Val & Petes Weblog

We had a lovely time when we met up with Ann and Jim and Ann and Norman for lunch last week. It was lovely to catch up with old friends who we had not seen for a year and as usual we had loads to talk about.

We went to Peter’s Aunt Bett and Uncle Chas’s in Farnham Common, Buckinghamshire for the weekend. Aunt Bett and I spent many hours chatting while Peter under very firm instructions from Uncle Chas worked hard getting their garden ready for it’s participation in ‘Open Gardens” on 7th June. He weeded, cut back and planted up both front and back gardens and left it looking very spruce and pretty. They are unable to do the work themselves and were delighted with Peter’s help and he was only too pleased to help and in his element working the soil as those of you who knows him well are aware that gardening is not a chore to him but a therapeutic hobby.

Our own garden is looking good now that all the new plants are established and Peter is now busy tidying up the corner where the oil tank was and he is making a hidden corner for all those ugly wheelie bins that we have. Today we have a carpenter here fitting a new cupboard in the utility room where the old boiler used to be. It will be nice not to have to look at all the ugly piping that was installed with the new boiler and useful to have another cupboard.

On Tuesday we spent another nice day with Sally. After going to Costa’s for coffee and a pastry Peter and Sally left me in HobbyCraft for a blissful hour of browsing, and a bit of shopping of course, while they went to look at cars for Sally. She is taking advantage of Gordon Brown’s offer of the £2000 trade -in on her worthless ancient car as a deposit on a new Ford KA. Good for her! We then picked Matt and Rob up from school and went to the Harvester for a meal, I’m not overly keen on the Harvester but I do like their salad bar and it is good value for money.

I did not fare as well on my last round of chemo treatment as on previous cycles but I was warned that it might get worse as treatment progressed. Nothing major but lots of little things combined with extreme lethargy and tiredness left me feeling like utter crap towards the end and after the treatment finished. The oncologist has reduced the level of dosage as she thought that would help with the effects I was getting and said it would not be detrimental. One good thing though was that my blood counts have not dropped very much at all since I started treatment and if that continues I am definitely on my way to Spain in 3 weeks time.  I started on round 6 of 8 courses last night and hope it goes a bit better this time. 

I have been busy on the crafting front and last week between jaunts I made 18 cards so I have a good stock in hand now. I think I might make a start on Christmas cards soon! I’m still finding my way around applications on my MacBook and still think it is wonderful. Peter is progressing well with the PC and is asking me for help less and less. I’m so pleased that he is no longer a technophobic!

Well that’s all for now folks. More boring ramblings in a couple of weeks time.