And back again

Back to Bristol with Dad today and a good journey - until we got to mad Bristol! Well, not actually Bristol - I gave up driving around Bristol many years ago. It's one of those places where the policy is to make life as difficult as possible for the poor beleaguered driver in the hope that, for his next journey he'll take the bus - if it turns up and is going anywhere near where he wants to go. On the road into where Dad lives is a Co-op, where we had planned to stop and stock up on the groceries he needs, but of course, there was nowhere to park anywhere near there so we carried on to the other end of the village where parking is usually easier.
Not today, however, as there was a fair going on on the common opposite the shops and so, again, not a spare inch of road on which to park. So back again to the original area to try another car park, unfortunately just as small and pokey as the first and just as full. Making it even fuller was the army of 'parking attendants' walking round photographing various cars, front, back, underneath, tyres. If they had been making a video, it would have been riveting! A mind reader would probably have described how they were rejoicing in the large amounts of cash they would soon be demanding from the drivers in fines, but they were certainly going about their task like people on a mission.
In the end, I had to drive Dad to his house and then make the journey to the Co-op on foot, twice, to do his shopping. I was not impressed! Coming back along the high street the first time, I noticed a large 4x4 stopped outside a row of shops, on double yellow lines, blocking the passage of a lengthy queue of traffic behind. Wondering if the driver had suddenly lost consciousness or died, I looked through the passenger window as I passed. There behind the wheel was a young woman, seemingly in the best of health, studiously ignoring all the hooting to the rear. I was so intrigued, I kept looking back till I got to the corner and eventually saw that she had been waiting to pick up her passenger from one of the shops! You would have thought there would be a traffic warden around to sort things out - oh no, they were all in the car park, taking photos of cars.
Which just goes to show the truth of my earlier observation - they are mad down here!

Help!

Dad is staying with us this week and has already lined himself up to be Paddy's ever-present, ever-constant 'patter on the head'.
Meanwhile, Keith has stepped up the diet over the weekend, has already lost nearly a stone and is proceeding apace with the light of the newly converted fanatic in his eyes. That means that any meal that deviates even slightly from 'grass' is verboten and this, in turn, means that I am rapidly approaching the stage where, if I see one more salad product, I shall break down in sobs of abject misery.
Can someone please smuggle me in some real food..... please......!

Salade avec....lard?

Keith has suddenly decided that he is on a diet. Maybe it was the prospect of a visit to the doctor's yesterday morning and the fear that the doctor would ask him how his diet was going - that's the one he's supposed to have been following since their last meeting, but I departed to do the shopping with strict instructions to get lots of salad ingredients, or as Keith refers to it, lots of 'grass'.
Now Keith is very much an 'all or nothing' man. The concept of 'a happy medium' is totally outside his comprehension, which means that, now  he has decided on a salad-based diet, we are condemned to eat nothing but salad until he gets bored and reverts to 'normal' eating.
"But I am just wondering about variations on a theme," he mused yesterday afternoon, and then his face brightened.
"Could we have deep fried salad?"

Shopping heaven

Food shopping is something I have to do but like to get over and done with as quickly and painlessly as possibly so this morning, having loaded my trolley and looked in vain for a checkout with less than a hundred customers patiently waiting, (OK exaggeration, but minor!) I drew up at the one with the shortest queue and grumbled to the lady in front of me about the urgent need for more open checkouts rather than employees standing around watching us queueing. We both agreed that we don't use the self-service checkouts on principle and then she told me that she has discovered that, if the people waiting ensure that they are blocking the aisle so that people still shopping can't get past, the powers that be open up another checkout sooner rather than later.
So that's what we did - and they did!
Power to the shoppers!
Next, to Boots with a prescription for Keith's new painkillers. Normally, we get prescriptions renewed over the phone and then I pick them up at the chemist, but today, Keith had been to the doc's (arm twisted up his back) and come back clutching the prescription in his mitt. You may recall that I have done battle with this branch of Boots in the past and taken my custom elsewhere but, for convenience, today I went in with the prescription, only to be told that they 'don't have a contract for NHS presecriptions', which I had forgotten, but which seems just as senseless to me now as it ever did. What is the point of a branch of Boots the chemist which can't dispense prescriptions?
(I'll probably get barred from there soon.)

Power Cut

This morning, at half past nine, we had a power cut for an hour. Now, much as I like living in north Wales, I have to say, during the past 8 years of living here, I have experienced about four times as many power cuts as I have during the rest of my life living elsewhere. What is it about the electricity supply here? Sheep gnawing through cables?
Anyway, once again, I was reminded of all I can't do when there's no electricity to do it with.
Computer? Forget it. Battery life is about 35 minutes when online.
TV? Radio? CD? Nope.
If it's winter - no heating.
Cup of tea/coffee? Only if I have a match to light the gas.
Cordless phone? Well that relies on mains electricity too.
Mobile phone? Because the signal is so weak, we have a signal booster which, guess what, is plugged into the mains.
Still, as it happened, I didn't need to do any of those things just then as I was waiting for my first counselling client of the day...
who didn't turn up.

Squirrels

I noticed last weekend in Kathy's garden that she had peanuts for the birds in plastic containers and she tells me that there are squirrels in the area too, so I wondered aloud to Keith the other day, why the squirrels there don't demolish the peanuts as they do here. This was after I had bemoaned that fact that feeding the birds here is an ongoing battle with the squirrels. No matter what I do, they always manage to grab the lion's share and even having a guided, squirrel-seeking missile in the form of Paddy does not deter them.
"Pretty obvious really," was Keith's reply. "The Sheffield squirrels are thick, unlike the Welsh squirrels who are super-intelligent."
I'll now sit back and await the torrents of abuse I know will be coming my way across the Pennines and all the way west to North Wales....!

The Wedding

Well, in the end, I did watch the royal wedding, having left Keith bound and gagged in the corner (not really) to silence his caustic comments. So, instead, evesdroppers chez Jennyta would have heard such comments as,
"Well, that outfit does her no favours!"
"Have you seen the state of that hat?"
"What an awful coat!" and other such sartorially helpful comments.
I quite liked THE dress but actually much preferred the chief bridesmaid's and I thought the aerial views of the abbey were amazing, but all in all, it didn't go with quite such a buzz as this version.