It’s raining. Again. July was a very wet month and coolish after the brief heatwave on June. And August is not looking promising. The garden is very lush. I have lots of tomatoes. Green ones. Think I’ll need to dig out the Green Tomato Chutney recipe. The wisteria seems confused by the weather and appears to be flowering now instead of in springtime.
So what have I been up to since the last post at the end of June? Well for the first two weeks of July, I was busy with the Chester Mystery plays. It really was a memorable experience being part of this community project which only happens every five years. The reviews were very good and I am proud to have played a small part in the success of the plays. Here are a few photographs taken at the dress rehearsal. I appear in a few of them somewhere.
The rest of July was pretty quiet. I spent most of my time catching up on neglected housework and gardening tasks. Both Paul and I have July birthdays and this year his fell on a Saturday - a two performance day for me. Kate came over for the weekend to help him celebrate though I did find time to make him a cake - a Cherry Bakewell which tasted good but looked terrible with slightly singed edges so didn’t take photo. My birthday was midweek and a wet day so we didn’t do much - a walk in Delamere Forest, a visit to the market for a a couple mojitos and dinner at home cooked by Paul. And I got nice presents. Here is the flower press Kate gave me and my first attempt at using it.
We’ve seen quite a lot of Kate recently since she has finished her first year of teaching for the summer. Instead of the Mediterranean holiday she and Calum had planned, she spent last week here. They had to cancel as they were due to go to Rhodes the week it was on fire. Poor Kate - she’d been so looking forward to her holiday. But they got their money back and have rebooked for Tenerife later on August, and this weekend they’ve gone to Edinburgh for the fringe festival. Certainly won’t be 40+ degrees there. I love having her around at home for shopping trips etc. We also went to see the Barbie film last week - very funny, very clever.
Some bad news in July which kind of spoiled the birthday celebrations. Our lovely doggie Alfie has been diagnosed with epilepsy. He’s had four seizures in total, the last two separated only by a few weeks, and has now started medication which we hope will keep it under control. He’s as lively as ever and it doesn’t take him too long to recover each time but still it is worrying. We still haven’t got over losing our last dog so this has been upsetting.
No holidays for us in August though we have booked a weekend away in Wales early September. Let’s hope the weather improves by then. But I have booked another short writing course, also in Wales, to get me back on track with my writing project which has been rather neglected recently. It’s at the
Ty Newydd Creative Writing Centre. The house is the former home of David Lloyd George. Should be an interesting experience.
That’s it for now. Rain has actually stopped now so may venture out into the garden.
