Damp.

We've been stuck in hazy conditions all day. The day began with rain which eased off by the afternoon.

I was so tired by the end of yesterday I knew I needed a 'rest' day. The trouble is the things I like doing don't really involve resting.

I compromised by pottering about in the garage, hanging things back on hooks and sorting through boxes of random 'stuff'. A lot more space is beginning to emerge and I'm hopeful that one day the whole garage will be organised so that when something is needed it will be easy to find.

 

Another job done was to hunt on-line for new bedside lamps. Our tasteful touch lamps have reached the end of their lives turning on and off at random. They are old and apparently the workings inside do fail eventually.

Argos proved to have a surprisingly good range of lamps and I've narrowed the choice down to two. (Apart from being aesthetically pleasing they needed to be touch lamps with several light levels.)  Peter likes both so I've made rough scale drawings so that I can have a good ponder as they aren't cheap.

Finally I had a go at learning a beginner line-dance that Rachel introduced us to last Thursday. Usually we stick to 80's disco and sometimes more modern pop but line-dance was a first. This dance 'The House of Bamboo' took her fancy so we're having a go. At least it's easier than the choreography for a video competition for disco classes that we tried to learn the week before. That was full of steps we've never done and we didn't do very well.

A lone but loud buff-tailed bumble bee visiting the hebe. It may have been a queen stocking up for winter hibernation (or dormancy) as the poor workers and males die off at the end of summer.

All Systems Go.

The plumber has just left after fitting a new expansion tank to the boiler. The central heating is on and showers are back on the menu. 

Not only that but the fibre cable has been fixed more securely and there's no danger of it dangling over the road. That was thanks to Peter following the matter up. He spoke first to Sky and they didn't even seem to have flagged it to BT as urgent. (BT own the infrastructure but our contract is with Sky so we should go through them.) Peter then took it upon himself to contact BT, explained that wires could easily drop into the road and lo and behold somebody came out within two hours. Peter's idea of adding another panel to the soffit board and a metal strap was deemed to be a good one and the fitting was re-attached once the cable was slackened off. 

No sooner had I sat outside with my coffee this morning then down came the rain which continued right until I got to the stables.

There I found that only myself and M (who is older than me and has more health issues) were down for the lesson but we were joined by a member of staff to make us up to three.

I rode Betsi who is so lovely. I had some time with her in the stable before the lesson and she was enjoying having her neck scratched so much that at one point she was just about asleep.

At the start of the lesson I got called out on my habit of riding with long stirrups and had to put them up another hole. And yes it did improve the way Betsi went so I guess I'll have to get used to it. I think my preference for long stirrups may stem from my early riding days when we did a lot of bareback riding taking the ponies to and from the fields. 

Today we worked on leg yielding (again) which is something Betsi does well especially when I keep my eyes on the mirror ahead so that I can see if I need to use more leg to push her hindquarters over.

 

After going to the dump, Hahav and Morrisons I called in at Charlie's. I met our neighbour there who was buying peanuts for the birds but had stopped to look at the Christmas lights but said he has more than enough at home.

Now that bonfire night is over I'm quite happy to see all the Christmas trees and decorations everywhere. I even browse the tree decoration aisles though I cannot image where I would put any additional decorations.

I'd gone into Charlie's to see if there was anything in the equestrian section I could suggest to Peter as gift ideas but nothing caught my eye. The good old favourites, Bailey's and chocolates will have to do.

In town I went into Matalan and bought some warm winter pjs for Pete. They've got a black Friday offer (which goes on for a while) of 25% off men's and women's nightwear which was handy.

This is the small table I painted. (It looks as if I've painted the bottoms of the large table legs but they are just wet.) Originally the metal legs came from my mother's house and were part of a stool with a wooden seat. The seat split making it a bit perilous to sit on and when the wooden garden furniture we bought on eBay came with a lazy Susan I used that to make a small table.

Cancelled.

The day has been dry and verging on chilly today. Not having the boiler to switch on the central heating in the early hours to keep the place from getting too cold is not a lot of fun. Although we haven't been putting the heating on during the day that little boost was just enough to keep things comfortable. 

On the plus side this is good preparation for power cuts. That's what I keep telling myself. Not a word from the plumber either.

This morning I was washing up and mentally making sure I had everything prepared for class before I went out to paint when in came Pete to say the lesson had been cancelled due to our tutor being ill.

Not nice for our tutor but that gave me time to paint the dragon and the table legs and then make a start on tidying up the back garden.

 

It was a good thing that I was outside because all of a sudden I heard a loud bang. Wondering what on earth had happened I was about to get the ladder out to check the flat roofs when I saw that the fixing the chap had put up to hold the new fibre optic cable had pulled away from the corner of the house. 

Not too surprising when you see the metal piece had been screwed into the thin plastic soffit board. Apparently they are not allowed to fix onto the solid wall of the house.

Peter managed to get through to somebody on the phone and explained that if the cable came loose it would be dangling over the street possibly low enough for bigger lorries to get caught on. Even so they won't be sending anyone to fix it until at least Monday.

Rather than let the situation get worse Pete first drove to town to get the correct screws and then put in various fixings so that with wire and cable ties holding the cable in place it can't drop any lower. It was a fiddly cold job with both of us up ladders (I was holding the metal thingy in place) but at least it is safe now. It's a good thing the class was cancelled so that we could deal with this little major problem.

The cable runs from the telegraph pole across the road and to the corner of the house.

My reward for all today's hard work will be to go and dance for an hour in disco aerobics.

Getting Cold.

While it has been dry with even some sun it has definitely been getting colder. 

I got a fair amount done this morning, a second coat of white on the inside of the garage window sills, my Welsh homework done and sent off and extra Duolingo because I'd missed two days in a row. I also did some bits of sewing. Nothing exciting, just some mending. 

The plumber was supposed to come in the morning but he couldn't get the part to fix our leaking boiler. For the time being the boiler is switched off so we don't even have the option of turning the heating on. For the moment it's a matter of wrapping up well.

Something else that needed doing was repainting the metal dragon Vytas gave me some time ago. The sea air had got to it and all the black paint was peeling off.  Once I'd scraped off the remaining paint and rubbed down the rusty metal I used the tin of black Hammerite I picked up at the dump last week. The tin was almost full and it was the hammered effect paint rather than the matt black I already have. I'll give the dragon another coat tomorrow and maybe even do the legs of a little outdoor table that I have on the terrace. 

In the afternoon I had to go to town to visit the dentist so he could take some more moulds of my teeth. I ended up with bits of blue stuff all over my face. And I had to pay the remaining £948 which left a bad taste so to speak.

I only went in one charity shop and came out with this ceramic ball, some holographic 'sellotape' and a bag of small icing shape stamps, holly and ivy leaves that sort of thing.

The cold got to me in the afternoon and I can't face the thought of driving out to sing in a cold hall before a second dark drive home so I'm giving choir a miss.

Truffles.

Today has been dry with some sunshine. 

I phoned the surgery first thing this morning and was given an appointment for later in the afternoon. At the appointment the doctor said the health board just wanted to make sure I still needed the number of painkillers on my prescription, duh - of course I do. At which point the doctor reinstated the amount on my repeat prescription and that was it. No time wasted talking about my ailments, I guess the medical record speaks for itself, and back home I went.

Since I had bought cream last week I thought I better get on and make the centres of the truffles that will go in this year's Christmas hampers. Sensibly, once I measured out all the ingredients I decided that the 45 minutes I had left before I needed to walk down to the surgery wouldn't be enough time to make and cool the ganache let alone add more ingredients to make four kinds of truffle - plain, walnut, crystallised ginger and raisins soaked in rum. Let alone portion and shape each truffle.

All that I did after I got back from the surgery and it took me two and a half hours to make 120 truffle centres. They will go in the freezer until I'm ready to dip them in more chocolate and then decorate the truffles. I was very restrained and didn't eat any truffles but of course I gave the bowls a good scrape out before washing them up. 

The dunnock has become very brave when I'm around and came down to feed even though I was standing just a few feet away. But the blue tits are newcomers to the garden and flew to the end of the garden to be on the safe side. 

Fuming.

Calm seas and a touch of pink in the sky was how the day started. It has been quite cold especially in the shade but there was a lot of sun (shame we didn't have it yesterday) until eventually the pink evening became a pretty sunset.

I dislike being cross but honestly ....... after a morning in Mach at the library with our friends where our laughter was almost drowned out by the toddlers in the children's corner the first thing I did when I got home was to walk down to the pharmacy. This was to ask why I'd been given less than half my usual amount of painkillers when I collected my monthly prescription last week. Not even enough for two a day. 

The answer was that the surgery had only put the smaller amount on this month's prescription. Off I went to the surgery to ask them what had happened. It turns out that the Hwyl Dda, our local health authority has put a cap on the stronger painkillers. Apparently people shouldn't be on them long term. If only they were able to cure chronic pain at the stroke of a pen as well.

The receptionist at the surgery said this had happened to lots of their patients and the solution was to make an appointment with the doctor so that he could confirm that I did actually need the painkillers. Considering it is the doctors who initially write the prescriptions and then check how we're doing at our yearly check-ups this seems like a complete waste of both the doctor's and my time.

I could have a booked appointment at the end of the month or take a chance and phone at 8.30 to get a quicker appointment. Whenever I've done that I've usually been seen the same day so I'll ring in the morning.

I was so cross that I that wrote a stern email to the complaints department of the health authority and then posted on four local FB groups suggesting anyone else affected also complain.

Having got that off my chest I headed into the garage to give the inside of the window frames a freshen up with a coat of paint. I may even give them a second coat though it is just a scruffy garage/workshop.

Then with a sore back and arm from going up and down the stepladder to do the masking tape and then the painting I gave myself some time off (plus painkillers and an icepack, my usual end of afternoon routine) to watch 'We bought a village.' before going down to photograph the evening sky. 

That was when I had to put out some seeds as no sooner had I gone outside but there was a dunnock telling me that all the morning seeds had gone and could it have some more, please? It's got me well trained. I don't like to put too many seeds out as it attracts the rats.

PS The youngsters with the ponies on the beach the other day were part of Welsh Border Vaulters based in Oswestry and one of the girls is a triple British champion.

Bonfire Afternoon.

Although it has been a dry day for which I am grateful it is a shame there wasn't any sun to light up the yellows and oranges of the trees all along the Rheidol valley which was the location for this afternoon's walk.

 

I say walk but apart from a steep climb up the side of the valley to S's home and then back down at the end we spent the afternoon helping S (who lives alone on 12 acres) burn up all the hedge and tree trimmings that she had collected over the year. The hot summer had meant that any burning was out of the question not to mention the fact that the previous year the wildfires had almost reached S's house after burning a large section of the hillside.

On our way up to S's land we stopped to admire some alpacas in a field.

A bit further on even the gloomy day could not diminish the blaze of colour from a mature acer in a garden that is obviously maintained by somebody who loves plants.

The lower of S's fields has a bridleway along the edge (where some of the group are standing admiring the view) which I have ridden along on one of the long rides I been on.

There we built the first bonfire, not a very large one and yes it did include a woodwormy old cupboard but when the flames had died down in went potatoes in foil to be eaten later on.

We (or at least some of us) moved to another field where there were piles of branches, 6ft and longer, stretching at least 30ft up the hill. It's hard to show the size of the fire and this was when nearly everything had been burnt as I had been helping drag wood to the fire. I was a bit surprised that some people preferred to sit by the house and drink cups of tea or stood watching the fire but we did eventually get it all on the fire. By the time we went all that was left for S to do was to rake in the last branches and make sure the fires were safely out.

The baked potatoes were very welcome but as I'm making progress with my diet (only 2lbs to go) I ate mine as it was without butter and cheese. After all I would still be having supper at home.

Driving back the setting sun turned the clouds in front of me a deep pink. Hopefully that means we'll have another nice day tomorrow.