Sunny.

A cool but sunny day today. No school for me so I had a whole day to get on with things at home. My first job was to finish cleaning the hearth. Both sets of curtains from the windows went in the washing machine and I now have a pile of ironing saved for the weekend when more rain is due. Now that we aren't having any fires I black leaded the woodburner, doesn't that sound Victorian? It probably isn't black lead, just some black stuff in a tube like toothpaste. I didn't have enough for the whole burner but at least the front is done. Then I sanded down the beams in the conservatory. It was very dusty work so I had one scarf tied over my hair, another over my nose and mouth and protective googles for my eyes. Trust the postman to turn up when I was looking like someone out of Mad Max. I've also made a start on filling in the gouges in the kitchen door. I've used a wood filler that you have to mix with a hardener, some sort of resin I think. It's very good but you do have to work quite quickly.

However I ended up making a trip into town anyway. Last weekend I got  quite a few bramble scratches just behind my ankle. Due to the medication I take and yes, my age I find that it takes a while for cuts and scratches to heal. However I was beginning to get concerned that the scratches were getting worse not better. Yesterday I covered them with plasters so my leggings wouldn't irritate them at work and when I took the plasters off there was a nasty red rash that hadn't been there before. I drew a line around the redness around the biggest cut - watching all those hospital dramas comes in handy- and it hasn't increased in size. As I'm working all day tomorrow and the doctor's surgery is shut on the weekend I thought I'd better give them a call today. (How utterly foolish I would feel to turn up at A&E with infected bramble scratches and how long the wait would be.) I spoke to the nurse practitioner and she wasn't sure if it was infected from my description but she would leave a prescription for antibiotics at the dispensary which I could collect today and take if my leg got worse. So I picked up my prescription (no cost as I have a pre-paid card,) and called in at the Tesco's there and Homebase. I had a couple of things to get in both places but as usual I checked out the reduced sections too. In Tesco's which normally doesn't take much off I got wholemeal bagels and coriander naan for Peter and some naughty chocolaty treats from the 'finest' range for me all at 80% off. Then in Homebase I had a wander around the garden centre. The rack of reduced plants looked too dire to consider buying but when I was browsing the full price plants I came across a section of petunias at over 2/3s off. I couldn't resist 2 boxes of purple/ white petunias and I have managed to cram them into the hanging baskets. But that is definitely it, no room for any more plants.