Baboons at the bottom of the garden

Keith and I were watching Baboons with Bill Bailey on ITV last night. It's an entertaining series and, last night, I was taken by the idea of people, going about their ordinary, everyday lives and also coping with a gang of baboons in the garden just waiting to break into their kitchen and steal any food they could find lying around.
"Paddy would get a bit of a shock if there were a couple of baboons on the garden fence instead of squirrels," I commented. "He'd think twice about charging into the garden to chase them."
Keith's mind was obviously still on the shots of said  baboons raiding the kitchen.
"Well, they'd be disappointed if they were looking for food in our kitchen!" he said.
Oooh! Nasty! Especially as he's the one who insisted on stocking up on wall to wall lettuce.

Taking the horse out for the day?

I have been out shopping this morning so I am a bit late with my post and John has got in first with this little item. The horse was apparently a Welsh mountain pony which generally stand under 12 hands high, but even so, Arriva trains didn't feel able to accommodate it. However, I remain unconvinced and I am sure that in pre 'Health and Safety' days when every inch of our lives was not controlled by rules and regulations  of varying degrees of sense and usefulness, the kindly guard would have said, "Come on, boyo," (or something like that), "no-one's looking, pop him in the guard's van and we'll say no more about it."
But I think the best part of the tale (no pun intended) is the reaction of the staff at Wrexham Maelor hospital when the man also took his horse there:
A spokesman for Wrexham Maelor Hospital said it was unable to do anything for the animal.
“We can confirm that a man did turn up with a horse in A&E, but we were unable to treat the horse,” he said.
Really, you couldn't make it up. However, I hope the Maelor then directed him a little further up the road and round the corner to Rhyd Broughton vetinary centre, where they treat a variety of animals, including horses.
And if a sheep can go to Slovenia in a car, why can't a horse go to Holyhead on a train?

Delightful

Last Thursday was my 'ladies who lunch' date but this time, Dad came too. We drove to the Park and Ride, as usual and then took the bus into Chester itself and walked through to Northgate Street, where we were to meet. Being one of those extremely unobservant people, I never take any notice of street names, so they mean little to me when it comes to finding my way around, but I had a rough idea of where we were heading, so I left Dad having a breather on a bench in Eastgate street, while I walked to the corner and back.

Of course, on my return, he was already being chatted up by a lady who didn't look too pleased to see me, but, eventually, we made our escape and went off to meet Gill and Julie and  had a very pleasant lunch.

Back  home, I got text messages from Gill and Julie saying how much they had enjoyed meeting him and I read them out to him.

"What did that one say? Delightful? Hmm, I'll have to remember that," he mused.



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.)