My own Gobolino (the witches cat)

I can't believe it's eggs for tea Sunday again, which is how I always think of the clocks changing backwards. It is also Halloween tonight and I have finally managed to carve a pumpkin. I have wanted to do this for years but always have done it with my niece and nephew who got to the pumpkin first. Now they are grown it was my turn so I thought I would do something less scary than theirs. I chose a cat and a bat and here it is my first solo carving. I love the colour of pumpkins they are so comforting. Now we have a great-niece I decided to save the seeds and let her sow them next year and grow her own to carve and keep up what has become a family tradition. This is so much fun I can hardly wait!

Return to Sender?

Bri's very favourite person in the whole world is the Postie, doesn't have to be one we know just the postie. Even the kids told him he should be one when he was made redundant, in fact everyone told him. This is because everyday he gets post, expects post, gets excited when it's post time until - a few weeks ago that is. What has changed you may wonder, has he stopped ordering stuff... No, we have a new dyslexic postman. He is driving us crazy! You can spot him holding the letters at arms length and scratching his head, this is not good we think. It isn't good we hadn't had mail in days.We finally got a letter that wouldn't go through the letterbox and when I opened the door (only because I saw him, not because he knocked) he was half way down the path. I asked are you our new regular postie? he shrugged and became confused, he didn't speak English. No hope for us then! The next day, however, he left a red card saying we weren't in for delivery so we trekked up to the sorting office having waited the 24 hours they said on the card, to be told they couldn't find our packet and when they asked our postie thet weres told he couldn't visualise our road. Tough, we want our parcel and we want it now! No chance! They took our phone number and would ring us if they found it. I hate our postie, I wish we had a dog and I'm not keen on the Royal Mail either. I might start a protest. I am watching with Bri at the moment as he is watching the postie going back down the road as he has missed someone and he has now gone past us yet again and we just know we are expecting something. No, wait he is coming back again, yes pushing post through, well half way through ....we have got mail... just not ours!!!

We Don't Get Out Much...

...which became VERY apparent this week when we went to Marks and Spencer for a quick coffee. They have the most up to date caff we have ever been to. So much so that we had to figure out how to order a cup of coffee and a teacake. None of your slosh it on the counter and no butter for the teacake affair. You order and get a thingy which you hand back when your order is ready. You then go to another island and get your coffee which came hot and steaming in large cups and then you go to your table with your thingy and wait. No one could have prepared us for the shock we got. We were just taking a sip of delicious coffee, and this thingy rattled and beeped and vibrated on the table and scared us half to death. It took us a full minute of this racket to realise what had happened, our teacakes were ready, that's all. It wasn't a fire alert or our phones it was a wonderful new fast way of letting us know we could collect our order. Genius! we thought and decided there and then we must get out more, we are being left behind by retail technology. So I thought I would just pop to the ladies powder room before I left and was met by a wall of plastic where I couldn't find which was door and which was wall, new fangled locks and all that. When I did get in I was met with square loos and square everything else, amazing! Came out to wash my hands and blow me the taps were automatic and the scary bit was you put your hands down a hole to dry them, I've seen too many horror movies to do this. I used a tissue which was swallowed up by a greedy bin that pulled it in. I left pronto, too much technology for me, perhaps I'll become a recluse instead.