What I didn't wear today

Today, I came across an article about Poppy Dinsey's blog, which is a photographic record of the outfits she wears every day and is called, unsurprisingly,  What I wore today. Apparently, she started it as part of a 
mission to  wear a different outfit every day and make use of all the many clothes in her wardrobe. Due to its huge success, she is now going to transform it into an 'entire social network for fashion fans to rival Facebook'.
So, ever alert to the possibilities of fame and fortune, I thought I might do my own take on the idea and share with  my millions of readers out there in the ether what I didn't wear.

Today, readers, I was mainly not wearing this, owing to the sun having disappeared and leaving us with thick, grey, dull cloud.
See, my blog even gives you an update on the weather as an added extra!
You don't think it will catch on, do you? Be honest, I can take it...

Rubbish!

This past week, we have had quite a few things delivered, which means quite a lot of packaging to dispose of, mainly cardboard. No problem. Here in Wrexham county we have a large, blue bag for paper and ordinary cardboard and the corrugated stuff goes in the green bin; don't ask me why, I don't really care as long as it's all recycled.

As there was rather a lot of cardboard, I hoped that the poor, overworked binmen - sorry, refuse collectors - would not find it too traumatic to collect it this week.

Round one was the emptying of the green bin. Done.

Round two - the emptying of the green box (wine bottles and, er, wine bottles) plus the blue bag. I noticed from the window that the blue bag had been placed on top of the empty box but still retained a suspiciously firm outline, so I hopped outside to investigate. A large, flattened cardboard box was still in there, plus two toilet roll centres, but I'm prepared to overlook those, so I took the bag over to one of the men who was busy sorting and emptying the neighbour's green box.

"Excuse me," I said politely, "you have left this in my bag," holding out the flattened box for his close inspection.

"We don't take cardboard," he said, without looking at me. (Oh shucks, I must have turned into the invisible woman again!)

"Well, it says on this bag that you do," I said, gearing up for battle.

The cardboard box was grabbed out of my hand and stuffed into the section of the vehicle reserved for and stuffed with - yes, you've guessed it - CARDBOARD!!

Lazy!

Don't think you're lying in bed all day, my lad. Time to get up!

Cycling

As walking isn't too comfortable at the moment, thanks to the creaky ankle, I thought cycling might be better. After all, Keith has a chronically bad ankle but is able to cycle quite easily. So this morning, early (so that no-one would be around to see any possible falling off), we set off down a local cycle path which I recently discovered. 

I am not a newcomer to cycling, although I didn't learn till I was about 16. I did, at one time, cycle to work on a fairly regular basis, along quiet, flat roads, I hasten to add and if it was windy, I chickened out and took the car, but that was about 20 years ago and since then, I have done very little on two wheels. The bike I had then was a very simple, three gear one - yes, it's that long ago, but not quite as long ago as the penny farthing; I would never have coped with that! The bike that Keith bought me a few years ago has lots of gears, which, let's face it, is a bit confusing, but I have slowly begun to realise that trying to go up a hill in 3rd or 4th gear is counter-productive, as I am not exactly Tour de France material.

What I really want is a bike which selects the best gear for me automatically. We have automatic cars, why not automatic bikes? Any enterprising inventors out there?

Electronics

For the past couple of weeks, Keith has been teaching himself electronics - not all of it, I'm sure, but the bits he's interested in. Unfortunately, this meant taking over the dining room, which is very small, and covering every inch of the table with what I would loosely call 'bits and pieces'.( I believe the scientific term would be -bits and pieces). 

But that's not all. In addition, he was building a new, thankfully smaller, computer for NASA, so there were various computer components littered around the living room. Oh, and he has taken the caravan television to pieces too in a, so far unsuccessful,  attempt to mend it.

I am fairly patient and long-suffering (Yes, I am, Kathy!) but if there's one thing which really, really gets to me, it's being surrounded by mess. It doesn't matter that, to Keith it's not mess but precious and interesting stuff, I have only to look around and my positive mood reading immediately drops to double negative with more negative on top.

So now, he's moved everything to the study upstairs. It meant that some of my stuff was unceremoniously ejected, but I can live with that on the basis of 'out of sight, out of mind' is far more bearable.

Peace reigns once more ...

Alice in Wonderland

Some time ago we learned that Paul was going to be taking part in a production put on by a drama group for youngsters in Bingley. The drama group is a branch of  Theatretrain and the performance was 'Alice in Wonderland'. Paul had got himself a part as a spider.
As the performance was an evening one, Claire, Keith and I stayed overnight at Kathy's in Sheffield, which was lovely as we don't often get to spend time together.  We really enjoyed the performance and, of course, Paul was a star, to us, anyway, but it was a long day. The youngsters had been rehearsing since ten o'clock that morning and the performance didn't finish till nine.
In the usual manner of life in the wild, Paul had had problems with the 'bee', who kept trying to pull his legs off but, as you can see from the photo, all legs remained intact at the end of the day.

Paddy + walk + another dog =

Well, in today's case, it equals a twisted, very painful ankle. I am determined not to even think of it as a sprain but, it ain't looking good. This sad situation arose because a lovely little Jack Russell, who, unlike Paddy, is trusted to be off his lead in the valley, came bounding up to us and he and Paddy did the usual sniffing nether regions etc that dogs usually do. All well and good, until little Jack decided to hi-tail it  back to base. Paddy hadn't quite finished his greetings and made a lunge to follow him, catching me by surprise and  causing me to turn my ankle over.

"It'll be fine in a second," I thought, as I hobbled to a nearby bench, but it wasn't. In fact it was painful and I had to hobble back home at greatly reduced speed. 

"You should have rung me and I would have come to get you," said Keith, when he arrived home later.

"But you had already gone out by then," I said, visions of an ex-ambulance trundling across a wide expanse of grass, having skilfully negotiated the lake and the ducks.

"Well, I could have come in the Pajero, off-roading," he replied. I think he would have enjoyed that.

Anyway, I have spent the rest of the day trying ice packs, strapping it up, hobbling and generally trying in vain to reduce the golf ball that is now the outer side of my ankle, but what better excuse not to do the housework that I had planned for today?

Every cloud...!