I haven’t been blogging much this year. Not for any major or horrid reasons, just that I’m having difficulty finding new things to talk about. Life keeps jogging along and I go with it.

The weekend before last was nice. Thursday 3rd was the Stepson’s birthday (22) and so he came up to see us all the previous weekend – he is working too hard on his studies to take off his birthday. So the Husband and I dropped down to Whitstable the Friday of that weekend, picked up the Father-in-Law and brought him back here to stay for the weekend. In fact the Father-in-Law thought we were crazy as we drove over there after lunch and insisted on turning around immediately to drive him back. When he saw how busy the M25 was by 4.00pm and how long the queues were for the QE2 Bridge at Dartford he then understood why we hadn't wanted to wait any longer. Saturday lunchtime the three of us met up with the Stepson and Stepdaughter at a good local Italian restaurant and after a very good meal we returned home for the rest of the day. The following day I cooked lunch ( a nice piece of sirloin but what a price! - £31, but it tasted wonderful and we had plenty over for other meals) and we all stayed together and chatted until after tea when we drove the Father-in-Law back to Whitstable.

Actually on the Stepson’s birthday the Husband and went up to Cambridge to meet him for lunch – the only time he was able to leave his studies. He really is motivated to do well. Afterwards the Husband and I had a quick look around the Fitzwilliam Museum for a couple of hours. It was a nice day, except the city was absolutely crowded with people. What we hadn’t realised was that this was the University’ Open Day for prospective new students. All of whom had brought their parents and some of them had brought their siblings also. As Cambridge University takes approximately 1 in 5 of prospective applicants it gives you some idea of the numbers involved. We had wondered why the car park at the Park and Ride was so full on an ordinary weekday. All was well during the day but the queue for the bus to take us all back to the car park was like a rugby scrum. We eventually got on the third bus going back and fortunately we had seats.

Other than that I can’t say we’ve done much. The weather hasn’t helped as we’ve had rain most days. The number of dry sunny days we’ve had over the last couple of weeks can virtually be counted on one of my thumbs. So I’ve had little opportunity to do much in the garden, which is growing and growing in so much warm and wet weather. The problem is that the weeds like this sort of weather too and so the best description for the garden at the moment is “unkempt”. This isn’t helped by the fact that when the Husband mowed the lawn he managed to cut the electrical cable in two by passing the mower over it. No-one was hurt, as he had used the circuit- breaker thingy, but his attempts to find a thing to repair the cable have been thwarted by the lack of such equipment in the shops. At one time lots of different electric equipment could be found but since the Health & Safety lobby has got going the amount of home electrical work that can be done by a householder rather than a qualified electrician is virtually none. He says he shall continue to look for the bits, especially as my look on the web this morning shows that a replacement cable from Flymo will cost about £16. So, Buffy’s requests for more pictures here of the garden will be answered once the weather clears up and my asthma allows me to get outside again. So, watch this space for that.