A Mother's Story: Together again

A Mother's Story: Together again

A Mother's Story: Passing time

A Mother's Story: Passing time

Mystery solved

I had an email from TK last night, which said that, rather than the cygnets being hunted by humans, the culprits were likely to be pike, which apparently are known to pull quite large birds under the surface of the water by their legs.
To quote Michael Caine, 'Not a lot of people know that!'
(Well, I didn't anyway.)

And on the canal

I was in Chester on Tuesday for supervision. My supervisor's place of practice is right on the bank of the canal and she and other occupants of the block take a great interest in the local birdlife. Through the spring and summer, they have watched this family of swans.
Now the cygnets have become 'teenagers' but unfortunately, there were six and, over the last few weeks, this has reduced to three. It's hard to believe that foxes have taken them at the size they are now so that leaves the possibility of them being captured by human predators, to be eaten. Not a pleasant thought and we are hoping that the three remaining juveniles will survive to reach adulthood.

After the holiday

I think Keith and I have definitely proved, without a shadow of a doubt, that travelling over twenty four hours with brief naps in the car wasn't the best thing for us to do and of course, we did do it twice just to make sure. The result is that we are still quite tired. We can deduce this from the fact that Keith has been tucked up in bed by 9pm at the latest every evening this week and I have been found slumbering gently on the sofa for a good hour every afternoon. Hopefully, we will eventually get back to normal (whatever that is) like Paddy, who was totally exhausted on his first day back home from the kennels but has since been his usual self. Maybe we will need another holiday to recover from this one.
Meanwhile, I'm off to make a cup of very strong coffee!

This time last week

This time last week, Keith and I had spent a couple of hours in the swimming pool at Floc Ferme enjoying the sun and the calm relaxing atmosphere. My main problem with actually getting into the pool as I don't do heights and anything above three feet above ground is 'height' in my book and this pool has 'up and over' steps to get into it.
However, taking my courage in both hands, and with Keith holding onto the steps, I finally made it (courage or wot!).
Keith's main problem was that he forgot that he is rather fair skinned and two hours in the pool without the sun protection that he forgot to put on resulted in Very Sore Shoulders Indeed, which are still pretty sore a week later.

Being twenty again

When Keith and I climbed into the car a fortnight ago to set off on our travels, he turned to me and said, "How old do we feel?"
"Twenty!" we both cried and off we went.
Of course, by the time we got to the south of France, after an almost non-stop journey, we felt more like a hundred and twenty.
This, however, did not stop us doing much the same on the way home. We had allowed ourselves three days to get back but we decided to cut that to two and, instead of stopping overnight at Limoges, carried on to Orleans, but then, having reached Orleans by mid afternoon, it seemed like an irresistable challenge to carry on all the way to Calais. Once there, it was a piece of cake to hop on the 11pm boat and then carry on from Dover, with a couple of stops on the way to catch some zeds.
So here we were, back chez nous at 10.45am yesterday.
Of course it then became necessary to sleep most of the afternoon and for eleven hours last night and to spend most of today feeling totally exhausted, so no, we still don't feel twenty.
Funny thing is, when I was twenty, I probably would have had far more sense than to do a journey like that so maybe I am growing backwards.
P.S. Keith is talking about making it to Florence next time.
       I think he might be on his own!