The House Husband

I joined Mirinda on the train this morning as far as Woking. My shoes have grown a hole in the sole so I needed to visit my favourite shop for a new pair. Given the rain, every time I wear the old ones, one foot gets squishily wet. I hate having to carry spare socks so figured new shoes were the best solution. And so I headed off for TK Maxx.

The old pair were ideal because they are quite wide in the foot, allowing for comfort during mild gout days – mild enough not to need the gout sandals, anyway – and so it was with some trepidation I set about trying to find a pair as good. And would you believe it! They had the very same shoes (just a different colour)!

Naturally, I snapped them up before they could disappear. As well as a couple of new shirts. My haul came to under £50 for the lot so I was very pleased. I just LOVE TK Maxx.

Back at home I set to mowing the lawn before the rain arrived. BBC had prophesied that it would hit us at about 4pm so I knew I had plenty of time but I also had some planting to do. The lawn was in desperate need of a trim after the rain of the last few days but the mower made short work of it and I settled down for lunch.

It was then up to the park with the poodles to check out the funfair which is presently setting up in the park. This happens every year. Lots of trucks invade the football pitch beside the castle, forming a circle like so many wagons defending against the Indians. In fact, looking back at my posts, it was exactly a year ago that they were here.

We chased a few dogs, ran away from others and then headed home. While taking a temporary diversion into Squirrel Tree Copse, Carmen had an FSI. She hasn’t done this for a while but today she found the mother lode.

I reckon there’s a communal fox toilet just behind the Squirrel Tree and the last fox that used it forgot to shut the door. Boy did she stink. Gaggingly smelly. Even Day-z walked at a distance from her. Of course, Carmen thought it was all great and walked with her head and tail held high. Stupid dog. And she hated the vigorous bath.

Having rid the house of the obnoxious odour of Carmen’s stupidity, I hit the garden, ready to plant up the horde from Saturday. Mirinda had placed them in their pre-ordained locations throughout the new bed so all I had to do was dig, manure, water and plonk them in. This I did while listening to Radio 4, watching the growing blackness starting to make itself known above the house.

I had two more to plant and it started. Big drips started hitting me. I heard the roofers next door down tools and vacate the scaffold as I rushed to finish the planting. The rain started in earnest and I quickly moved the radio and my camera into the shed before returning to finish, water streaming down my face.

The dogs were sitting on the sun lounger watching, ignoring the rain. Idiots. Anyway, I managed to finish and put all the tools away before rescuing the radio and my camera and heading inside. The rain still hasn’t stopped. This means I am unable to take a photo of the finished bed. Maybe tomorrow.

Here’s a picture of the Lightbox, the museum in Woking. I’ve yet to visit it. I would have today except it doesn’t open until 10:30 each day and I was catching a train home by then.

The Lightbox museum, Woking

Today was the day before the night of the giant moon. Apparently it is the biggest it’s been for 19 years. We were lucky indeed that it wasn’t cloudy so we could gaze upon it’s magnificence. It was very bright. I’m sure Mr Astronomer (Nicktor) could tell me why.

Today was also beautiful. Blue skies, cold with no wind, perfect. I thought the entrance to the park looked quite attractive. Apparently the park volunteers (they meet on Wednesdays and do all manner of things to improve the park for us) are going to work on this entrance to improve it. I have slipped over here a few times in the snow because it’s quite a slope!

Entrance to Farnham Park

We took advantage of the wonderful weather to be very English and visit the garden centre today. I made the mistake of saying how next week I’d be home every day (even Wednesday because Mirinda is visiting Harlow – not Jean) so, of course, we had to buy enough plants to keep me occupied. Now I just have to hope for good weather or I’m going to spend the week wet.

We went to Badshot Lea. Mirinda sometimes goes into automatic pilot when she’s driving somewhere she thinks she knows. She will be in mid discussion about something frightfully interesting and I’ll say “didn’t you want to turn there?” If, like today, this happens in one of those very narrow English roads where traffic has to dodge in and out of parked cars, Mirinda will do anything not to go down it twice.

Of course, this sometimes means we have to hike across country, travelling about 35 miles to get back on track, returning to the original route by way of open farmland. We always manage to find our way to somewhere and today we discovered quite a circuitous route to an antiques place we sometimes visit by the short and direct way. Our surprise and delight saw us drive passed and onto the garden centre.

Badshot Lea is renowned for it’s fish. Odd, but true. It’s also well stocked with conservatories. Mirinda decided we really wanted to ask this woman about them. We wandered through them all and then asked her a bunch of questions relating to the possibility of having one built for us. Not that we’re ever going to put ourselves through the horror of doing so. It’s just that Mirinda likes to go out on Saturdays and tease salespeople with vague hopes of a sale.

Eventually we made it into the actual garden centre bit of the Badshot Lea Garden Centre and Just About Everything Else Emporium. Mirinda wanted to buy the two heaviest things that would still fit in Sidney just to see if I could actually pick them up. I managed to talk her out of the metal plant holders.

We bought two huge pots that were very heavy. I could have slept in one of them. Actually, having dragged them around the garden centre, up to the car, into the boot and finally into the back garden, I’d have been more than happy to curl up on the bottom of the smaller one.

We also bought about 460 plants for planting. A lot of them were on special. I’m not expecting these ones to grow. This is what they do: They have a plant they know will not grow – maybe they grew it on purpose, I don’t know – and they put it in two pots. They then get two other plants they know will grow which look exactly like the two that won’t. Now, here’s the clever bit – they now sell all four for the price of three. This means they can’t help but make money AND they get the customer to take away their rubbish as well! Pure genius. Not that I’m cynical.

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And now for a playground update…it’s looking very good for an Easter opening. It helped that it rained this week.

The new playground in Farnham Park

I didn’t get a lot of sleep last night. As usually happens when I’ve had a few drinks, I woke up at 6am feeling a bit rubbish. I managed to drag myself down to the kitchen and made a coffee. I then staggered, poodles clinging to my legs, into the lounge room where I collapsed in front of the TV. I watched Breakfast long enough to hear that the British entrant in Eurovision came last this year, while the German entry won. The next thing I knew it was 8:30am and my coffee was cold. The same news item was on the TV. It was like I’d been sucked into some time vortex thing where time moved but TV didn’t. I thought about this for a bit, thinking, perhaps I was in a Simpsons episode, and then went and made another cup of coffee.

After shopping and Mirinda’s weekly phone call, we spent a lot of the day in the garden except for the big slice we spent at the garden centre at Secretts. Mirinda loves walking right around the entire place before deciding what to buy. This takes about three days. Everything is then repeated with a trolley, loading it impossibly high. As usual we managed to buy everything except the one thing we had originally gone to buy – sweet peas for the obelisks.

We did overhear a woman who hates radishes to the exclusion of everything else. Radishes are the only thing she hates. Not world poverty, not stupid politicians, not even traffic wardens. No. The only thing, in the entire universe, that she hates…RADISHES. What a fantastic life she has.

I made pork with a pear and apple sauce for dinner and we watched two episodes of Dr Who before retiring. Lovely day.