How long have you had that?

Over the past week, or so, 30% has been having a clear out of her dressing room.  She has made half hearted attempts at this over the five years we have been living here, but, this time, it seems to be a serious attempt to make the room look presentable.

Yesterday evening she wandered downstairs and presented me with a voucher. "I found this upstairs," she said, "You're going to be in the vicinity of Halfords tomorrow, why don't you use it?"

I looked at the voucher and it seemed voucher ish. It was clearly from Halfords and offered the owner £5 off any purchase. However, on closer examination there were many things you would expect on a voucher, that just weren't there. There was no QR or barcode. There was no expiry date, neither were there any detailed terms of use or limitations, just a reference number of eight or ten digits.

I said I'd give I a go, and that leads us on to today.

First activity this morning was a walk with Hobson & TB, once the painkillers had taken effect. This took up most of my morning, and any spare time was used to refill the log basket and chop some kindling.

After lunch I headed in to Redditch. I will need some plywood in the near future.* A quick visit to Wickes had plywood ticked off my list. I then drove around the corner, parked up, and wandered in to Halfords. I spent several minutes wandering around, and failing to be inspired by any of their stock. Yes, I could have purchased something shiny in chrome vanadium, but I have plenty of tools already.**

Eventually my eyes fell upon a little visor cleaning kit in the motorcycling section. "That'll do" I thought, so I picked it up, and wandered over to the tills. Eventually a member of the team ambled over and cheerfully scanned my purchase. I handed over the voucher and he looked a little puzzled. He made a couple of attempts to get the till to recognise it, before calling over his team leader.

The team leader looked equally puzzled and, was about to just create a manual discount, when the till seemed to recognise the voucher code and I was able to complete my purchase. The chap advised that he had worked for Halfords for over ten years and had never seen a voucher quite like the one I presented today.

God knows how long that voucher had been lurking in 30%'s belongings, but I happen to know that she does have a Co-op voucher that she received when she was first married, over thirty years ago.

Perhaps we should try that one next?

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* I have a few clearer boards to make. These are used to get bees out of the supers, before the honey is extracted. They act as a one-way valve. Once the bees have exited the super, via the clearer board, they can't find their way back in. 

I also need to finish making a pair of cupboard doors for my carpenter's bench refurbishment.

* You can NEVER have too many tools!

A slight improvement

The forecast for this week looks almost pleasant after the preceding weeks of rain.

It should be noted that the weeks of continuous rain has meant that my definition of pleasant has been tempered, and is now satisfied by showers rather than downpours, and sunny spells rather than endless rain.

Today started with blue skies. It clouded somewhat later, and there was the occasional shower, but it was dry enough to get out with the dogs and walk out as far as Pete the beekeeper's house.*

I have learnt that I need to schedule these walks, as my back is much improved, but I need to dose up on paracetamol and ibuprofen about an hour before we set off.

I am reasonably confident that I am not making matters worse, as my back seems fine when I am walking and no worse when back at home, pottering around the house and gardens.

So that it is it for Monday.  The dogs got walked and I managed to tidy up the bits and pieces left over from yesterday's honey bottling.

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* Today I established that this is actually about 2.6 miles in total. Consequently it is not my new three miler, but in fact just a pleasant walk with far fewer encounters with Townies. There is also always the chance that I will bump in to Pete, and can order another bucket of honey.

Sales report

Yesterday's sun was a brief reprieve, and today the rain is back.

Fortunately I was running low on bottled honey, so I was able to use that as an excuse to stay indoors and bottle a couple of batches, over the course of the day.

I thought that sales had slowed down,* but, on checking, my last bottling session was on 27th January, so I still seem to be shifting about ten pounds every fortnight.

That pretty much sums up Sunday. There was also a snooze the sofa, and a fire was lit early in the evening. There was also a rather nice bottle of Governo to go with this evening's dinner.

And I didn't get too wet shutting up the hens.

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* Hardly surprising considering the weather!

Fishing

Today we had a brief reprieve from the endless, soggy gloom.

The skies were blue and the sun shone down. There was even a light dusting of frost early this morning. Don't be mistaken, everywhere is still soaking wet, but it was lovely to have a bright sunny day after weeks and weeks of cloud and rain.

After a hefty dose of painkillers* I headed out along the lanes with Hobson and TB. We completed the new three miler, before the dogs were dunked in an icy bath to wash away the mud.

Late last night 30% happened to mention that an important document** had managed to slip in to the windscreen vent of her car.  After listening to a somewhat waffly explanation, I avoiding saying "FFS," and advised that she might like to use the long reach, locking forceps*** that I have in my fishing bag.

Let's now roll forward to this morning. 30% advised that she had tried to retrieve the document with her eyebrow tweezers, but had failed. I asked why she hadn't used my fishing forceps and was advised that she "didn't know where they were." I would have thought that the large,  and only, green bag in the store room, adjacent to the three rods and the landing nets would have given her a clue.

Again I avoided saying "FFS" and went to have a look for the forceps. I have to be fair and say that I totally failed to find them. I must have left them on the bank on our last angling excursion. I then tried and failed to retrieve the document with a pair of long nosed pliers. I eventually fished out the damned piece of card with a steel rule, tipped with a piece of gaffer tape.

Here endeth the tale of my first fishing trip of 2026 ... At least I had a catch!

This evening we headed in to Redditch to see the Dazzling Diamonds drag review at The Palace Theatre. We had a splendid time watching three queens sing, lip synch, bitch and take the rise out of the audience. The humour was, most definitely, fellatio focussed and absolutely brilliant.

There were moments of true drag genius, and particularly worthy of mention was the mash-up of Rod Hull and Emu with Bjork singing "It's Oh So Quiet."

We had so much fun that we have already booked tickets for their new show in April '27.

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* My back is still not pain free, but I can now stand upright and walk, confident that things are on the mend.

** The arrival time recorder that accompanies her blue badge

*** Have you seen a pike's teeth!

I think I've watched as much curling as I can take!

The rain today was relentless.

It didn't stop at any point. The ground is now so soaked that it cannot absorb another drop, so it is collecting in huge puddles, and streaming on to the roads.

There was no way that I was going to walk the dogs in this weather so I limited my activities to those I could perform indoors.

The loin of pork, that I started curing last Friday,  was taken out the fridge, dried off, and wrapped in muslin. It is now hanging from a hook in the ceiling of the workshop. It will remain there for the best part of a week, before I take it down and smoke it.

I'm embarrassed to say that that was all I achieved today. I did watch more of the Winter Olympics, but have now reached the point where I am starting to come up with suggestions for new sports to be included in the French Alps Olympics of 2030.

I think snowmobile racing could be a big hit, as could dog sledding.  Wrestling polar bears is probably a little one sided to be taken seriously, but I'm pretty sure it would bring in the viewers.

"I'm not sure why you're here?"

 The only thing in the diary for today was a trip in to Worcester for a check up at the eye clinic.

I left home with plenty of time, as I expected to hit rush hour traffic. Instead I breezed through Worcester and was parked up forty minutes in advance of my appointment. I used the time to pick up some milk,* before I wandered in to the clinic ... I was still twenty minutes early.

After a short wait I was called in to an examination room and the first utterance from the practitioner was the title to today's Journal entry.

She was very pleasant and apologised for not getting in touch and cancelling the appointment. She pointed out that I was last seen in November, and didn't need to reviewed until May, at the earliest. We agreed that the CHEC service seems to just make random appointments, and she gave tacit agreement that the company operated in that fashion, as each appointment would result in revenue from the NHS. The more appointments they make, the more money they earn!

She measured my IOP's and both were fine. Shen then made me an appointment for May, and cheerily sent me on my way, with the warning to ignore any future requests to schedule appointments.

I didn't really do much for the rest of the day. The weather is still appalling, and the Winter Olympics are a reasonably interesting diversion.

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* We always need milk, and I never drink the bloody stuff ... bleurgh!

Post Script:

We did have a quick chat with TP this evening. There is not much sound work available at the moment, so he has picked up a contract with Amazon to deliver parcels for three days each week. He is just completing his training and says, "it is actually nowhere near as bad as he expected." 

The reason for our call was to wish him luck for tomorrow. Back on the 20th January TP had mentioned that he was interested in a change in career direction and was looking at other areas of the sound engineering industry. 

He has reached out to a couple of companies to see if they would offer him some work experience and he now has offers from a couple of companies. It seems that they might be interested in offering him employment if they like what they see.

Post, Post Script:

I also had an "even better than that" moment this evening.

I briefly checked the notifications on my phone tis evening and noticed that I had received a payment into my bank account.

At this point I put on my reading glasses expecting something mundane. Instead I discovered that His Majesty's Revenue & Customs had refunded a significant amount of tax deducted from a pension drawdown payment ... Result!

Improvement?

 My back seemed slightly better this morning. 

As a consequence, I started to plan my day and a walk with the dogs was added to the schedule.

Midway through the morning the painkillers seemed to have kicked in, so I headed up the hill with Hobson and TB. I hadn't walked far before I realised that we would not be completing the new Three Miler. I could walk, but even dosed up with paracetamol, I was subject to regular twinges, particularly when going downhill.

I settled for about a mile. The dogs had emptied themselves and I had, at least, got out in the fresh air for half an hour.

A delivery in the post kept me busy for another hour ... A while back I repaired and cleaned up an old reading lamp. It is a lovely thing apart from one thing. It needs an in-line switch fitting to the cable. This simple addition would make a nice light into a perfect light.

An hour was spent fitting the switch, and I am really pleased that I have actually achieved something today.

A snooze was necessary in the afternoon ... obviously for medical purposes, and I lit the fire, before heading in to the village for this week's Tai Chi session.

I was a little apprehensive about some of the sequences. but I can report that it was relatively twinge free. I am hoping that the stretching and gentle exercise will assist in my back healing.

Mostly Sleeping

 My back seems to be slowly improving, but for most of today I have felt absolutely zonked.

I'm not sure whether it is the after effects of Tramadol,* but I felt completely out of it. 

I spent the morning dozing on the sofa and the afternoon included an hour of sleep.

I did manage to trim Whiffler's face, but that was it for the day ... Oh, and I did manage to fill the log basket.

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* The pharmacological equivalent of a bottle of red wine

Thoughts on our bike tour route

Over the past few hours I have given some thought to this year's motorcycle tour, and I don't want to be in the same position as last year, when it seemed that Charlie dictated the route.

For many, many years I have been fascinated by the Palaeolithic cave paintings in France and Spain, and, if at all possible, I really fancied including some of these sites in our tour.  Hence, this morning I Googled the locations of these caves, and found that there were several sites in the Vézère Valley.* 

Now this region is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and is about a day's ride due East of the French Alps.  A quick look at the map suggests that we could take in some of the Massif Central en route to Vézère.

I have posted this route suggestion in our WhatsApp group chat to see how the others felt about it. So far, TP seems very keen, but I've not yet had a response from Rob** or Charlie.

The rest of the day wasn't particularly busy. I took the Hobson and TB out for a walk and we met and chatted to a couple of friendly dog walker. Hobson also found a dead squirrel and was absolutely delighted  with it. He promptly picked it up and carried it for about half an hour mile, before abandoning it by the roadside.

The dogs were washed on our return, and I then grabbed the clippers to trim Hobson's face. It is almost two months, to the day, since he was last clipped, and he is starting to look a little shaggy. He now looks much smarter, and, hopefully, it won't be too long before his topknot is restored.

The only other thing to report is that my back was twinging quite badly this afternoon. I'm not sure what I have done, but I may have pulled a muscle when I was cleaning my shotgun yesterday. I took a selection of painkillers in the hope that it will clear up over the next day or two.***

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* In the Dordogne

** This is not particularly surprising, as Rob openly admits that he is "happy to go with the flow."

*** Having suffered from a slipped disk and foraminal stenosis back in 2023, I am now paranoid every time I have back ache. 

I had a plan/We had a plan

 So my plan for today was as follows, clean my shotgun and get the dogs walked.

It wasn't a complicated plan. It had two components, and each of them was easy to achieve.  The only slight complexity was that the dogs were likely to get filthy, so the end of my walk was planned to ensure that 30% was available to assist with washing them.*

The morning was spent pottering. I took a wander up to the hives, and lifted the roofs of each of them in turn. I can report that all three colonies are alive, and the bees could be seen working their way through the packs of fondant that are sat on the crown boards.**

As midday approached 30% headed off for an art class with Mummy Sheila, so I settled on the floor in front of the television and cleaned my gun.

Lunch followed and then there was the obligatory nap.

I woke at around two o'clock and noticed that the rain had started. I didn't fancy getting wet, so I filled the log basket, chopped kindling and occasionally peered out in hope of dry weather. 

Eventually I gave up on the idea of walking, lit the fire and settled in front of it.

This evening TP arranged a zoom call to start the planning for this year's motorcycle road trip. Charlie and Rob joined TP and I on the call, and it soon became apparent that there had been some pre-meeting decision making by TP and Charlie.

Our original intention was to take the Portsmouth to Santander ferry and take in the sights of North Portugal, but Charlie spouted out a set of inflated ferry prices and said he didn't want to spend that much money. A quick internet search found ferry tickets for two thirds of the price Charlie mentioned, so he then used the thirty hour sailing time and the need to eat on the boat as reasons not to go to Portugal by ferry ... it is clear that he is a bit of a tight-arse.

TP then mentioned that he and Charlie had had a preliminary chat and were keen to explore the French Alps around Grenoble ...it seems pretty obvious that this was probably Charlie's idea after seeing the price of ferry tickets.

Now I didn't particularly object, as, late last year, I took a look at touring options, and quite fancied the Massif Central in France. This mountainous area is en-route, so I suggested that we could include that too. This wasn't objected to, so we moved on to talking about potential dates. It seems likely that we will be going for nine days in the first half of July. My preference is for 10th - 19th.

A follow-on call is planned for next week, once Charlie has confirmed what dates he can take off work.

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* I don't mind walking the dogs, but I really dislike having to wash and dry them afterwards. With the weather as it is at present, it is a rare treat for them to come home clean!

** I bumped in to Road-rage Ken this morning and it is sad to report that he has lost all of his hives this Winter. He's not sure what caused their demise, but thinks that it may be weather related. I offered genuine commiserations, and a nucleus colony, if I have one spare later on in the year.

The dining room comes together.

Saturday started with a drive over to Childswickham.  The morning was spent clay shooting with Bubbles, Ben, Little Miss Sunshine* and Adam.** After an indifferent start, I finally managed to start hitting clays and ended up with a score of 46/80.  (57.5%).

I can also report that we were incredibly lucky, and managed to avoid the showers that were forecast for the morning.***

I was home before midday, so had time to nip in to Alcester and pick up a roll of electrical insulating tape before lunch.

First job in the afternoon was to attend to the problematic light fitting. It was a matter of a few minutes work to insulate the light, and I can now report that we have fault free lighting downstairs.

Next on my list was a massive kip, before our friendly curtain lady arrived to fit the new curtains in the dining room. They look absolutely fantastic and most definitely worth every penny.

I now need to think about getting the dining room and the connecting lounge painted. I know that this is going to be quite an upheaval, as there are some large items of furniture to be moved, stored, or worked around. But, for the moment, I am able to ignore the less than perfect paintwork and enjoy the ambience of the new curtains, rug and lighting. 

It is going to look fabulous before the end of the year.

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* Bobbyn has received a new alias, as she has such a cheerful disposition

** Bubb's colleague, better known as "Berko"

*** The BBC News website reports that a nearby village, Astwood Bank, has had rainfall on every day this year, so far.  We are only a few miles away and have had similar weather conditions.

Still raining

It comes as no surprise that I woke to yet another rainy day, although the rain did seem slightly less heavy than yesterday.

I was out of the house relatively early for a consultation at the local surgery. I have a recurrence of trigger finger in my right hand. It is not massively painful at the moment, but I know that it will become debilitating, if it is not attended to.*

Fortunately the GP was of the same opinion, and has referred me to a Specialist for a steroid injection. I am now wondering just how long I will have to wait.  If the NHS is as slow as expected I may well locate a private surgeon and pay to have it done.**

Once I was back at home I prepared a batch of cure, and spent the rest of the morning starting the cure of a huge loin of pork. This five kilo loin is now lurking in the bottom of the fridge, having been rubbed with several handfuls of an aromatic cure. It will be massaged and turned daily for the next six days.

I then had a look at the last light fitting that I put up yesterday. I think there may be an intermittent short between the connector block and the body of the light fitting. A couple of inches of insulating tape would sort this out, but I have none in the workshop.  It looks like I'll be nipping in to Alcester at some point to get some.

In the afternoon I headed off out for a walk with Hobson and TB. The lanes were soaking. Water is now flowing off the fields and streaming down the roads. The dogs had a splendid time and came back soaked and filthy. Usually I can get away with dipping their feet in a bucket and washing them off, but on this occasion the dog bath and a hose were required to get them clean.

The afternoon included a snooze on the sofa, and I spent the evening alone, as 30% was out to see an ABBA tribute band with the WI ... She was home just before ten o'clock. and wasn't in the best of moods. Apparently the band were dreadful.

From my perspective the words "ABBA" and "Tribute" should have been sufficient warning ... I keep these thoughts to myself.

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* I last had trigger finger back in March 2021. This was treated privately under my work's insurance scheme. There is a comedy tale about having injections in each hand and not being able to feel or locate the gear stick on a Land Rover. It was an interesting drive back from Solihull.

** There used to be a GP at the surgery who would carry out this procedure "in-house". Now I need to be referred elsewhere and am definitely now on a waiting list. This is called progress.

A short?

The weather was equally vile again today. 

Fortunately I still had a couple of light fittings to replace in the dining room, so that kept me occupied for most of the morning.

I certainly seemed to have found my DIY Mojo, as I also dug out a picture,* which is now hung on the wall of the room.  It is now really coming together, and the new curtains will be delivered and hung on Saturday.

I felt I had earned a celebratory snooze, so that occupied an hour of the afternoon. I then filled the log basket, chopped kindling and got the fire lit.

I would like to say that I was chuffed with my accomplishments, BUT, as the afternoon turned to evening, we noticed that the downstairs lighting circuit would trip out occasionally. I have my suspicions that there may be an intermittent short circuit on the last light fitting I swapped out.

It looks like I'll be re-installing that one tomorrow.

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* An old C18 print of a bucolic scene

Two more to do

Today I returned to my lighting project, and finished off the third, and final, light fitting in the hall. 

Neither of us can believe how much difference the new fittings make to the look and feel of the hall.

I then moved in to the seating area of the dining room, and started work in there. By lunchtime I had replaced another light fitting and was on a roll.

Today was much more pleasant than yesterday, so my afternoon started with a walk down the lane to Pete's house, and back, with Hobson and TB ... my new Three Miler.

I then treated myself to a restorative nap, before putting up a second light fitting in the dining room. There are two more to be replaced, but they can wait until tomorrow.

I needed to get myself tidied up for this evening's Tai Chi class.