Grey.

It's been a hazy grey day ending up with some rain in the evening. In the morning I met up with three friends, all ex-work colleagues, for coffee, cake and chat at one of the big garden centres. It gets a bit confusing when the garden centre keeps changing owners and names especially as it is now owned by the same people that have the other big garden centre and both are known as St. John's. Makes the habit of calling places by their original names seem sensible though I did have to explain to somebody that the car park which I and many others call the Sheepskin Shop car park then became Brown's Antiques and is now a children's nursery. 

I even was chauffeured to the garden centre by one friend who lives close by and I came home with a cardboard box that is long enough for my stash of rolls of wrapping paper. While everything in the loft is boxed up plenty of boxes will still be needed for when we pack up the rest of the house.

We had a lovely time chatting, hearing each other's news and catching up on what some of our former pupils are now doing. While we there a man was fixing the outside doors and in came a bold robin. The robin hopped around confidently collecting some of the crumbs that were being thrown to it. 

Back home I finished off my trimming of the round bush. It would have been a shame to leave the white flowers hidden. The new shoots felt as soft as silk which made a change from my usual pruning jobs where the plants seem to fight back and leave me with scrapes and scratches. 

The pitcher plant in the bathroom recently put out a flowering shoot. Hopefully it'll have plenty of new pitchers again this year. The latch on the bathroom window had failed recently so Peter went round to his friend's window company to see if it could be fixed. He was given a new latch so I balanced on the bath to screw it in place but it wasn't exactly the same, the bar was slightly too big and wouldn't turn so he's going to go back and see if they have the right one. 

I did do my exercises last night but it's too tempting to skip them if I leave it that late so today I went back to my usual time. I tried using the inhaler before doing my exercises and it did make a difference. I used to think that I was just fat and unfit when I got out of breath going up hills but maybe it was down to asthma.