Tempus Fugit and all that!

"Forgive me Father for I have sinned. It has been 14 days since my last confession blog". Where has the time gone? As a child the years drag by but by the time you reach your middle years, when you’d quite like them to drag, they race along like Long Run in the Cheltenham Gold Cup.

I’d love to say it is because, with all the recent beautiful weather, I’ve been out in the garden weeding and hoeing, but no, sadly my lawn is still showing an impressive dandelion count and my plants are vying for space with goose grass and other assorted garden weeds.

I just got an e-mail from our Village Chairperson asking me if I would like to take part in the Village ‘Open Garden’. I told her I’d be happy to open my garden to anyone armed with a fork and a trowel or to paying guests who wants to experience the full spectrum of British weeds.  She politely declined.

I did plant up some pots with primroses and pansies in a futile attempt to beautify the front garden but I noticed this morning that they contain nothing but floral corpses. Forgot to water them again!  I keep hoping the garden fairy will come in the night and I’ll wake up to a Chelsea Show Garden but so far she seems to have been otherwise engaged. Either that or she really doesn’t relish a challenge.

My ironing pile now has a red light on the top so inbound military aircraft can avoid it and the two books I have on the go remain largely untouched. So what on earth have I been doing?  I can see you all, leaning towards your computer screen in anticipation of some earth-shattering revelation………….. but there isn’t one. I’ve done nothing….. no thing…. not a thing. My days seem busy, I rarely have time to sit down but in the time-honoured words of Snow White’s dwarves I seem to have been busy doing nothing. And I can’t even blame Fessebook!

We’re in the midst of the half term holidays now and I have a vague recollection of having a couple of children somewhere but where, I’m not entirely sure. The Girl has been staying in Sussex with her grandparents and was driven straight from there back to Wiltshire for a sleepover which has, so far, lasted three nights. The Boy was last seen heading off to stay at The Girlfriend’s house (“Separate rooms and her parents are there” he said when asking permission – and I checked) and will, apparently, be returning tomorrow in time to head off down to Cornwall for an action-packed week of kayaking, surfing and biking the Tarka Trail with a friend and his uber-active family, a welcome change from the Wylye family holiday of indolence and over-indulgence.  The thought that someone would want to spend any of their hard earned holidays having their butt deconstructed by a narrow bicycle saddle is anathema to me I’m afraid.

We had our inaugural village Quiz Night the other day.  The Husband dashed back from filming in Manchester to be ready for the 7pm kickoff but was sadly too tired to contribute anything of any great use and the bottle of red wine that went down rather too quickly didn’t help.  One of our elderly neighbours came along as she’d never been to one before. As she couldn’t really have a team of one we co-opted her on to ours in the vain hope that someone educated before it became dumbed down (don’t blame me, it’s what the Daily Mail says and we all know that it is the oracle and speaketh only the truth) might know a little bit about geography and history.  She didn’t sadly but she has led a fascinating life, married to a tea planter in Sri Lanka, although she still refers to it as Ceylon. Shame there were no flaming tea questions!

Still, with the benefit of my mind which retains useless information in the same was as Dr Brian Cox retains the names of the stars and galaxies, we romped home to a very acceptable third place – no, not out of three either – cheated out of second place by a mere half a point.

The following day was the first of our village clean ups when the posh people in the village come out to show off their new pressure washers  and ride on mowers so us mere mortals can all get Karcher-envy and rail against the Gods who have only blessed them with mid-range Flymo. I’ll give them their due though, they get stuck in.

It starts off with a slap up breakfast of sausages, bacon, mushrooms, tomatoes, hash browns and beans, followed up with as much toast as you can eat washed down with tea and coffee, then we all sit there feeling too full to do anything useful.  I got the unenviable task of scrubbing down the railings outside the Village Hall with a small pan brush then, having commented that the doors could do with a coat of varnish, some bright spark found some in his shed and I was handed a paintbrush. Anyone passing through the Wylye Valley is welcome to come and admire my handiwork and I'll take commissions as well.  The Husband was tasked with replacing a brick on the edge of the patio at the back of the Hall. A simple task one might think but not so for a purist like him. He spent about an hour trying to find the perfect Victorian brick, even keeping back some of the crap that came off the newly power washed patio to pack it out with. Like all men though, the thrill was in the chase and once the perfect brick was found he lost interest and by the time we left there was still a hole in the patio just big enough for one of the members of Brenda's Sugarcraft Class to turn an ankle.

The world's most expensive Audi continues to cost me dearly. I just put a new exhaust on it and will shortly be putting both kidneys on Ebay to pay for it. Meanwhile the Crapmobile is the focus of much interest to the local Pikey population who knock on the door regularly to tell me they collect 'scrap'. Scrap? I point out to them that it has a mere 60,000 miles on the clock, has two new tyres, a long MOT and that will be £300 thank you very much. They don't generally hang around for long.

The weather has been glorious for weeks now, all bar a few days, and Gizmo has had to have sun cream on his ears. Meanwhile he appears to be trying to construct a pigeon out of feathers and a stick on the kitchen floor.

Well, it's a start isn't it?