Towel rail

Towel rail. 

Destination - bathroom

Date of purchase - a week ago

Current situation - lying forgotten and abandoned in the conservatory

Update - Well, this morning, he has taken it out of its packaging and looked at the instruction sheet - before continuing on his way to play in the shed (sorry, workshop).

A degree of progress, I suppose ...

Nearly an armful!

Yes, today was that time again. Blood letting, or more precisely, blood donation day. For the last couple of years, this has been run by the Welsh version and yes, should anyone out there be wondering, they are perfectly happy to relieve English people of their blood too. 

Little has changed really. New uniforms, new couches, iPads to input your information instead of the old parchment and quill pens (and that in itself has been enough to deter some donors!) and, this time, a new way of taking the pinprick of blood for testing. The only difference I could see was that the nurse used a longer, very thin tube to gather the blood and here's where I nearly fell at the first hurdle, as it took two pinpricks in different fingers to extract even that small amount of blood.

"It's not looking good for the armful," I remarked.

"It's probably just that your hands are cold." she said.

Eventually, she managed to get the required amount and I did also manage to produce the armful. When they take the needle out, they now put a bandage on your arm instead of a plaster.

Now I'm quite happy with this, especially when it's finished off with a nice bow, like today, because it gets me the sympathy vote and respect from Keith when I get home. (Mind you, today's was perhaps a tad OTT.)

Then on to the reward, a nice cup of coffee and a Club biscuit, which is what I go for really. Keith is jealous but I keep telling him, if he gives an armful too, he can have the same.

He's not convinced.

Toilets and pens

It has been a job waiting to be done for a long time, about four years in fact, but the other day, we replaced the toilet seat in the downstairs cloakroom. The original one was made of oak. (Remember this, it will be significant later in this post.) The new one looks like this:

Pristine, white and clean, which the old one certainly wasn't.
However, that did not deter Keith. He decided he had a use for the lid of the old seat and immediately carted it off to the shed (sorry, workshop).
This is where we come to the second part of the title of the post and prizes may be available if you have already worked out the link. Over the last week or so, Keith has been making pens, like these:

Smart, aren't they? He has made some from wood too, such as olive wood, which he has bought online. Now however, he has decided that a discarded toilet seat is the way to go, and you can see him doing just that here:
 Keith's video.
Anyone for an oak pen?