase a heart monitor device, as I do not want to keel over just yet.  I bought a Garmin.  Well this magic device does the whole business as well as monitor the heart.  It tracks my rides and can even call a named person for assistance if I should fall off and injure myself.  Oh the joy of modern technology.

I retired last year and have time on my hands, and it was whilst  peddling about the countryside that it occurred to me that I should start writing again, and so we begin