Back Again!

I haven't been around for a while & I have no single reason or excuse for not blogging. It's a mixture of things which I won't bore you with. Think I'm feeling a bit more positive about life now and getting back to blogging even though it's changed a lot since I've been away.


So what have I been up to? 


Well I decided to volunteer to help out at my granddaughter Lauren's primary school. They needed people to listen to children reading to help improve their reading skills. We got a little bit of training from the Local Education Department's Literacy Co-ordinator, a CRB (Criminal Records Bureau) check just to make sure we weren't perverts & off we went. Have to say I do enjoy it.


I also volunteered to help DTP our local churches' weekly bulletin. Didn't realise it would take so much time but I suppose collating information from 3 churches isn't exactly a quick job.


I have done quite a lot of reading over the past few months. I have picked up a few new authors I really like. Michael Dibden who wrote the Aurelio Zen books I posted about a while ago & Andrea Camilleri whose Inspector Montalbano books are a real treat. I got hooked on the TV series, BBC 4 showed a few of them earlier this year and I think they are going to show a few more later. They are a few years old and are sub titled but they still make wonderful viewing, absolute gems.


My main obsession has been with knitting. I took up knitting lace shawls & got really hooked onto it. Often I knit when I really should be doing housework & feel a bit guilty about it. However I have a friend who always tells me that nobody on their deathbed ever said they should have done more housework! Well she was a teacher so I tell myself that's good advice.


Our summer has been terrible so far, I can only remember two really warm & sunny days. Earlier this year the forecasters were complaining about the lack of rain for the past two years & were saying that we were going to have a serious drought. I wish they had kept quiet. It's a true saying about being careful about what you wish for because it's never stopped raining for months now. It's the coldest & wettest summer I can remember for years following the mildest and driest winter! Hard to tell what season it is, they all seem to be merging into one. I went for a swim tonight & honestly if it hadn't been so cold it would have saved time not bothering to get changed out of my bathing costume. I was wetter when I got into the car than when I got out of the pool! They spent a fortune putting a roof over the Centre Court at Wimbledon, it's already proved to be money well spent. If the rain doesn't stop the Olympics are in danger of being a total washout. Not that I'm going!


Well to give myself a lift from the dire weather I've been looking back at some photos I took last summer when we had a really hot spell. I persuaded a very reluctant husband to go on a really cheap bus trip last July to The Cotswolds. I've never been there & wasn't ever likely to go as my husband hates going on any trips that involve driving. I'll probably post again about it as we visited some really lovely places. Thankfully we had fantastic weather and the photo above was taken in Boulton, a really pretty picture postcard village. The photo was taken from the road and that little stream runs through the bridge into someone's beautiful garden. Fancy having that to look at every day!