John Wasn't
Secrets
Sixty Years
Well Murphy's law has been very much in evidence here in gloomy Sussex this week. As I had a bird table that is well visited by feathered friends I decided to go the whole hog and buy a bird box. As is usual for me I went to buy one item and came away from the garden centre with more! I bought both a Tit box and a Robin box. Then the other half, being the 'techy bod' he is suggested a bird cam. When the two infra red cameras, computer interface 'thingy' and bits and bobs were all priced up we were looking at 300 quid so decided against it just in case the birds decided not to inhabit them. So the boxes were put in place on Friday and guess what! Yup, you've guessed, two blue tits were seen in the Tit box on Monday! Mind you it was comical to watch, they both went in, then one came out, sat on a post at the end of the garden and seemed to be viewing the neighbourhood. Shortly the second one came out and they swapped places. After a good viewing of the area they went back inside for a few minutes then flew off. I expect they are now looking at schools in the area for their offspring!
I now must get round to putting the four shrubs, I bought at the same time, into the front garden!
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Well the gloom has returned once again but yesterday was a real treat, you could almost have mistaken it for a spring day! We walked out to Seaford Headand Seven Sister to peruse the view. When I've taken the photos off the camera I'll put a couple up here. The wood from the Ice Prince doesn't seem to have 'infected' the beach there as it has in Worthing. There were a couple of planks to be seen but nothing else. Mind you, I suppose, the locals could have been quicker at gathering it up than the inhabitants of Worthing. Not that it can be of much use after spending some time in the water!
Well my car is in for a service today so there is no avoiding the housework! I just hope it isn't too expensive or I may have to think about alternative transport.
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Well there is a funny orange globe in the sky, AKA the sun, and I can feel hibernation mode coming to an end! The weather has been so gloomy and 'sit upon' of late it's been difficult to get motivated to do anything. To help me focus I sat and compiled a list of things to do then promptly lost it!
Time is still bothering me as well. the old adage goes that the older you get the faster it whizzes by. When you're younger you here the older generation come out with pearls of wisdom like that and think to yourself, 'Barmy old bugger,' or words to that effect. while i can now state that I am rapidly becoming a barmy old bugger. It's nearly the end of January - where did that go and February is such a short month and as Easter is so early this year I'll soon be counting the daffs in the garden! Well as it is so bright out there I'm off to the garden centre to get some motivation for that 'department' and get into motion!
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I'm definitely in my grumpy old woman mode. Yesterday I went to the DSS office to find out about my state pension entitlement. There emblazoned in the foyer was the fact that this was where all enquiries regarding all benefits could be made. I joined the queue and stood patiently in line watching numerous people wandering round carrying anonymous folders, eventually two assistants walked up to the counter.They had obviously decided now the queue was long enough to deal with! When it was my turn I was politely informed they were not 'geared up' to deal with enquires and handed a leaflet with a phone number on it and told to make an appointment with someone. This HAD to be during a three hour slot on a Tuesday morning! I duly went home and rang the number then faced an interrogation as to how I had got the number and how did I know that there would be someone at that location on a Tuesday morning! I was then told someone would ring me back to make said appointment - Guess what - yep you've got it still waiting!!!
I really needed to know if I had made enough national insurance contribution to qualify for a pension because if not I would ‘make up’ my contributions as the dear old Inland Revenue keep trying to persuade I must do before 2008. So I rang yet another number I had found on the pensions advisory service web site and BINGO I was speaking to a lovely lady who obviously knew her stuff and admitted that no they couldn’t give me a pension forecast at present as ‘the rules’ had changed last week and they were playing catch up. But she could ‘tot’ up my qualifying years and YES I do qualify for a full pension! HALLELULAH. Plus I will be able to get a forecast in 12 – 18 months time!!! But WHY couldn’t someone admit to this months ago? Someone must have known the changes were coming yet I’d made two previous requests which had been totally ignored. I’m now off to work out how to spend my pension!
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Where did those weeks go? I'll tell you - First the server died big time so I couldn't add an entry, then numerous ear infections (Why does it take the doctors so long to admit that YES there are times when antibiotics ARE needed, you think they would admit defeat after 3 courses of ear drops but NO it took 4 courses of drops and numerous weeks before I had one course of antibiotics and guess what - cured). Then it was off to Northumberland for a holiday & another trip up to Lancashire (I'll expand on that next time!). Then there was my creative writing classes- I am now well into my tale of Jonus Jewel and Ruby Rhubarb. They are two dragons who inhabit a park and have kept a watchful eye over generations of children who play there. Jonus is of Irish descent, leaving Ireland at the height of the potato famine and Ruby is of Spanish descent. They are Faerie Dragons and generally gentle souls unlike the fire breathing dragons who it is rumoured are scheming to get their hands on the faerie dragons fortunes.
I have also written a number of short stories, but like any skill it takes practice so I must become more disciplined and learn to sit down and get the words onto the page! The aim is to write something everyday even if it is only a blog entry so watch this space!
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