Friday 26th April 2019

It has been a grim few weeks with work. I have mentioned it in passing, and it has affected my sleeping patterns, meaning I have been awake some mornings at four in the morning, with my brain racing at a hundred miles per hour.

So, it would be nice to have a pleasant day for once.

I am awake at half four again, so I lay in bed waiting for the blackbirds to begin singing for their breakfast, which they do at twenty to five.

I lay in bed, and Scully sits at the bottom of the bed trying to use her kitty-powers to make me get up and feed her.

I don't.

Anyway, I get up at half five, as does Jools, she feeds the cats, I make the coffee and soon we are getting ready for the day ahead.

Come eight, I get down to do a task I had been putting off for months. I had all the details I needed, just spread over a number of sources. But I crack on.

And it is a quiet day, so I am able to concentrate on the task in hand, finishing all three tasks by midday, and sent off mails and documents.

Cheers easy.

I have cheese toasties for lunch, and a celebration huge cuppa.

And I get all the other weekly admin tasks done, two final phone calls at two, and all there is left to go is monitor the e mails, then at three, finish to take Mulder to the vets. He needed his annual jabs, so I pile him into the travel box, and whisk him to Whitfield, wait ten minutes and we get called in, he is weighed checked over and jabbed.

Done.

Back home where Jools is waiting.

So, we go for a walk. The question from Bev the day before about walking through the oilseed rape. I think we should.

I take three cameras, just to be sure, then we walk down the street to the footpath between the houses, down to the bottom of the dip, across the farmyard, then up the other side, skirting the huge bright yellow field.

Then taking the path that cuts the field diagonally, through the head height plants, with branches and stems rubbing against us as we tried to push through.

I stop to take shots, but not that much to see to be honest.

The down slopes gently down towards the bottom of the Dip, and we go with it, butterflies and other insects scatter as we approach their roosting spots.

Up the other side, and the plants thin out until we come to the hedge, and the gap through which the path goes. There was just the task of cutting across two more fields to rejoin the path that leads back to our street.

I meet a dog walker who asks what I had been snapping. Se tells me that another neighbour has lost is mortal battle. Kieth had been found to be riddled with cancer two years ago, and was given three months. I lasted much longer, but in the end refused treatment due to the pain he was in. He was my age.

What's for dinner?

I look in the fridge, and there seems to be hardly anything. But I get out some chicken, defost that. I chop a couple of onions, two sweet peppers to make a stir fry. Then I find some asparagus too. Finally I get the spices ready to make a batch of aromatic rice. The chicken I cost in tikka spice, then griddle, meanwhile I fry the veggies, then tip the finished chicken in.

And it was rather nice I have to say, even for what was in effect, leftovers.

The evening is spent slumped on the sofa watching some cooking show, then Gardener's World for our weekly fix of The Don.

It am the weekend.