Thursday, October 25, 2007

Happy happy joy joy!

The Post is restored in Liverpool! :-) Local mail strike is over. I am beginning to get mail again. Only had boring stuff over the first couple of days post strike, but yesterday the good stuff began to arrive.

Before the postal strike I'd ordered a load of stuff. Including some Birth Certificates. Those arrived yesterday, and it turned out neither were related to me. Ah well, next time I'll try and check details better. Though to be honest, how likely is it to have two unrelated girls in the same town with the same name born within 12 months of each other? Probably common in Wales with a name of Davies!

Today's mail brought a belated (now VERY belated) birthday prezzie for John - "A Pig with Six Legs". To add to his several clouds and weather books.

And a great book on bag making - "making vintage bags".

But best of the bunch is a book of Gustave Dore's London engravings. Absolutely magic while also horrifying. Gothic and dark... And yet some parts of London are recognisable to me.

I think that I've only had around half of my book order so far... More fun to come, can't remember what I ordered now as it's so long ago. Will be fun seeing what arrives over the next few days. I do like getting book parcels! :-)

Sunday, October 14, 2007

Spider v Wasp

John and I were sitting in our bedroom soon after mid day, when I looked out of the window and noticed a wasp had got tangled in the big spider's web outside the middle bay window. The wasp struggled and struggled, but couldn't get free.

Big fat spider comes out to take a look (usually would have appeared much sooner on a tremble of the web) and hung back a bit. Wasp went on struggling, possibly getting stuck down onto the web a bit more... Spider comes a bit closer and stops again, then advances on wasp, which redoubled its efforts and flew away when the spider was only about an inch from it.

Which left me wondering which would have walked away from the encounter if it had happened. Or would both of them ended up dead from stings?

Tuesday, October 02, 2007

Our Visitor

Brodie and I have spent a happy day together in bed. Well, me in bed and he shedding fur on the duvet cover. He is a very gentlemanly cat - not a scratcher at all. It's really fun to have a feline friend again. I hope that he enjoys his sojourn with us.

Brodie sleeping

Brodie enjoying a nice rest

We have a Visitor for a few days!

Bwlchtocyn Nosegay

Bwlchtocyn Nosegay

John went to Abersoch on Sunday to finish stowing the boat ready for winter. He had quite an exciting day, and brought me a little nosegay of flowers from our garden.

He and John managed to get the mast out and remove the ballast. After that he thought he'd go for a little row, as we hadn't managed to get the dinghy back up from the boatyard in August. Rowed round to Porth Bach where it was very quiet and the water was so warm that he went skinny dipping. All in all a good way to celebrate his 62nd birthday!

Lavender

Lavender

John had driven straight to the beach, and had intended to drive up to the caravan and leave the car there before returning for the dinghy. But he found that the road was closed with the fire brigade and an ambulance in attendance. A very big motor boat was being towed down the hill by a tractor and they had jack-knifed. So John had a chat with one of the rescuers that he knew, and then walked up for some lunch. The driver of the tractor was the only person hurt, but it seems he escaped with minor cuts and bruises - a lucky escape.

Yesterday evening Helen and David came over and treated us to an Indian Takeaway as a late celebration of John's birthday. They are going to stay with a friend in Bristol for the rest of the week, so have left the third member of their household here with us as a visitor for a week.

Visitor

Brodie