🦞Lockdown friends still together🦞

*Grammaretto sorry your friend didn’t turn up but it sounds as though you enjoyed going to the cinema.
Your day on the beach sounds wonderful to me. Wish I could have joined you. It reminds me of the times I was on the beach with my dad he always loved delving in the rock pools.
What a fascinating range of plants you found. I’ve never heard of half of them. I wonder what they taste like. Did you put some in the flatbread? Hope you get some takers for your lunch tomorrow. I’m going to DS1
Ixion hope you’re doing ok. Don’t you go foraging in the garden and pick any hemlock or magic mushrooms for tea.
Kaimoana sending love and hugs.

Just a quick hello this beautiful Easter Sunday

Wishing everyone all the joys of Easter.

Joining NS in wishing you all the kindest of Easter days.

Me too. I hope all Lobstars have a happy day. I also hope it warms up a bit. I am really cold.

The cathedral bells here are magnificent!
Spending the afternoon with my mother-in-law and the garden is gloriously sunny.

Hello lobStars

Just popping in say I hope everyone a having a lovely Easter Sunday 🐇 x

Hello Cherry 🍒
So good to see you.
How are you doing?

I'm having an odd kind of day. DS couldn't come so I shall be living on Mary Berry's salmon encroute until I resemble one.
My df from the North came for a cuppa and I made her go home with large slice of pavlova.

I had a covid jag and planted out sweetpeas. Otherwise zilch.

Happy Easter all
Cherry how lovely to hear from you. Sending lots of love and cwtches to you.
Notspaghetti sounds like a very pleasant afternoon.
Ixion i had to make that picture bigger to see what it was. Love it 🤣🤣
Grammaretto so sorry your son didn’t make it after you’d gone to all that trouble too. Glad your friend dropped in for a visit.
Kaimoana thinking of you too.
I had a lovely morning in church then went to DS1 for a wonderful roast lunch. Ate too much but enjoyed it. Been catching up on chocolate since I got home 😮

How lovely to see you Cherry - wishing you good health and many loving hugs.

If you have to live on a restricted diet grammaretto, you cannot do better than salmon en croute

The Cyclone season has been relatively mild this year with just one final throw this week of battering wind and rain and those screeeeeching Met Office warnings you get on your phone which nearly scare you to death and urging you to flee to the hills and evacuate with babies and pets.

Speaking of church bells (an altogether different sort of warning .
There is a city centre cathedral with a peal of 8 bells, rung regularly but too far away for me to hear. I'm also told there is a church in Hamilton 2+ hours drive away but I've never heard them either. Pity, I miss church bells.

The older churches here are from a style long gone (see pic) with one bell, if that.
Many were silenced by complaints from non-church local residents complaining of the single bell summoning the fathful to prayer when they wanted to sleep in on Sundays.

The more modern and economical 'church' is a room or hall hired in a school, or the sharing of premises: Pasifika Methodists from 9:30 to 11am and once they leave, the 2-5pm spot for the Unitarians or other denominaions.

Anyone can start a church here and call themselves a Pastor, and they do

The early churches and chapels looked like that Kaimoana, when we lived in mid-western America
Some were tiny "wayside" chapels and only held about 20 people

It has always amazed me how much of NZ is a reflection of US design NotS.
Housing, road signs and more. Very odd to say we have been strongly associated with Britain since the outset, with hardly any links to the US until the Internet and TV (which we didn't have until 1960!) invaded.
.

Happy St. Georges Day for Wednesday which is also the birthday of Wm Shakespeare..

St George was a Greek soldier in the Praetorian Guard of Roman Emperor Diocletian (so not exactly a local lad from Essex)

Like most saints, legend has it he refused to be a pagan and
Diocletian had a tantrum and said, 'Off with his head; or more likely 'Caput eius amputa'

Saints didn't have it easy in the 3rd century but got their rewards in heven for all the good it did them

Now the Pope has died Kaimoana2 - maybe you saw the news...?
I thought he was speaking with difficulty yesterday but what a "good" last thing to have done to have given his blessing to the world on Easter Sunday.

Kaimoana I’m sending Jeeves over to anchor you down. Can’t have you blown away by a cyclone.
They have little chapels like that in Norway and Greenland too.
So pretty.
Notspaghetti. I have just read about the pope too. Nice for him to have given his blessing.
Sorry short post tonight. I’ve been out for a lovely meal with both our sons and families. So nice to all be together again. We talked about Dh which was nice. He would have loved it. He would have been so pleased to hear how well our grandchildren are doing. I was lucky to have him with me for so many years but I do miss him so much. Sleep well all.

How lovely that your DS are both so close to you, and their DP Doodle.
DH can't be far away ❤️

I went back to bed this morning and stayed here all day, mostly sleeping and having vivid dreams. I think it was the reaction to the covid booster. Not had a reaction like it before.

I have a meeting in Edinburgh tomorrow so I had better be well again.

The radio has been on so I have listened to stories about Pope Francis. What a good man he was. Let's hope the next one can carry on in the same vein and go further with reforms.

Pretty churches Kaimoana. Wasn't it all to do with available building materials? Plenty of wood in USA and NZ. Plenty of stone in UK and probably cheap labour.

I have a book called On the crofters trail following the journeys to Canada of evicted Scots. They had to learn to live or not in a harsh landscape with wood to build with, and dangerous animals .

My own GGM in NZ. wrote how she had stores delivered once a year and brought up 9 children. Cooked on a colonial oven and milked a herd of goats. She lived till she was 97 and I met her when I was a child.

What a tough life earlier generations had.
I know my grandfather's relatives on a farm in what is now Poland lived a very tough life too.

It was bad enough when we were snowed in for a week or two a few times when our 5 were small and had just the woodstove to heat and cook with.

It is true what they say though... wood heats you twice!

Of course we were lucky to have a big wood store - and water, and a sack of wheat, and a coffee mill to grind it! and several kilos of dried pulses and oats.... and only a few miles from a shop and a goat farm for milk.

It was hard if the water went to be sure though. We didn't have a well...

Yes, what an irony that the Pope was so welcoming of refugees - with Vance (a recent Catholic convert) so hostile. I wonder if his Easter Sunday visit to the Pope and his spokesman did anything to soften Vance's heart to the plight of the poor, needy and homeless?

Today has been a good and bad day.
Good because I had a very jolly swim with my youngest daughter and my son' two girls. There was almost nobody in the pool but us and it was a joy to see how fearless the little ones were. The 4 year old swam a width unaided and her older sister spent more time underwater doing flips and turns than above it. 😍
It made a big difference having their auntie there to help shampoo their hair etc afterwards.

The not so good thing was that a car drove into the back of me and did quite a lot of damage. I hope it's fixable and not a write-off!

The man in the other car was rushing to a hospital appointment. He survived something major a few weeks ago and this was a check up.

As he said, he was happy to be alive!
I said yes, and we are both still alive so that is good news. Indeed. It's a nuisance but only metal.

Unfortunately my car insurance renewal is 2 weeks away.
I hope I have a car still to renew!

Without TV or radio and unable to see the news on any other medium, I had no idea what the Pope was called, nor that he'd died.

I too had relatives who lived what we call a tough life but without exception they did not think it was at the time.
It was just normal to them, as ours is today.

No doubt in the future when people read how we queued for buses in the rain, or carried two heavy bgs back from the supermarket miles away, they will think our life was though.
We who do it (or did, in my case) just called it normal.

My message vanished

It was mainly asking why you don't have a radio Kaimoana and to tell you I have recovered from my extreme tiredness.

Did you see the film The Two Pope's?
It was excellent and worth watching.

youtu.be/T5OhkFY1PQE?si=zD5Qat0CkkAl46CD

Also to say how shocking for you NotSpaghetti to have a car crash into you! I hope you weren't hurt.

Great to watch those waterbabies!
My 7yr old DGD has stopped lessons as her mum says she cannot swim and sinks everytime! Lessons are expensive.

Grammaretto pleased to hear you are feeling a bit better now. I hate dreaming. My dreams (when I remember them) are not nice. Last night I dreamt I was the only widow in a room full of married women. I was pleased to wake up and find it was a dream then I realised I was still a widow dream or not. I have been miserable all day I just can’t shake it off today.
Have you been to Edinburgh today? Hope you had a good time. Does it take long from where you live?
Notspaghetti I’m so sorry about your car. Thankfully neither of you were hurt. Nuisance having to get it repaired etc.
Kaimoana like Grammaretto I am wondering why you don’t have a radio. I don’t ever use one and I hardly watch the TV but I do get news and films on my iPad.

I'm sorry you are feeling particularly low today, Doodle but it is not surprising after a dream like that.
So pleased you had a good family get together over Easter - did they all get choccies?

Hope you have recovered from your jab, Grammaretto and were able to travel into Edinburgh.
Is the salmon en croute going down? If not, please direct some down here!

No radio, Kaimoana. You must miss it. Is there noone who can help you out? Or, perhaps you don't miss it.

I have eaten my weight in chocolate this Easter and not achieved much else. Mr.I is getting twitched about my enthusiastic clearance of his stuff in the garage.

I have had to rein back for a while.

Relieved no-one was hurt, NS.
I hope it will be a non- contentious claim.

Oh Doodle I am so sorry you've been miserable all day.
I thought Jeeves was at yours keeping your spirits up? in more ways than one

I felt so much better that I planted out my potatoes. Just ones which had gone to seed by themselves. I do love when the DGC dig them up to find gold

It takes about an hour each way on the bus to Edinburgh. I was at the Quaker meeting house and didn't have time for anything else. I shall go again next week with the art appreciation group.

I'm glad the city is so reachable but glad I don't have to commute.

I don't have very nice dreams usually although once I dreamt of DH who let me kiss him! He looked well, suntanned and happy so I hope wherever he is, it's just fine.

Sparky says he's coming this evening to fix new elements into my kiln. I asked him months ago and it's going to be dark before he gets here.

Thank you everyone for your very kind thoughts about my car accident.
He unfortunately has told his insurance company I rolled back into him.
🙁 I really did not do this.
He drove into me with quite a whack.

I've been feeling shakey about it today now.
His lawyer tried to speak to me this morning about it as well. Why would they do this?
Not feeling so good now.

Still pleased nobody was hurt but....

NotS "In the UK, if a driver rear-ends another vehicle, the driver who rear-ended the other car is generally considered at fault. This is because they are expected to maintain a safe distance and braking distance. "

Insurance companies will have heard all the excuses. DO NOT be intimidated by a lawyer wishing personal (possibly intimidating) contact. Just refuse to discuss it and let the professionals fight it out.

Gramaretto "It was mainly asking why you don't have a radio Kaimoana and to tell you I have recovered from my extreme tiredness."
I am so pleased to hear you are feeling more lively :-)
As for radion: Radion 4 was my favourite as there was no music, just interesting docos or articles.

However, when I came back to NZ, Radio 4 was rebroadcast by Auckland Radio Trust, and they did include music so I gave it up as a bad job.

I miss Radio 4 but now I can no longer see webpages, I can't even access it via the BBC from the Internet.

I'm used to silence in my house, unless one of the many dogs in the area has a lonely day, so I'm happy with that and birds.

I won a sparkling ornament at my elders group yesterday, when we played Trivia but some of the questions were decidedly iffy.
One said alcohol will cause a scorpion to sting itself to death but scorpions are immune to their own venom.

I didn't know that until I got home and looked it up Alcohol will disorientate them and make them panic but then it has the same effects on some humans

Excellent advice from Kaimoana about the driver behind who bashed into you NotSpag.
I was also told to be looking at the road ahead and to keep my distance.

You can't be expected to have eyes in the back of your head. Your brake lights would have come on.

People behave in strange ways when in shock but sadly this guy has tried his luck with a lawyer.

I was behind a truck which suddenly dropped his load in front of me. I stopped just in time and got out of my car. I turned to the person in the car behind who hadn't seen what happened and was cursing me for not signalling! Luckily no bumps that time but instead of an apology I should have told her that my brake lights were my signal and that she was far too close.

Sorry you can't enjoy radio 4 Kaimoana . I listen to that or 3 or radio nan gael while in the pottery/bath/bed. There's at least one programme a day worth listening to. 😅

Sparky was here until midnight fixing my kiln which was still working but going slow with worn out elements.
I told him of my house plans and he told me of the large bill he's going to send me.
I'm feeling very poor at present. Money pouring out and hardly anything coming in! 🙄😔