Sunday 28 September 2008

Bald panic

After a two week holiday and a few days of basking in the glory or awards I have now got down to writing a proper post. This incident happened, three weeks ago, the day before we set off for France.

In the early hours of Saturday morning I had a dream that my husband's car had bald tyres. I am not sure where we were, still in England or over the channel in France. As I moved from dreaming into consciousness I made a mental note to check the tyres on my husband's car, then returned to sleep. It as not until early Saturday afternoon, when I was doing some jobs outside, that I remembered that I needed to check the tyres on my husband's car. The front tyres did not seem to have much tread on them and I could not even find a tread bar. I was not even sure what I was looking at as the tyres on my husband's car are totally different from the tyres on my car. So I had a look at the rear tyres. They had inches of tread on them. By comparison, the front tyres were virtually bald! I marched indoors and ran upstairs to the study where my husband was fiddling around and told him in no uncertain terms that unless he changed the front tyres on his car, I was going nowhere in it and the holiday would be off. He had a look at the tyres and begrudgingly agreed with me. As it happens the car needs to be MOT'd in a few weeks and would not pass with the front tyres in the state that they were in. Luckily he managed to find a tyre replacement place which stocked the correct tyres for his car. The middle of a Saturday afternoon is not the best time to need to replace car tyres as some places only open for the morning.

Up till now I had managed the pre-holiday stress pretty well, but now I could feel myself becoming stressed and my blood pressure rising. Also, while my husband was out getting the new tyres fitted I became annoyed at his cavalier attitude to our safety. The previous day had been the wettest day that I can ever remember and more rain was forecast. In my book, bald tyres and wet road equal disaster. If I were about to drive my car two thousand miles, in a foreign country I would check things like oil, wash bottle and tyres. As far as the holiday was concerned all my husband needed to do was make sure that his car was up to the trip and pack his suitcase. I had done everything else.

Thursday 25 September 2008

Another award

Dottie has given me the Arte Y Pico award. I am amazed and thrilled to receive another award. So a big thank you to Dottie who mistaken thinks that I know everything about renovating houses which could not be further from the truth, but I am learning. If I did know everything about renovating a house I think that our cottage would have been finished a long time ago, with a lot less hassle and I would not have so much to blog about.

The rules of Arte Y Pico are that it is passed onto five blogs that you consider deserve this award for their creativity, design, interesting comment, or for contributing to the blogging community, whatever language. Each award winner has to show the award on their blog and link their blog to the blog that has given them the award.

I am giving this award to the following:
  • Akelamalu - who may tell you everything or nothing
  • Denise - an English girl living in America
  • Gill - a British woman living in Canada
Each of the above blogs is creative, different and interesting in its' own way.

Monday 22 September 2008

An award


I was given this award by Denise - An English Girl Rambles just before we went on holiday, and I did not have the time to do the honours with it. I hope that, that is alright as I am sure that you all, and Denise, understand how frantic things become just before a holiday. I would like to say a big and belated thank you to Denise for this award, which I was surprised and delighted to receive. The rules that go with the award are that you:
  • put the logo on your blog
  • add a link to the person who awarded you
  • nominate at least seven other blogs
  • add links to those blogs on yours
  • leave a message for your nominees on their blogs
It has been difficult to select seven blogs to pass this award onto and I have had two weeks to think about which is probably too long. Now, for the nominees which are as follows:

Dottie's lot -life in rural Scotland with three young children plus studying at the OU

Gone Back South - life back in the south after living in Cheshire

Maggie May - who writes so eloquently about the current turmoil in her family

Mima's doings - who has had a hard time recently

Rural Villager - life in rural Wiltshire

Suburbia - sociology in the suburbs

Working Mum - who juggles a young daughter, working and doing up her house

Saturday 6 September 2008

Au revoir



We are off to France to restock the wine cellar or too be more accurate the wine rack that I bought my husband for his birthday last month, which is still in the box and needs to be assembled. Tomorrow we drive to Portsmouth. Then on Monday morning we get the ferry to Cherbourg. Yesterday it was almost wet enough here, to get the ferry from our front door.

Back in about two weeks.

Tuesday 2 September 2008

Designer shopping

On Sunday we went to the Cheshire Oaks Designer Outlet with the intention of buying some clothes for my husband. He hates clothes shopping. I am not sure whether it is the spending of money or deciding what to buy that he hates - probably both. But a visit to B&Q or PC World is a different matter - he will happily spend ages in either shop. Also I am not sure where the designer fits into Cheshire Oaks as most of the clothes that they sell are a season or two old or are seconds, but there is plenty of free parking there and it is only about five miles from where we live. Since we moved to Chester, five years ago now, we have only been shopping together in Chester, once. The reason for this is that the car parking in Chester is in short supply and costs an arm and a leg. The alternative is to use the Park & Ride, which for two of us is equally expensive. As I would not trust my husband to shop on his own, I now buy some of his clothes such as shirts, jumpers and trousers, myself. Usually I buy things from Marks and Spencer so they can easily be returned if they are not right. He really does not care, too much, what he wears, but he will not wear anything that he considers as the latest fashion. I suppose that, in some ways, I should be grateful for this. At least he does not look like the male equivalent of mutton dressed as lamb.

The clothes that I cannot buy are suits and shoes, both of which he needs to try on. We/he bought a suit earlier this year. On Sunday we were looking for shirts and shoes. First we went to Marks & Spencer who did not have what we were looking for so we headed for the Clarks shop. When we got there it was only about 20 minutes after the shops opened and the shop was heaving, mainly with children. And there I was, with my big child, looking for a new pair of shoes which we easily found, thank goodness. Then we had to join the queue of about ten people to pay. I had never seen this shop so busy, even I was glad to get out.