I didn’t have high expectations for the weekend as I am suffering a little bit of empty nest syndrome and a weekend with no sign of children on any horizon leaves me feeling a little weak and vulnerable. So it was just me, the Husband and the dogs. Friday afternoon found me mowing the lawn in between showers in my winter woolies and it was then that I found some discarded gosling legs (remember the mystery of the 6 missing one day old goslings a few blogs back). Dog no.1 slunk off sheepishly as I had to dispose of the legs, which clearly had been left as, after eating five other pairs, he realised that a sixth set was just going to murder his digestive system. 

Saturday morning dawned with an S.O.S. call from my mother’s parish priest saying he thought my 86 year old mother may be ill and struggling to look after herself so we should start to look for care homes!! Blimey that is enough to shock life into my body and snap me out of a hangover. On enquiring how he came to this conclusion, expecting that he would say he had visited her and found her fallen over and unable to move for days, he told me that he had not seen her in church for the past two weeks which is like saying that he went to the 100 metres final at the Olympics in August and didn’t see Usain Bolt! So maybe he was right that things weren’t quite right in her life. So it was up and off on a mercy dash to find her quite perky, full of sparkle but with a car with two flat tyres. She also mentioned that the temperature in church is a touch on the freezing end of the thermometer and was not exactly conducive to a lot of kneeling and old bones! The problem is that in this ‘Big Society’ we seem to have lost that little local garage where you get everything done for your car and so when you are 86 years old they will pop by  to change the wheel/s. When she phoned the nearest Kwik Fit for a mobile unit she found them a little impatient particularly when she could not reel off the reference number for the tyres that she required. I think at this point she felt she would stay in, pray to God from her armchair and hope for some divine intervention……

At half past five Husband was restless to leave Mother and return home to watch 22 men chasing a ball around a field for 90 minutes then a further 30 minutes and finally penalties for it all to be decided in the last two kicks i.e. the last 30 seconds of 150 minutes of viewing. All that blood, sweat, swearing and tears for it to finally come down to 30 seconds to decide the champions of Europe who, b.t.w., are Chelsea and clearly, on listening to the post-match interviews, not too many of them were Made in Chelsea!! However I managed to survive the evening of footie by contacting Ellie, fellow footie widow, and together with @ELA40s, @jimatbiggin, @Jontybabe, @mitchdafish & others we had a ‘Twarty (Twitter party) hosted by @Margot_Bloom. Margot bought the wine and cheese, Jim provided music via You Tube and we all had good a good chat (banter as my youngest would say) and we left Margot’s place with no mess for her to clear up, no hangovers in the morning for everyone and new friends made so it couldn’t have been better!! Ellie, we must remember to write our thank you letters because Margot was so welcoming and hospitable!!

Finally on Sunday we went to a summer barbecue in full winter clothes, boots, layers of jumpers, scarves and one guest wore a hat and gloves! We are one month away from mid-summers day so that means by my mathematical calculations that if the sun and heat arrive today then we can expect summer to be over by 21st July. Our hostess showed us her 115 year old tortoise who did not look impressed at all by the commotion and fuss since clearly she believed we were still mid-winter and she wanted to carry on hibernating.

Bye for now. . . . . Annabel x