Journey to the Lakedistrict (by sarah)

Alaric's Dad and Step-mother Lynne are in the country at the moment and took us on holiday to the Lakedistrict - Penrith to be precise. Unfortunatly it is like a five hour car journey and I managed to have a back spasm Thursday night.

This ment that a car journey that would have been very uncomftable for me was not really very pleasant but I managed to get some reading done on the Moon and thanks to Lynne had a great time teaching Jean set theory in the back of the car with some Gruffolo stickers. After the first hour and a half of counting and catagorising stickers and off course sticking them I asked Jean if she was bored of counting and numberrs - 'No want more' was her answer - followed by a belated, 'please'. Great as this was it did mean that I had to keep thinking of new ways of looking at the stickers and which groups could over lap and things.

How many owls are there? Owls are a type of bird, what other birds can we see? Woodpeckers - how many? Oh and there's odd birds too? So how many birds do we have? Oh look there's a damsely fly - how many? Oh look it can fl, yes so can the butterfly - they are instects - whow many insects? Some of the insects can fly but not all - how many can fly? So if the birds fly and some of the insects fly how many things are flying?

And on and on and on.... there was fungi arithmatic to conjur with too!

(to the last question Jean answered 'all' which was true as well due to the way she'd stuck the stickers to the page :/ But once I said which ones would we see in our garden flying she answered the question correctly.

After this it was time for a rendition of Old MacDonald and the like.

I was exhorsted by the end of it.

But there was a lovely cottage with baconies and everything - not to mention a pool at the accompanying hotel! Jean was transfixed by the swimmers. We had a lovely meal in the hotel resturant which has these lovely blue and turquoise ceramic abstracts up all over the place. I mad the med veg.

We then went back to the shalleee and watched a film.

After that I stayed up to await the arrival of Al and Simon (Al's step brother). I read alot of my moon book whilst doing hot and cold treatments on my back - the pain was affecting my breathing and had affected my eating as swollowing had become supremely painfull 🙁

At about 2 am they arrived consumed Jeans leftover tea and was all went to bed.

From South Africa to Gloucestershire (by sarah)

Alaric's Dad Lionel and his step-mother Lynne are currently over from South Africa where they live. They arrived in depested darkest Gloucestershire last night and for Lionel it is a return to the place he was brought up. Tonight we made them a three course meal along with Barbara - this is the first formal entertianing we have done since moving back into the house after the flood.

So I brought out the table cloths and napkins and the nice butterfly napkin rings David and Michelle got us at Christmas. We made yummy lentil cakes with sage in - yesturday Alaric made some of the same lentil cakes with what he thought was the coriander but it turned out he doesn't actually know the difference between my lovage plants and coriander - he thought the lovage were lemon corriander and thats why it tasted odd :/ - still both types of lentil cakes were good 🙂

They sat upon a bed of salad from the garden and we had various dips. We then had ground nut stew cook using the cabbages from the garden (well what were left off them due to this years cattipillar uinfestation). Desert was home-made yogurt and local honey with hazel nuts (I'm afraid these were bought as Jean had eaten the ones from the hedge row I'd gathered.).

The interesting thing to note was Jean's interactions with Lionel - her langage was completely different from how she speaks to dad - eg:

To Dad, 'Ferfer nut?'

To Lionel, 'Grandfather would you like a nut?'

I thought this comparison was very interesting as was the fact she called him grandfather when Al had introduced him as Granddad but Lynne had said Grandfather. I think little bobble has worked out that you can interact differently depending on whats expected of you!

Anyway I did take a photo of the Snells but haven't got round to uploading it yet - I will also shortly be sorting out my cooking blog which I will link to so that you can see the recipies etc... of the fabled lentil cakes!

The Big C – Take 2 (by sarah)

Mum's biopsy results came back yesturday and the lump was cancerous so now she has to go under the knife for a third time and this time they are removing the lymph nodes (as I thought they should have done last time). There will a third partial mastectimy followed by another lot of radiotherapy.

This is almost a year after her treatment started last time and she has only just started to get her life back in order. Now we are worse than back to square one and the thing that makes me the angriest is that it was there when they where treating the first lot. So they have left her with a cancerous lump for year which could have become malignant and decided to send little baby cancers through her body - I presume we wont know if thats the case until they look at the lymph nodes. Then there is the trumer of operations and the knock on effects of anestitics.

What exactly do they think they are doing?

And so we are back to minuse square one.

She goes in for her operation on her's and dads thirtieth wedding anniversary - we had been hoping to do something joint for that and her sixtieth birthday but I think we might have to see how things go 🙁

The Ferfer, The Wheelbarrow and the Stream (by sarah)

On Sunday dad was supposed to burn the tomato plants as they have been wiped out by potato blight - he however didn't get all of this done as he went hypo. So with the promise of a cake (made by Diane from the village) he set off to finish the task in the dark.

He wouldn't have done this and would have been sensible and done it the following morning had it not been for Barbara (Al's aunt) who stated that she had asked us to burn them weeks ago and the blight had now spread to her plants. I was a little confused as I thought she had suggested I keep the plants to see what tomatos I could get off of them dispite the blight. I was origonally going to just destroy them. She then got angry that it was potatoe blight and was worried about her potatoes as well - but I've already had to dig all mine up as the blight had got them about a month and a half ago!

Dad valiantly headed out with his torch and was a bit longer than I expected (I was burning his dinner - I actually managed to set it on fire but don't tell anyone), then he appeared with a soggy leg. Not best pleased he informed me that he had been trying to locate the paths edge miss judged and stuck his foot into the stream, the wheel barrow had then come off of the wooden brigde he was wheeling it across and had pulled him right into the stream.

I tried not to laugh at his misfortune but somehow managed to fail much to his chagrin!

Poor Hat Man.

Mum’s Second Op (by sarah)

Mum's second partial mastektamy in the other breast went much better than expected. They used a different tequnic but worringly to me they also did not take any lymph nodes this time. They say they don't need to but then they origonally told her she didn't have cancer when the origonal scan shows both lumps in both breasts and from that they told her she was in the clear.

If they had looked properlly later on they could have just done one operation on her a year ago for both lumps and delt with it all. Instead its two lots of operations and depending on the results of the biopsy from the lump they've removed it may be another third operation to remove the lymph nodes to see how its spreading and then more radiotherapy.

But she is in hoping its all ok as are we and she has been knitting like a demon!