So we’ve had a busy few weeks, what with both Kathryn and I ageing another year, and Kathryn’s dad & partner visiting us from abroadland. We took them on a whistlestop tour of England, calling at Bath, Bristol, Stonehenge & Avebury stone circles and London – then we went for a brief sojurn in Kent (just two days, but it was nice to get away).
On top of which we’re doing battle with the forms of immigration. There are various curses placed upon these forms that mean that there are very small boxes into which you are required to put much information, which has led to (after some frustrated wailing and attempts to change things) the creation of a number of continuation sheets.
They also required information from our parents that needed checking with them; y’know, I thought I knew where my parents were born (as in which town), but I wasn’t absolutely 100% immigration form certain. I mean, most people probably think that I was born in the town where I grew up, but I wasn’t. No, I was born somewhere even less exotic.
So that’s been taking up a fair amount of our spare time recently, and when not spare time, our spare thought processes.
As a component of this, or perhaps an excuse to avoid it, we created a blackboard (of sorts) to live on the wall with a list of jobs to do for us to escape. This is one of my favourite recent creations – consisting of a £2.99 second hand picture frame with the trim sprayed matt grey and a piece of black card placed behind the glass.
It’s now hung on the wall and has an ‘inspiring’ list of things to do, along with a map (which really is meant to be a bit inspiring) that one of my friends has added to (with a handy ‘Here be dragons’ ‘SQUIDS!’ and ‘WHIRLPOOLS!’…all illustrated too). It also turns out that when I draw the UK from memory it looks rather like a cat. I grant this is to a large degree avoidance of things that actually need doing, but it gives us something to look at so I can go ‘ah’ and try to remind myself to actually do things.
We’ve also planted out the tomatoes… some in the ground and some in the greenshed… not that you can really see them in the photo, but the Greenshed is now complete!
Unfortunately, I didn’t realise before starting assembly but one of the hinges on one of the windows is bent, which means it’s not entirely enthusiastic about closing. But I have done my best with it – and it seems to be doing its job. But it’s well painted in there, and despite having spare hinges kicking around I’m somewhat loathe to change it. We’ll see.
The garden in general seems to be doing its spring/summer thing of waking up and looking pretty,
The apple tree is, as you can see, covered in blossom. The plum tree was. The other apple tree is leafed out, but not very blossomy (but it’s never been terribly happy). We made rhubarb cake yesterday with our own rhubarb… the peas are plodding upwards. It’s quite joyous to see. We need some more soil and some more compost – and I think I’ve worked out what to do with the two troughs that are looking somewhat tired. So progress there would be nice. But I think I should probably spend some time tomorrow on the house (Yay, more sanding and painting).
Still. Progress is progress.
Some of you may be wondering about baby progress, because I’ve said nothing about it for quite a while. We had three tries… or all of our tries on our pre-paid three cycle package. No luck, unfortunately… We’re going back to the clinic in a couple of weeks to see what we can sort out, but financially we’re entering the endgame on that one.
