You can take a horse to water...........

I spent nearly all day gardening on Sunday, and left Mason trying to sort out various problems with his project. I managed to catch up with a few emails which were overdue.
On Monday I went off to Pinner for a change, it is a beautiful bus ride and made a change. The weather is still terribly hot. When I got home I tidied up a bit.

On Tuesday Margaret called round, and we sat outside in the shade and had icy lemonade. Poor John was at home recovering from having a tooth taken out by the dentist. It was nice to chat to Margaret as we had not seen each other for a while. As Mas had spent all day on the computer or phone, we decided to go out for dinner at the Man in the Moon to break the monotony.
It was steak night, so we both had one. Ken came in, and said his TV had just gone wrong, and he had come to watch the football match so he sat where he could watch it, and we went off home once we had finished our meal.

On Wednesday we went swimming in the afternoon. As usual we separated to go to the changing rooms, Mas saying he would see me in the pool in a minute. I swam alone for 50 minutes, knowing he must have got talking to the guys in the changing room.
Another lady was swimming too, the pool was fairly empty, and I got talking to her. She was from Croatia, and had lived here for 15 years, she was wondering where her partner had got to, and I suggested that he and Mas were talking together; before long they both appeared.

After swimming for an hour I got cold, and with lots of protests from Mas, left the pool, showered and dressed, and walked around several football pitches looking at the variety of bushes and plants. After two hours of this, Mas came out, and we left! He had not done any exercise, just talked in the pool!

The man who lost his trousers, and another fine art.

We seemed to have another busy week, Mas was busy on his computer, and I did a lot of gardening and walking. Pete called, saying that his visit to school had gone well, and they liked my pictures of the Skelly characters.

Mas and I went swimming, and when he went off to town on Thursday I went swimming again. This time, talking to another swimmer, he mentioned that he had all his kit stolen yesterday, including his wallet and car keys. When Mas came home he was really tired; he hates travelling on the tube. We decided on the spur of the moment to go off to the curry club, and have a meal there. Luckily our new friend Ken was there, and we had a nice meal, but an even more interesting conversation, and amongst other things he told us about his recent holiday in India, and we talked about meditation and French films.

The next morning I walked down to the station, and on the way saw the two Jims who are neighbours. Irish Jim, talking of Lilu, (Ben and Poppy's small white dog,) said he would not take that dog out. He said he had seen Lilu (who was on a lead) tear the trousers right off a man she did not like the look of. This made the other Jim and me laugh a lot. On a more serious note, Jim's neighbours, on either side of him, were recently burgled. That makes five burglaries on one side of our road.

I met Christiane at Hendon Station, and we travelled off to Olympia as she had free tickets to the International Fine Art Fair that was on today.

We spent a long time looking at

everything, there were beautiful carvings from Japan in ivory, wonderful hand stitched

sculpture over animal skeletons, and lots of jewellery too.

We stopped for a cup of tea, and we had bought some biscuits with us. Eventually tired, but feeling we had seen everything we left and went home again, another nice day!

Once home again I had a quick tidy up, and before long Manu came round, and we sat in the conservatory and had some cool white wine and chatted. Manu wants me to check with the local church hall to see if we could use one of their rooms, one evening a week, so that our art class people can use it. I will check with them. We had a nice evening, but both Mas and I felt really tired and staggered off to bed as soon as we could muster up the energy to climb up the stairs.

Almost a car catastrophe

This week I spent a lot of time researching things, and sorting out direct debits. Boring but necessary. I called Margaret and talked to her for a while, and I spoke to Pete as well.

On Wednesday Mas and I went off to the Man in the Moon for lunch, only to find out when we were going to go home that the power steering in the car had gone wrong, and it was difficult to manoeuvre out of the car park. Mas dropped me off and I walked home with the milk we had bought, and he drove down to our local garage which luckily is within walking distance. The garage called later, saying that they may be able to part exchange something, if it was in good enough condition, also that the fan belt had gone as well. The car should be fixed tomorrow.

On a more cheerful note Joan sent a picture of Ethan's lovely cat, Skrimshaw, who is trying to fit in with the other cats and dogs ( his face is like my childhood cat Jimmy Lizard)















Today the garage called, the car was fixed, and for £100 less than we had expected. We cancelled the vet appointment as Salty is completely back on form now, but still taking the pills.

In the evening Robert picked us up, and we went, as planned, to The Man in the Moon as it was the evening for their Curry Club. When we went in all the tables and alcoves were being used, and we wondered if we would eventually get a table. While we were dithering we were invited to join someone sitting at a table as there were three available seats. In no time at all we were all four of us chatting and having an interesting time as well as a tasty meal. His name is Ken (from Kenya). We did not stay too long as Robert had to go home and work.