Magic Mushrooms

Yesterday when we were at Hestercombe, we were lucky enough to come across a magical field of mushrooms.
There was a band playing. It was a rather hot little fella called Elfis, and he was accompanied by his backing dancers, the Hula Honeys. The audience was transfixed. One little elf offered us a ferrero rocher, so we knew it was a classy affair.

A day out

Today my mum and I met up with friends at Hestercombe House, near Taunton in Somerset. We spent a wonderful autumn afternoon walking through the gardens. There is an 18th Century landscape garden with lakes and woodland walks dotted with follies, followed by a formal garden designed by Lutyens and Jekyll. A perfect day.

Orange legs

Thursday nights mean only one thing. Badminton. So last week I put my shorts on in readiness.

Then I caught sight of myself in the mirror. Oh the whiteness of those legs. Like legs which had been kept undercover their whole life, legs deprived entirely of sunlight. My upper body and lower body looked like they owed their existence to different sets of parents.


But to every problem there is a solution. And mine was fake tan. I shook the bottle and applied. Liberally. Looked in the mirror again. Mums and dads had swapped positions.

In short, my legs were to orange what the Incredible Hulk was to green and the Smurfs to blue...




For another sporting disaster please go to Killer Mosquitos on the loose!

This weekend

We recently bought a new house and have been busily doing it up since April. This weekend we were mainly steaming, scraping and scrubbing the walls in the entrance hall. It's a horrible job as there are layers of old lead paint to steam and scrape off.

I managed to escape for a breather in the garden. It is more builder's yard than bucolic idyll, but there were some highlights.

This weekend I was dragging a tree trunk around the garden. Not for pleasure; I was doing a bit of clearing out. I got distracted when I walked into a spider's web. As a result I dropped the tree trunk onto my toe. Making whimpering noises, I went and told my boyfriend (because sympathy noises make pain more bearable). He was up a ladder steaming wallpaper off a wall, but got distracted by the whimpering noises and so got dripped on by the steamer.

Slapstick isn't so funny when you play a starring role...

Love Story

Where do I begin...?

This is a true story of something that happened last week, witnessed by a friend of mine. He went into his local sandwich shop, the appropriately named Mrs Bun and there was a buzz of excitement in the air. A group of young lads were hanging around because one of them was trying to get the phone number of one of the girls working in the shop. She was out the back, so getting the number involved a middle man. Apparently every one in the shop knew what was going on, so that when the phone number was finally produced and delivered, everyone was laughing and smiling. The young lad was pleased as punch and was saying to his mates as he left the shop, 'went in for a sandwich, came out with a date!'. I thought it was a lovely, heart-warming story and if I were a writer, I would definitely find a way to use that scene.

Fences

Last weekend was spent up in the North East of England. We went for an evening drive out into the countryside and it was just lovely.