Sunny.

Bright and sunny today with a good drying breeze but not too cold.

It has been an eventful day. Here nothing major, more interesting than dramatic. Unlike the poor people in Ukraine now being bombed and having Russian tanks entering their cities. 

I woke at 6.00 and was up by 7.00 which at the moment is incredibly early for me. I swished the floors, prepared breakfast, put washing in the machine and still had time to do my DuoLingo before breakfast. After breakfast all I had to do was hang out the washing before leaving for town. There the first stop was the dump where I got rid of a carload of stuff mainly from the garage, dropped into a builders' merchants for adhesive to stick the upstand to the wall and then to Morrison's. 

On my shopping list I had the usual supermarket items and then a list of plants; air plants, a white Easter cactus and white indoor jasmine, all for the sitting room window. I looked in Morrison's first as they're the sort of plants that get sold for Mothers' Day but no luck there. Then a quick stop at Charlie's which has a small garden area outside but as it turned out no indoor plants, at least not real ones. Then after parking in town and collecting flea drops from the vets', another pair of joggers for Peter and a few items at Lidl I drove to the garden centre out in the countryside. There I thought I'd at least find some air plants. But no, they had had some but not at the moment.  After buying some fennel and golden thyme for the herb garden I called it a day and headed back home.

Where I was informed by Peter that the dentist had a cancellation for 3.00, did I want it? Anything to get rid of the toothache. I had time to put the shopping away before heading back to town.

As I walked through the side streets to the dentist I admired the faded architecture including a number of buildings that had once been chapels and noted the many interesting independent shops. On impluse I walked into a gorgeous florists that also sold indoor plants to see if they had any of the plants on my list. Bingo! they had about six air plants. I picked two of those and bought a mister with the right sort of water. They also had the indoor jasmine which I put in one of the hanging tubs before taking the photo. 

The dentist tried to persuade me to keep the tooth, a big molar at the back that has nothing above it, but having had toothache for weeks I could only forsee more trouble and pain so in the end the dentist agreed to take the tooth out. What a simple and painless procedure that was. A couple of injections and in less than 30 seconds maybe only 15 he was putting a swab on the hole and that was it. Admittedly my jaw has been aching this evening but I'm so relieved the tooth is gone. The very worst part was paying nearly £200 but what can you do and the private service seems better than the NHS for dental care.

On my way back to the car I stopped in at a charity shop raising money for planting trees in Africa and bought the blue ceramic sphere just because. Then I went into Lidl to buy myself some ice cream as a treat for going to the dentist and there on the end of an aisle were a few air plants in glass containers at the same price as the ones I'd bought in the florists and a different variety so I bought one of those too. Now all I have to do is sort out the driftwood.

When I got home I still had the ironing to do. Speedy was sleeping on the sofa when I noticed Little Ginger walking about on the terrace. Naturally I went out and Little Ginger confidently came up to me and gave me some bops while I stroked him. By this time Speedy had noticed and was watching through the window. Back I went to my ironing and then saw Little Ginger go into fight mode and slink to the corner of the terrace where with some yowling another cat appeared. A large fluffy tabby who looked to be Boss Cat. A bit more yowling, he disappeared and soon after I could see Little Ginger looking at something which turned out to be a black cat down on the wall. Our terrace seems to be turning into a cat playground which I don't want to encourage. Speedy wisely stayed inside while Peter went out and shouted at the other cats to clear off.

I enjoyed my ice cream, the aftercare leaflet said to eat soft food! and hopefully my jaw will soon be back to normal.