Plague and pestilence

Golly it's ages since I have blogged. My doors have been visited by plague and pestilence, so I've been otherwise occupied of late. The plague has been various fluey type bugs afflicting us all in turn and the pestilence is the dratted head lice. Never has squishing something felt so good. Head lice are currently at Number One in my Pests I Hate Most Chart. Slugs are at number two. For now.

In between mopping fevered brows and sleeping at lunchtime (fluey side effect) I have gardened my little socks off, run 5k in the Race for Life (raising £170 in the process), bought a new (to me) 4x4 and driven to Sheffield and back to have my broken tooth repaired by my lovely dentist sister.

I really like May. It's a month stuffed with promise of good things to come. Sometimes the rest of the year doesn't live up to the promises made by May, but there's always hope. The garden is full of buds and baby vegetable plants, the lambs are bopping about in the field, trees are leafy and green and flowery and when the sun comes out it's warm. Too warm actually, because May for me is also my month of sunburn. I do it every year, completely by accident, but I should know not to by now. In my defence I was bonfiring and the heat from the flames distracted me from the heat of the sun and... well the rest is, as they say, history. And yes I am freckled and fair of skin and sun is DANGEROUS. But it was a good bonfire and I enjoyed it. It'll be big t-shirt cover-ups for me from now on, I promise.



Then there was the Race for Life at Scolton Manor, just outside Haverfordwest. It was lovely to be there again. The race has a wonderful atmosphere and it is just so exciting to take part in such a happy thing. I always race in celebration of my Godmother, Thelma, who had breast cancer years ago, had the conventional treatment and is now happily in her 70s. The treatment also saved her sister from the same disease. It's lovely to be able to do something small, like a run, by way of saying thank you to Cancer Research for helping to find the drugs and treatments to help Thelma and her sister and others like them.

The day after the race I hit the road in the direction of Sheffield accompanied by Mum who also needed dental treatment. We decided on the avoid motorways at all costs route and headed up through Aberystwyth and over the Cambrian mountains accompanied by a swarm of Sunday motorcyclists. The entire route to Sheffield was buzzing with bikers enjoying the bends and twists of the route.

Exactly half way is Welshpool at the National Trust's Powis Castle where we indulged in coffee and cake to fortify us for the rest of the six hour journey. Jackie fed us handsomely on Sunday and filled us up with wine, then fixed our teeth on Monday morning. We headed back to Wales the same day accompanied this time by thundering lorries and the occasional swarm of bikers. I used to have a motorbike and it is on days like these that I miss it the most. I've threatened Brian that I will have a mid-life crisis and buy another one, but he has added motorbikes, along with sunburn, to the list of things that are DANGEROUS and, therefore, BANNED.

So today it was back to the garden, clearing out the polytunnel and making it productive again. I have finally planted up my hanging basket this year with gloriously purple surfinia petunias which have a lovely musky scent. I treated myself to a new fuchsia too and a new sage and a lemon balm. I've planted my Marvel of Four Seasons lettuces out alongside a nice thick row of scrummy coriander and have a queue of cucumbers, beans, peas and tomatoes waiting to find a permanent home in the garden somewhere.

The 4x4 I mentioned earlier is a nine year old Honda CRV. FINALLY we have one after exactly a year of looking. It's gorgeous and I love it, but I'm terrified that Horrid Gordon will slap a Nasty Tax on it because rich people in Chelsea think 4x4s are for cities. We have this one to tackle our hilly, muddy, floody school run having had a couple of close shaves when I have nearly failed to get to school to pick Hannah and Rosie up. It's lovely not to get stuck in the soft verges between home and school too, which has been a regular occurrence until now. It's already done a Proper Farm Job too, taking a deceased ewe lamb to the Veterinary Investigative Centre in Carmarthen. So, Mr Brown, I do actually NEED a 4x4, it's not just a lifestyle choice or a fashion accessory. So there.

A bit of a tight squeeze...

So, there we were, me and the children, heading back home on the school run. We rounded a corner on the first narrow bit and the other side were two vehicles. Touching.

They were not crashed, but had tried to squeeze past each other rather than one backing up for the other. They hadn't made it and now they were stuck together, side by side.

Luckily both were quite good humoured about it. One was a Toyota Landcruiser, the other was a Vauxhall Astra. They obviously thought they were slimmer than they were and perhaps attempting to squeeze through side by side on a single track road with no verges and a high bank on either side was a triumph of hope over experience.

I put on my handbrake and waited while the drivers sorted out the physics of the problem. The Toyota driver leaned down and folded the wing mirror of the Astra inwards, which seemed a good move. Then, no doubt having engaged four wheel drive, he carefully backed up, and the cars parted. The Astra then reversed to a gateway and waved happily goodbye to the Toyota, me and the two other cars which had also joined the queue.

I then followed the Toyota and yes, we met other cars. Each time, he just pulled of onto soft verges and roared along damaging the verges in the process and asking other non-4x4s to pull off too. My blood was boiling by this point.

"How dare he!" I exclaimed. "Look at the way he's carving up the verges."

"Yes, Mummy," said Hannah in the back. The Toyota disappeared out of sight. Silence fell.

"Mummy?" said Hannah.

"Yes?" I replied.

"Can we have one of those?"

That's my big problem with 4x4s. Absolute unadulterated green-eyed envy. Hannah wants one. I want one.

I learned to drive in a Land Rover at the age of 13. This one, in fact.

Now it doesn't go anywhere. Something to do with the fact that the top part is no longer connected to the bottom part and the bit under the bonnet doesn't make that big growly noise it used to. And it's got some time of major vehicular asthma, coughs loads and disappears in clouds of black smoke if you do get it started.

I've done miles in that Land Rover. It took me to countless pony shows. I even took it to university once and towed a trailer full of windsurfers to Bala lake. One time I was driving it the mileometer said 999,999, then 000,000, which was quite a moment.

But what Hannah wants (after seeing a picture in a car magazine) is one of these...

... and after this morning's trip into school where we were confronted by a raging torrent and had to turn back in our Ford Focus estate, I can only agree! Not environmentally-friendly perhaps, but entirely practical for the school run.

A wild goose chase in the Chilterns

I always have mixed feelings about go away to visit friends and relatives. Going away is fantastic, but reminds me of how much there is to do at home. So I’m back now, amongst my muddle, dreaming of house extensions and minimalist living.

We have just been to stay with Brian’s sister and her bloke who live in the Chilterns. They are child free (by choice) and have just extended their lovely flint cottage which now includes three bedrooms and an upstairs bathroom. They live a tidy, orderly existence without clutter and the new bathroom has a minimalist hotel look.

Hannah and Rosie loved it, of course, especially the bunk beds they shared, and kept telling me which bits from the house they would like to have in our home. Sadly we don’t have the sort of income to buy such gorgeous things (like their lovely aubergine Aga and hand-built maple kitchen, for example), but I can pinch ideas and colour schemes for free.

Our visit, which was a bit of a last minute decision, was really to look at cars. We need to replace our estate and sadly defunct old Land Rover for just a single 4x4. I’m embarrassed to say that I need it for the school run, but I do! We are surrounded by rivers and a number of times it has been touch and go to be able to get to the village and pick up the girls from school. The estate struggles and I have repeatedly got it stuck in the verges, usually when forced to pull onto soft ground by other 4x4 drivers, so it is also part self-preservation, part necessity and part ‘if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em’!

But first of all before car viewings we visited Waddesdon Manor, near Aylesbury, a French chateau-style manor built in the late 1800s by Baron Ferdinand de Rothschild to display his art collection. It is famous for its parterre garden and Rococo aviary and has wine cellars containing thousands of bottles of Rothschild wine.

We picnicked in the garden, admired the gorgeous parterre and the girls had a lovely time playing on the new woodland play area. We had the obligatory ice cream sitting in the sunshine on a wooden bench in the garden watching the water dancing in the fountain. It is a beautiful place and we plan to return in the future to fully explore the house and grounds.




But we had to leave the Manor to go and view cars. We drove back into Aylesbury, found the correct car sales and immediately wished we hadn’t bothered. The car had four bald tyres and the spare was perished. The radio looked as if it had been jemmied out with a crow bar and another fitted with bits of foam sticking out. The clock didn’t work and there was a can of Diet Coke in the drinks holder. We said ‘no thanks’ politely, and left.

The next car had weird gouges out of the rear passenger doors – as if it had been used to transport pianos or something. We imagined little fingers picking at the gouges, spilling the filling, and imagined the repairs bill. We left.

The third was located in Chalfont St Peter. It was 4.45pm on a Friday afternoon and we were heading towards London. Were we mad? We arrived. The car was obviously an import. We left.

Cars could wait, so we spent Saturday amusing ourselves and the children in the Lacey Green Maize Maze. It is a genius idea, even in the rain. We collected our map and quiz sheet and rushed about in the maize losing ourselves and finding the clues. Then in the early evening we went to the local pub, The Whip Inn, and had a fantastic meal. It was walking distance from Brian’s sister’s home so I availed myself of a couple of pints of the local brew. Lovely!

We dragged ourselves away on Sunday and headed home via Brian’s Mum’s flat in Langley. Hannah and Rosie were fascinated by the planes taking off at Heathrow – the same planes which would later fly over the Preselis on their way to America. We had one more car to see, with the registration COO, but a black one not a purple one, so that wasn’t quite right either. We pointed our trusty estate car westwards on the M4 and headed on home in the wake of the planes we had just seen heading into the sky.