Washing all of our mugs this afternoon, I wondered how on earth we ended up with 22 of them. I mean, with only two of us in this house, we really don’t need anything like this many.
Then I remembered the time I was helping to clear my mother’s flat after she died. I had been amazed then at how many mugs, cups, tea sets, plates, cutlery and so on she had – there must have been enough for 30+ full place settings. An old lady living on her own, with few visitors – what on earth did she need so many for, I wondered.
But now I think I know. Like me, Im sure she was holding onto all this china and cutlery just in case she was descended upon by a coachload of hungry, thirsty visitors; she wanted to be prepared for any eventuality, and would have been devastated if there hadn’t been enough plates and forks for everyone.

So, if a coach party were to drop by my huse – I could rustle up tea for everyone!

Just been to see the Doc about the continuing pain and stiffness in my shoulders. She’s sending me for an X-ray; I probably have arthritis in my shoulder joints. I may also have the beginnings of osteoporosis in my neck vertebrae.
Oh wow – just what I always wanted, arthritis in my joints and a crumbling spine…..

…..and in the middle of it, a dead crow. Freshly dead, by the brightness of the red blood and purple guts spilling amongst the shiny black feathers. A couple of feet away, another, less identifiable, road-coloured lump. Evidently, the crow had been about to enjoy some breakfast when Death caught up with it. A little strange, as crows aren’t usually so careless.
Half a mile further on, a movement alongside the car caught my eye – a small rabbit springing away through a gap in the hedge, the sun momentarily shining through its translucent pink ears. It must have been just inches away from going under our wheels – another crow would be going without breakfast this morning, at least.
I eyed the speedometer. The needle was flickering just under the 90 mark.
“I thought you said you would be driving sensibly this morning, and not doing any silly speeds.”
He took another narrow S-bend before answering. “I said that I wouldn’t be doing any silly speeds as long as there was nobody getting up my arse. And there is.”
Sure enough, there was a silver Audi keeping pace behind. It was dropping back in the bends, but gaining in the straights. So, evidently not a local who knew the road. But it was keeping a respectful distance all the way – he probably knew a mad local driver when he saw one in front of him.
We approached Parton and dropped steadily down to 30. We were passing the church on the other side of the village when the Audi turned off.
“Pity” he said, “I’m going to have to drive sensibly now, aren’t I?” And eased up to 65.

I love these kind of sites! ReligiousFreaks.com

—————-

Been going cold turkey, trying to get off Iboprufen. I managed 48 hours; after deciding I no longer wanted to live with aching joints, rising blood pressure, fuzz-for-brains and total tiredness, I gave in and swallowed 120mg an hour ago.
I feel fine now.
Damm…..

——————–

I’m still waiting for my replacement motherboard. The ompany decided to send it to the woman who bought it for me, instead of direct to me.
Botheration……

————————–

And another interesting site: synclecron.com. The guy who devised (and patented!) it is hugely enthusicastic, but I can’t see what makes it so different from Lunabar, or any other program that shows you the Moon’s phases on your desktop.

Not much news. Haven’t been able to upload any new photos because Windows suddenly won’t recognise the Card Reader. Waiting for a new motherboard (again). Until that arrives, I won’t have much time on B’s machine, as he suddenly has some printing work to do.

Quite tempted to join another message board: Barbelith. Found them from browsing though my stats – one of their posters has posted a link to my old Atlantis Commune article, and I’m tempted to join in the discussion. However, I don’t get the time to regularly read all the forums I’m on now. So I think I’ll give it a miss this time.

Back again. Still having motherboard trouble. Blah. Can’t get the latest one to detect a keyboard – any keyboard. I’ve emailed the company that sold it to Caroline – it was only six weeks ago, so they might possibly replace it.
So Im rather fed up. Still, went down and saw my new grandaughter at the weekend. She’s georgeous, of course! I shot off loads of photos, will post one here soon. And the trip made a change. Most of the family were there as well, except for grandson, who is on holiday with his dad, and No1 daughter, who still isn’t speaking to anybody. Her own daughter never sees her any more. Oh well….
The bath is finally installed and we managed to each get a bath in it (at last! huzzah!) before the pipes sprung a leak. However, it will be easy to fix.
And that’s about it. Oh, we have to find £160 for the car insurance within a month. And the coal bill is mountng up again. And we’re behind on the rent….
But – it’s only money…..

Finally, I’ve got the July issue of Transit off to the printers. I was planning to finish it over the weekend, but it took longer than I expected, mainly because I was double-checking everything. Don’t want to have any more typos! This time, naturally, my printer ran out of ink just before I could print off a final copy for proof-reading. So I had to proof it on the screen, and hope the graphics will print out OK.

I can’t get another ink cartridge before Friday or Saturday; hopefully, I can also get a good PSU for my computer as well. The 250W box that is currently powering it isn’t enough – I’ve had to disconnect the second hard drive to save power, and it still crashes if I have too many windows open. I’m wondering if I should get a bigger hard drive as well, for my main drive. 30gig sounded enormous last year, but even when the 20gig spare drive is hooked up, I’m feeling short of space.
I’m also wondering if I should switch from my faithful old Win98 to WinXP; every review of it emphasises its stability, and with W98 I’ve always had crashes and BSODs, regardless of my hardware configuration. But – a legal copy costs £££ that I don’t have. Easy enough to find a (coughcough) free copy. But M$ has made the copy validation pretty tight….
(Please don’t tell me to switch to Linux. I’ve looked at various distros, and the intallation looks gruesome. I don’t want software that I have to waste whole good working days fiddling around with, thank you very much. I do enough of that already with my present system. There is much wrong with M$ products, but at least they are pretty much plug ‘n’ play.)

I think I may have to go back to see Doc G for another checkup. I’ve been feeling ill and tired for over a week, waking up every morning with a headache and often not able to sleep properly because my joints are aching so much. I think my blood pressure may be creeping up again (I keep getting that “swollen-head” feeling that I used to get before my BP problem was diagnosed) , but I really don’t want to go back on medication for it – everything that he tried with me last year produced side-effects. I’ll give it a few more days, though, just in case it’s some sneaky virus laying me low.