Nearly an armful!

Yes, today was that time again. Blood letting, or more precisely, blood donation day. For the last couple of years, this has been run by the Welsh version and yes, should anyone out there be wondering, they are perfectly happy to relieve English people of their blood too. 

Little has changed really. New uniforms, new couches, iPads to input your information instead of the old parchment and quill pens (and that in itself has been enough to deter some donors!) and, this time, a new way of taking the pinprick of blood for testing. The only difference I could see was that the nurse used a longer, very thin tube to gather the blood and here's where I nearly fell at the first hurdle, as it took two pinpricks in different fingers to extract even that small amount of blood.

"It's not looking good for the armful," I remarked.

"It's probably just that your hands are cold." she said.

Eventually, she managed to get the required amount and I did also manage to produce the armful. When they take the needle out, they now put a bandage on your arm instead of a plaster.

Now I'm quite happy with this, especially when it's finished off with a nice bow, like today, because it gets me the sympathy vote and respect from Keith when I get home. (Mind you, today's was perhaps a tad OTT.)

Then on to the reward, a nice cup of coffee and a Club biscuit, which is what I go for really. Keith is jealous but I keep telling him, if he gives an armful too, he can have the same.

He's not convinced.

Toilets and pens

It has been a job waiting to be done for a long time, about four years in fact, but the other day, we replaced the toilet seat in the downstairs cloakroom. The original one was made of oak. (Remember this, it will be significant later in this post.) The new one looks like this:

Pristine, white and clean, which the old one certainly wasn't.
However, that did not deter Keith. He decided he had a use for the lid of the old seat and immediately carted it off to the shed (sorry, workshop).
This is where we come to the second part of the title of the post and prizes may be available if you have already worked out the link. Over the last week or so, Keith has been making pens, like these:

Smart, aren't they? He has made some from wood too, such as olive wood, which he has bought online. Now however, he has decided that a discarded toilet seat is the way to go, and you can see him doing just that here:
 Keith's video.
Anyone for an oak pen?

No trains today

For those who may have thought that my rants about North Wales are a trifle exaggerated, have a look at this. North East Wales is actually without trains today so that people in the Cardiff area can go to a rugby match. Is any further proof needed that North Wales is grossly underfunded?

Horses

Bucknut Farm Stables

This is the link for Younger Daughter's new blog. It's in my sidebar too and for anyone interested in horses and riding, it might be of interest to you. Claire is a Drama teacher in a high school 'oop north' so doesn't have a lot of spare time, but much of what she does have is taken up with the four horses she and her friend own between them. They all have their own personalities (the horses, that is) but the two miniatures are really full of life and full of mischief, so look forward to some interesting tales in the future!

Flying Scotsman

This morning, Keith and I set off to Tattenhall, near Chester. Why? Well, a trip for the Flying Scotsman had apparently been planned. It has been showcased on various trips around the country during the summer and today it was travelling from Crewe to Holyhead and back, via Chester. When these trips are broadcast, they are always rather cagey about the details of the route and exact times and places  it can be seen, apparently because they think that people might be stupid enough to stand on the rail track in order to get a better view. (Sigh!)

However, they reckoned without Keith. He knows the area very well and soon pinpointed a certain bridge just outside Tattenhall as a good vantage point, so off we went. 

The day was overcast, but at least it wasn't raining, and these photos are stills from the video which Keith took from his tripod which he had set up on the wall of the bridge. Nothing if not organised, but it was just as well as my camera failed me miserably and the Flying Scotsman, despite its great age, showed that it was still just as capable as it ever was of travelling like a bat out of hell. It could certainly give our ageing diesels in North Wales a run for their money. In fact, we would probably be better off with it than with the 'new' (second hand tube trains) that we are soon going to be using round here. (But  that is a whole other rant for another day.)

The last time I saw this engine was in 1969 when I was travelling back to college in Hull from Bristol. It still looks just as impressive, having been through a lot of ups and downs in between, of course.

Some day, Keith and I would love to treat ourselves to one of these trips on the Flying Scotsman, but tracking them down before they're fully booked is harder than one would think. So if anyone knows of a website where we can actually get to book a trip, do please let me know.

In the Shed

Nipsa 7,5 OHV Four Stroke 9

Yes, go on, click on the link. You know you want to. Take advantage of following Keith in his journey of making two stroke and four stroke engines out of his own head.

Proud of him, I am - even if I don't understand more than one word in six of his explanations and am overcome by a feeling of intense nausea when I look at the incredible mess in that shed ...

So if you are at all interested in this sort of thing, or know someone else who is, please visit his YouTube site and give him a thumbs up.

21st Century Trolley

Lately, by which I mean over the last few months, Keith has developed an unhealthy interest in trolleys. When I say trolleys, I mean tea trolleys. Think 1950s housewife tripping lightly into the living room, pushing a tea trolley piled high with cucumber sandwiches, tea pot, rattling crockery and, of course, cakes, lots of cakes. I think it's probably the healthy eating diet that we've been following that's got to him, with the result that he is rapidly becoming obsessed with cakes of all shapes, sizes and calorie content and the problem of how to access them.

"Wouldn't you like a nice tea trolley to wheel in the supper every evening?" he queried hopefully.

I left him in no doubt that hell would freeze over before I appeared before him pushing a trolley of cakes or delivering cakes by any other means, for that matter, apart from the fact that we don't have supper and that, I thought, was that.

Cue Keith's next idea - an internet trolley.

This, he explained, as its name suggests, would be connected to the internet so that if we ran out of cake and er, cake, an automatic order would be sent to the nearest supermarket to replenish supplies.

He's threatening to start work on designing it imminently ...

The minimalist look

 I've always wanted the minimalist look in my home and wherever I've lived, I've never managed it and I've never managed to find a kindred spirit who understood the advantages of having space rather than 'things'.  Longtime readers of this blog will know only too well that Keith is definitely not minimalist and the idea of having any kind of space not crammed with what he would call important things and I would call rubbish, though maybe not to his face, is a completely foreign concept to him.

 Almost two years ago, we had the kitchen re-fitted, which was great except that I sort of lost sight of the fact that even though the units were new, the kitchen is still the same size and still only holds the same amount of stuff. So now, I am looking at videos on YouTube for ideas on how to cut down on 'stuff' and free up more space.
(Note that I am talking here of people who are voluntarily cutting back and 'downsizing', not those who unfortunately have no choice.)

 Boy, has that been an eye opener! There are people out there with kitchens the size of small cupboards who boast of having empty drawers and cupboards as they have too much storage space for their needs!
Some have only two plates, mugs and sets of cutlery.
What do they do when they have visitors? I wonder.

One woman only has enough food in the fridge AND freezer for a week. By the time shopping day comes round again, the cupboards, fridge and freezer are bare.
What does she do if she's ill or something crops up and she can't go shopping that day? These things happen. And does it mean that she has the same menu week in, week out? Not like my system at all. When asked what I am cooking for the evening meal, my reply is usually 'Whatever falls out of the freezer when I open it,' to the amusement and/or horror of friends who pride themselves on being a little more organised.

 So, having read this far, if you look at these photos and have any ideas as to what can be ditched, do let me know.

In the meantime, I am thinking of doing my own YouTube video on Keith's desk ... Now there's a challenge!

Walking in the valley

I haven't been down in the valley with Toby for several weeks now, but the other day, we did pay a quick visit. It was a lovely day, there were plenty of mallards squawking and squabbling, as they do, and a few coots but no moorhens. 

Most of my photos are taken on an iPhone 6 plus, one handedly, as I have Toby's lead in the other and let's face it, Annie Leibovitz et al really have nothing to worry about. But maybe I should look at some instructional videos on YouTube - although they would probably begin with something along the lines of 'Ditch the dog and use both hands.' 

Or, perhaps I could train Toby to take them ... 

Dad's bench

It was probably back in the eighties that Dad bought a new wooden bench for the garden. It replaced the one he had built himself, which had been there since we were children, and always sat under the dining room window to provide a vantage point from which to survey the rest of the garden. Mum used to sit there often in the summer and Dad too in later years. So when he moved up here to live near Keith and myself, it came with him and provided another vantage point in another garden.

After he died, it came to our garden and being by then in need of sprucing up, I sanded it down and coated it with Osmo oil, which according to Kathy, would be better than varnish.

"Make sure you put several coats on," she said, after I'd put the first coat on and thought I'd finished. So I did.

So there it is, in all its glory, in our garden, where I can sit on it and survey our garden  - and Keith's shed, of course!