Developments for August

Cat has bought herself a second hand Toyota Celica, that's got the Mazda story out of the way, at least. She is delighted with it and has even taken Robyn to Oxford in it to move her possessions into storage, any excuse to drive it. The car is a silver one and is not the new angular shape, but the rounder old shape, it looks quite good.

I strolled into the kitchen to do the dishes, (Liz makes me do them!), and was happily pottering around when, glancing at the cats' bowl on the floor I noticed that a broom head had fallen into it, I thought this was strange as we don't have a broom! The bristles moved and my mind took a mighty leap and assumed that we had a hedge hog in the cat bowl. We thought it was dead, at first, as it hardly twitched, Liz thought it had stuck to the molasses that she put in there with the cat food, in case Soolie ate any, this apparently helps her with the fur balls, the hedge hog would not have a hair ball problem any more. I picked up the bowl and placed it outside so that the animal could return to its home, under our shed. Liz placed a bowl with some bolognaise in it next to the hedge hog, for which the cat was grateful, as she dived in to it and had to be shoved to one side. The cat did not understand all the excitement as she sees the hedge hog quite often and is not all that interested in it, humans are weird. The hedge hog, Cyril, we think, slowly got out of the cat bowl and attempted to fade away under the shed without us seeing him or realising he was gone, hah, he got a little stuck trying to ease his way through some tines on the fork leaning against the wall, too much cat food and molasses!

Michael arrived at about nine on Thursday night from Scotland, so we had a wee impromptu perty, work was a bit hectic and the alarm rang early at five, still the Brazilian Brahma lager was more than drinkable and made an ideal nightcap.

I will place pictures here soon, watch this space. Off to work again.

6th August

Well the weather has not improved much, loads of rain, so much that the animals are starting to leave the bush and heading for the drier roads! On Friday night I hit a muntjac, which made a mess of my plastic car bumper, what ever happened to the old chrome plated ones we used to have on cars? Luckily the damage was confined to the bumper and none of the rest of the car's bodywork was damaged. The lawnmower has also given up the ghost as well, but the grass is still growing, damn! I took Liz for a check up after her operation and she has been given the all clear to return to work from Monday. This is a bit of a relief, as she was getting bored and brown, she still has to be cautious with heavy lifting etc. We have an auction to go to this weekend, so hopefully there will be a lawnmower there, or something else we would not be able to live without.

We will have been married for thirty years on the 22^nd and Liz is planning on a “perty”, we have yet another gazebo, this one looks substantial, so maybe we will be able to braai under it even if it rains. Catriona reckons she wants to buy a Mazda M5 for about £600 in perfect working condition, we have told her to up her meds, she will more than likely get one in good condition for £6000.

Party time

It was party time at the old home last Saturday, although the weather was looking a little dubious on the Friday. There was lightning and bucketing rain galore, it felt as though we were back in Salisbury. The front lawn was flooded for a while, and it is on a slope, and there were people knocking boats together quickly and I am sure I saw someone with several pair of animals, all very worrying. I even went to work by car, although a motor launch was looking increasingly like a viable option. Saturday dawned as a typical grey and overcast day, so it looked as though the party was on. There were no ambitious plans, in view of Liz's recent operation. The plan was strictly limited to lots of booze and food, that is several pints of cider and gallons of lager. I braaied hamburgers, chicken, sausages and some boerewors that was hiding in the deep freeze. Liz made a sauce and I knocked up some sadza ( miellie pap, or maize meal) for our friends (victims), this is now expected at any of our braais and some of our pals are now actually contemplating buying some Iwiza No 1 for their own larders, we'll convert them yet. We did braai some Norfolk chicken, a local product, once it was done it was basted with some of Liz's home-made marinade, so that it wasn't too burnt, marinades tend to blacken the meat, Liz likes it black though, so I have to make sure at least one piece is really black just for her, everyone else wants normal burnt meat, that is quite easy. The sadza making is now attracting an audience and soon I'll have to autograph the stirring stick for people, perhaps I should trademark the process, ha ha, I think everyone was starving , as it was about eight o'clock. I may have to try the traditional African method of a bowl of water, for the hands, the sadza and a bowl with gravy for dipping, mm-mm, there's an idea, maybe next time, to hell with fondue dinners, sadza dinners here we come! We also had a few bags of tortilla chips and a dip to nibble on while people waited to eat. The folks started to pitch up at about four-ish, the party soon got under way, I had a few beers left over from Louise and Matt's wedding, anniversary beer, Boddington's, I am not too fond of it, but someone drank it and suffered no ill effects, so not too bad then. One of the guests was a three year old who tried to feed the fish a glass of drink, she also got to feed them properly and they came up with a lot of splashing to the surface and made her a little wet. Some of our guests did the dishes, something that has been my job for the last few weeks, so I was really grateful.

The cat flap was broken and needed to be replaced, another little job I had put off a few days, why don't cats learn to open doors like everyone else? I finally got round to it last week, Liz was impressed, the cats weren't! One was trapped outside for hours, and when a human finally opened the door, she bolted in and we found her bolted to the bed. The cats were very wary of the new flap, they knew it would attack them as the went through it. Even Liz was convinced it was smaller than the old one and the cats would get stuck, hah, well they didn't and now they come and go as usual, another crisis overcome.