Smart wheels

This drew up outside our house this afternoon. Sadly, it was driven by a potential customer, not Keith's surprise present to me.

Ah well, it wouldn't pull the caravan anyway.

New houses

At last, we have open daffoldils! A bit late for St David's day but just in time for St Patrick and I'm sure David won't mind sharing.

Paddy and I went across the field behind us and walked round the adjoining field where the horses live. They're not there at the moment but they'll be back in a few months.
Then, we were a bit naughty and climbed through the (broken) fencing onto the road so that we could walk past this.









This is where 'they' are building new houses. Since I moved here, seven and a half years ago, house building has become this area's new hobby, all with its attendant disruption to the local road system, of course. The road running by this estate-to-be was closed to us from last August to this February and, since re-opening, guess what? Even more bollards and humps to wreck our cars on.

These will be three, four and five bedroomed houses, according to the blurb but I am wondering who is going to buy them. Many of the new builds around here are either still empty or have been bought up by housing associations.

As a fellow dog walker commented to me this morning, as we surveyed yet another area where it is rumoured that even more new houses might be built, soon there will be nowhere for us to walk the dogs.

The things you see!

This afternoon, Keith and I popped into town to do some 'man' shopping at Maplins. We managed to find a parking space and had just got out of the car when we noticed another car parking in a perfect diagonal across another parking space nearby. The woman driver got out and disappeared into a nearby shop, having omitted to buy a parking ticket, followed, a few seconds later, by her passenger, also female. What caused me to stop and stare and wonder if I had suddenly dropped into a parallel universe, though, was the fact that said passenger was clad only in dressing gown (hopefully with pyjamas underneath) and slippers. She too disappeared into the nearest shop, while Keith and I sauntered along to Maplins.
Sadly, I was so stunned I didn't manage to get my phone out quickly enough to take a photo, so I'm afraid you will just have to take my word for it.
And before you ask, no, I hadn't been at the cooking sherry!

What a nice clean boy!

On Sunday, Jenny seemed to be in super-cleaning mode. She made Keith tidy his computer desk and did lots of hoovering, dusting and washing. I was getting dizzy just watching her, but then, THEN, she started on me.
First of all I thought I heard her use the 'b' word, yes, that;s right, BATH, but I hoped I had heard wrong. After all, I do get things wrong sometimes, like when I think she has said 'Rush out through the door and look for a cat to chase' when in fact, she has said 'Stay'. Unfortunately, this time, I was right and the next thing I knew, I had been enticed upstairs and plonked in the bath with the shower cascading the wet stuff all over me. The indignity! And to make matters worse, she used this smelly shampoo stuff, to get me clean, she said. This was followed by a good towelling and a bit of a blow from the hairdryer before I was allowed downstairs again.
Doesn't she realise that we terriers just don't 'do' clean and sweet-smelling?
"What a nice clean boy," she said, to add insult to injury!
Well when we're out for our walks this week, the first dog to smirk about me smelling like a bunch of flowers is going to get a good thumping!
And that goes double for cats and squirrels!

Tidy NASA - again

After a couple of days rebuilding his computers, which meant that the living room looked like an extension of the van or the shed, depending on your point of view, Keith was, this morning, presuaded to tidy up all the myriad wires and leads which had been nestling underneath NASA and even to tidy the top. (And I only had to hold his head under the tap for ten minutes to obtain his acquiescence!)

Now long-time readers of this blog will no doubt recall that this has happened before, several times, in fact but you never know, maybe this time he will be persuaded (via iron fist in velvet glove) to keep it tidy.

Here's hoping!

(I think the groaning I can hear in the background is Keith suffering from withdrawal symptoms...)

67 Flag Lane

Reading this post by Shooting Parrots sent me off down Memory Lane to Crewe, where my paternal grandparents lived and where Dad grew up. Their house was a three storey, terraced house right by the railway line and was unusual in that the first floor at the back was the ground floor at the front. So going in by the front door led into a hall at the end of which were stone stairs going down to the living room, or  kitchen, as it was called, on the left and the back kitchen on the right. From the living room, you could walk out through the back door into the back garden, with the outside toilet at the bottom, but from the back kitchen, if you stood at the sink and looked up through the grating, you could see the feet of anyone who happened to be walking past. To the right of the sink was another door, this one leading to the coal cellar and in the pavement outside was a manhole, through which the coalman would tip the coal straight into the cellar, which, you must admit, was very convenient.
The back kitchen was dark and gloomy, a room that I was not very fond of and not for anything would I have ventured into the coal cellar but I did enjoy watching the feet going past.
By 1970, this little row of houses had been earmarked for demolition and, when I last went there number 67 was a windowless shell. Health and Safety would no doubt have been very annoyed, but we did go inside to have a last look round and even went up to the top floor to look out over the surrounding streets and the railway line.

 

Change of plan

Today there were two Canada geese visiting the lake and this morning I got my first sight of daffodils in the valley, so maybe, in spite of the rumblings on the weather forecast about approaching snow, we won't be in line for that and spring really is on its way.
Main plan for yesterday was to be a 'lady who lunches' and meet up with Gill and Julie, but probably not at the same restaurant as last time. However, on my way home from our walk, I started feeling the first effects of a migraine so, instead of living it up in Chester, I spent several hours curled up in bed, suffering...
and Paddy curled up in sympathy.