Some Archy and Mehitabel Days

I was reading Laloofah’s super  Mehitable Days blog and realised it was ages since I wrote a proper post.  One about life as it is at present.  One that actually used the English language and some moderately responsible grammar.  (Note that last ‘sentence’ lacks a verb!) So herewith is an attempt to bring you up-to-date with life at The Willows - a sort of Archy and Mehitabel Days. 

I have calmed down enough now to write about an incident that happened recently.  On second thoughts, even thinking about it has my blood pressure rising already and I haven’t started writing yet.  Hopefully, by the end of this posting you will be equally annoyed.

One morning the maintenance manager from the Nursing Home at the back of our house came to the front door and asked if we possessed an air-rifle.  Upon our denying it (and him obviously not believing us) we got the story.  Apparently someone was shooting birds whose corpses were landing on their property and it really could only be us or our next-door neighbours, with us (having the much better view of the area) as prime candidates.  We explained that next door was a couple our age and so it couldn’t be them either. I suggested it might be youngsters taking pot shots from a car on the road but the places the bodies were landing suggested that was unlikely. 

Eventually he believed us and we walked around with him to look at the latest delightful evidence.  As we were chatting at the nursing home gateway our next door neighbour’s wife came along.  We mentioned what we were there for and she had no hesitation in admitting it was her husband who was shooting the birds.  Imagine, an 80 year old man killing birds on other people’s property for fun.  The excuse being that they trampled on their plants!  We aren't talking geese or 400lb ostriches here  -  we are talking about blackbirds and pigeons and the odd squirrel.  We have obviously been feeding them too well if they are that heavy!

The Police were called – it not being exactly legal to shoot into nursing homes – but all he got was a police warning.  wotthehell, archy, wotthehell. I am not a violent man but he did get a rather more forceful warning from me that if anything happened to Ivy he would be seeking his teeth down the back of his throat.  We seem not to be on speaking terms with our next door neighbours any more. 

On to events more designed to lower my blood pressure...

I’ve received lots of postcards this last few weeks and also some maps from Doreen.

What I need to do now is expand my study walls in some way so that I can put up the super map of America she sent me and then I can mark on it where my postcrossing and blogging friends live.  If I could push the walls out even further I could add maps of Europe and New Zealand.  Then there’s Hank – I’d need another map for him.  And so on…  Perhaps I’ll just move house it might be easier.  Who knows, if I move to San Pedro Sula, Honduras, next door might have a machine gun.

This week the weather has continued dry.  Today is the hottest day of the year – it must have reached 14°C.  Last weekend I fitted the hose reel (that GB so kindly gave me) to the outside of the kitchen wall ready to water the garden.  The front lawn was so wet earlier in the year that it was flooded for days on end and part of it turned into a mud patch.  Now it is so dry that the mud patch has cracked and crazed like the bed of a dried up lake.  There was a delay between fitting the hose reel and getting the hose on, caused by my head deciding it would prefer to be banged on the bedroom wall rather than allow me to stand up for any length of time.  But on Saturday I managed to fit the hose, despite freezing temperatures and creaky knees, and I hosed the garden down good and proper.  Sunday it rained for the first time in weeks.   wotthehell, archy, wotthehell.

Someone close to me always says there is no such thing as bad weather.  I discovered from Joy’s blog they are echoing Ruskin it seems.

“Sunshine is delicious, rain is refreshing, wind braces us up, snow is exhilarating; there is really no such thing as bad weather, only different kinds of good weather. ” -  John Ruskin

Over the last couple of weeks I have been creating postcards for sale – an idea given to me by Danielle the fount of many good ideas.  I upload my photos to Zazzle and they are sold through Zazzle and I get a (small) percentage) of every sale.  You can see my shop here –

Zazzle has a wide selection of pictures available for sale as postcards and greetings cards and I reckon if I upload one photo a day to my store (which takes no effort really) I should be able to rake in at least enough to buy a Christmas card in 2015….

In case you are wondering why the strange selection of photos I have simply started with one folder and am working my way through it, grabbing any picture I think may be looked for as a postcard.  I may get a bit more methodical one day!