Blogging again!

Oh dear - last published 15 December 2015!  And the longer I left it the more daunting it became. However I have at last taken the plunge and here is my first blog for 2016.  The thing is, I found a little app called Handy Diary and I thought "I know what I will do - I will keep a diary every day with all the trivia etc and then only blog the interesting bits".  Well I kept the diary but somehow never seemed to get round to updating the blog.  Then in June I upgraded my phone and although the app copied over from the old phone with all the other apps, the entries I had made for the year had all disappeared!  Even more daunting now!  So this is not a catch up - just a hello and sorry for being silent for so long.  I shall blog away again from now onwards, and try and write some catch up blogs as I go along.

There have clearly been some welcome improvements to Blogger since I have been away - and I can now amend the date published to arrange the blogs in the order I would like, so at least the Catch Ups will be in date order when I get round to publishing them!

The good weather continued throughout the first two weeks of August.

Sunday 7th August
Lawrence and Liza anniversary barbecue.  Unbelievably it will be their 25th anniversary next year.  Went to 8 am and did the ringing circuit then went home for Suki and walked her up to the convent to meet up with Mike, buying a nice bunch of flowers from the stall at Turnham Green station on the way. It took us 2 hours to get there but it was worth it.  The food was fabulous as usual, and Lawrence and Liza made us feel very welcome.  There was another dog present, but Suki kept her distance and was really quite well behaved.  It was cloudy and a little windy for the first couple of hours until eventually I put my fleece on.  Almost immediately the clouds scudded across the sky and disappeared and the rest of the afternoon was hot and sunny with blue skies.

It was obviously better in London as Lorraine WhatsApped a photo of her with Ollie and Bethany lying in the pool in Carolyn's garden.  Amanda and family were down for the weekend to go to Fabian's barbecue.

Monday 8th August

Gosdens at Chiswick

Went walking with Maryanne - for the first time since spraining my ankle in March.  We did the Turville Heath walk but tried out starting from a different point where there was more parking (with a view to Maryanne leading it for Ramblers in October).  We spent over an hour trying to get started, with various attempts bringing us out at the wrong point, and added a mile or so on to the 6.5 mile walk, but eventually we got started and had a lovely walk.  I had no time pressure because I had received a text from Mike saying he had gone in to work at Bracknell, so we were able to recce the start properly until we were satisfied we had it right.  It was nearly 2 pm when we got to the Fox & Hounds at Christmas Common but luckily they serve food all day (the nearest pub didn't serve food on Mondays!).  It is such a nice pub - dog friendly and nice food with the bonus of it being available at any time.  The Gosdens came to the Chiswick practice in the evening - all of them!  It was great to see them again and they were a real asset to the practice.  The QP of Cambridge had failed, and the rest of the evening was spent practising Double Norwich.  I didn't go to the pub and went straight home for a beer and an early night.




Tuesday 9th August

R-L:Pam, Derek, Liz, Me, Margaret, Catherine, Joyce, Cousins

Joyce  Cole's 90th birthday.  I was invited by Joyce to lunch at the Civil Service Club - 12.30 for 1 pm - with a few close friends and family.  I arrived at 12.25 to find Liz Miller and Margaret (a friend since Joyce arrived in London in 1943 and joined Elmwood) outside waiting for Joyce and asking everyone who went by if they were there for the lunch!  About 1 pm we heard that Joyce had rung to say she was delayed - so Liz and I went in to the bar and got a glass of wine.  At 1.30 we got another message saying they were delayed by traffic and for us to go ahead and start as the Club stopped serving lunch at 2.30.  The four of us who were there (we discovered Joyce's tenant Catherine inside) went up to the room and ordered our food.  Just as the starters arrived Joyce and her entourage arrived.  The taxi had failed to arrive and then there was huge traffic delays.  However it was soon forgotten as they caught up with the food ordering and we were all soon in sync.  Others present were Joyce's two couins, Pam Rental and Derek.  The food was wonderful - and I drank rather too much red wine.  Got home about 5 and took Suki for a walk and then collapsed on the bed and went to sleep.  Peter and Richard Jones came round to ring handbells with Mike - and I joined them when I woke up and rang some London minor inside with Peter on the trebles.

Photos: https://www.flickr.com/gp/jillwig/P015B0

Wed 10th August

Emma collecting pretty petals

Lee creating order from chaos

Today I was in all day.  Lee and Emma came over and did the garden - it now looks beautiful.  Svetla hoovered the walls of the porch and it almost looks newly painted.  So we are feeling very spruced up at the moment. I went to change the bag in the hoover today and was mortified to find there was no bag in it and my lovely clean new filter was thick with dirt and dog hair.  I cleaned it up as best I could, and washed out the hoover, but I can't think how it happened as I have plenty of bags and the whole point of buying a new one was so that I never had to do all that again (it used to be a feature of the old hoover).

In the evening went to the Bell and Crown for dinner with the Choir pub group.  The pub is under new management and the menu has changed somewhat.  It was very noisy and busy - Mike and I struggled to hear any conversations down the table, and even hearing what the people next to us (Mike Kron and Brian Barker) were saying was difficult.  The food was good though and the evening enjoyable and convivial.

Sylvia Davies died unexpectedly this morning.

Thursday 11th August

Got a lift with Mike (on his way to work at Bracknell) to Chiswick House and walked Suki round and then back home.  Three and a half miles in an hour and a half.  Then had shower and did some washing.  Lorraine went off to pick up Ollie and take him to a festival in Dudley.  I went over to Keith's, no KFC pick up, and took him out to the newly opened Co-op in the village.  I picked up some granola bars and cheese pasties.  He got some bits and pieces and enjoyed choosing them and paying for them himself.  Then we went off for him to say hello to Mr Shah in the paper shop - couldn't get the chair in the shop because of a step but Mr Shah came to the door.  Changed the bedding when we got back.  Keith said he really enjoyed it.  In a mad moment treated myself to some mapping software - purchased 1:25k OS maps of the whole of Great Britain from MemoryMap.    Went to Guys in the evening to ring handbells with Caroline, Mark and Kris.  Failed to ring a peal of 4xspliced but rang a random performance of Yorkshire quite well (Mark miscalled QP composition so we decided not to count it).  Went to Azurro afterwards and I had a pint of Peroni before helping Mark finish the bottle of Montepulciano.

Had a WhatsApp chat out of the blue with Marilyn Dennison

Friday 12th August

Mapping software arrived today - was supposed to take 3-5 days.  Glad I didn't pay for expedited delivery!  Got up rather late so didn't have any time to play with it before going off to fitness class at 1 pm.  However spent the afternoon loading the maps on to my PC and phone, and then creating my first route.  I decided to do one from Cowleaze Wood, which I had driven past on Monday, and then discovered that Malc would be in the same area tomorrow with a friend photographing Red Kites, so we decided to meet up afterwards for a drink. I created what looked like a nice walk of just over 4 miles and managed to save it to the cloud and upload it to my phone. Went to Barnes with Mike in the evening intending to do cross stitch in the car, but someone failed to turn up so I ended up ringing the treble to London S Major - Louise's first.  Rang it in memory of Sylvia.  The practice was good, and well attended, with a well rung touch of 8xspliced and lots of useful ringing for the people present.

Saturday 13th August

Suki and I emerge from
Cowleaze Wood on the
Footpath and into
Wormsley estate

Mike went off to Uxbridge to the District Meeting and then to ring for weddings there and at Ruislip.  Suki and I went off to Cowleaze Wood, with a picnic lunch and armed with the MemoryMap App on my phone and my first route loaded.  I tried to use the MyDrive app to send the car park location to the SatNav but I couldn't find it on my SatNav when I looked so that will have to be a project for another day.  It was a beautiful day - warm and often sunny but not unbearable hot or fierce sunshine.  We set off at 11 am and got off the path almost immediately - but it didn't matter as I found a better path through the wood which met up with the footpath I wanted.  I had a lovely walk - needing the navigation on the phone in earnest about twice to actually check my direction, but often checking the route etc just to see how it all works.  Malc and his friend were behind a large bush on the edge of Beacon Hill just off the path.  I couldn't see them when I entered the field but Suki started rushing about with her nose in the air and then dived into the bush - I guess she recognised the scent of someone who used to give her lots of tripe sticks.  I gave him a wave and carried on.  I rearranged the route on the fly a bit when I discovered a better route back through the reserve, and also went back a more circular route through the wood to pick up the footpath I should have been on at the beginning.  I then took a blanket and the picnic to a small clearing in the wood and Suki and I spent a pleasant hour or so having a picnic and relaxing while I listened to my book on Audible.  Malc came and found us when he had finished his photography and then we went off to the pub at Christmas Common for a pint of lager shandy each before heading off home.  When I got in I amended the route to reflect where I had actually walked, and then saved it, along with a route card - the first of my portfolio.  I then created a second route which started the same but had an extension to make it 6.5 miles which would be suitable for a Maryanne walk.   And finally I created a route and route card of the Turville Heath walk we had done on Monday, ready for the repeat recce planned for 5 September.  By this time Mike had come in and we decided to give the Oktoberfest at Bedford Park a miss because of the loud music and just stay in for a quiet evening with some Olympics on TV.  I had a nice chat with Jayne on the phone about 6 pm and spent the evening updating this blog!

Click here for Route card