Stormy.

Breezy and wet was the morning forecast but I think they underestimated the quantities of rain and wind. Looking out of the kitchen window I could see the poor acer had been blown over again and some of the showers were torrential. 

As happens occasionally I was up and doing my exercises by 7.00. They keep saying that sleep is important at all ages so if I sleep on I accept what my body is telling me. With no plans to go out today I was able to have a quiet afternoon writing up my journal.  

While doing my afternoon pedalling Speedy had a serious battle with the sofa throw. For most of the time all I could see was the occasional flash of leg or tail as he slid about on the floor dragging the throw down over him. I do feel sorry for him being cooped up inside for so many months. I felt so sorry that off came the cone, on went the jacket and lead and out we went for a walk.  Apart from trying to go in the neighbours' front gardens Speedy had a good old sniff around. He's already trained to come to a quick whistle and I used that to encourage him to walk along the pavement instead of just lying down. The neighbours must think I'm a mad cat lady.

One job I did towards the eventual move was to go through a trolley of cleaning stuff all carefully sorted into old ice-cream tubs, to see if there was anything that could be given away. There's a big difference between throwing stuff out and passing it on to be reused. One example was all these spare brushes. Some were for horses, another for dogs and others for shoes. I have still kept a set of brushes should we ever need to polish shoes or brush an animal. There might even be shoe brushes dating back to the time I was at boarding school when shoe polishing was a daily chore and I remember the time when Romas had to polish his boots when he was in the Sea Cadets. I think one reason why people of my and my parents' generations kept things that still had some use harks back to the deprivations during the last war and living on a limited income. Some of the brushes would have been used by my mother to polish up wood or metal for her sculptures. Somebody has already claimed these and another person is collecting a large amount of sturdy plastic cutlery that I also put on the free site.

Finally, I did overcome my British reserve and phoned the council about the butcher's disregard of the way to handle cooked meats and raw meat sold from the same counter. Partly because there may be more older vulnerable people who prefer to go to an independent shop rather than the supermarket. And in the same vein I found out today that I may have been breaking the law for years, that is if the law goes back that far. Which law? The one that forbids the feeding of any household scraps to hens unless they are from a vegan household. That's to prevent the possibility of cross contamination from meat products which our dogs or cats ate anyway.