Last day of October, eh?

Lunch of Fortnums' Nürnbergers, grilled outside on the barbie and consumed ditto with a bit of salad.   Laundry drying nicely on the line.  But the sun is low, and the air not breezy enough to dry the grass enough for cutting.  Phew.

Today's other good news is that both pensions have coincided for once, so I can make a start on filling the vast hole in the new car fund.  Who knows: I might not have to dip into it again.  Meanwhile, the vehicle is starting to loosen up a bit, but I shall have to sit on the drive and RTFM (read the manual) if I'm to understand the vagaries of the gearbox and the instrument panel.  I suppose that, if I can master some of that, I might be able to cope with some of the arcana of the software we're supposed to use at the hobby...

Mobility, and all that

On Celia's advice, I have ordered a pedal exerciser.  In response, Amazon is recommending related products including two varieties of incontinence pads, ski feet for zimmer frames. raised lav seat adaptors and guide frames, to name but a few.  Oh yes, and draw sheets.  Gawd: is it come to this?

Oh well, we took advantage of the fine, mild weather to go for a stroll in the Ashdown Forest before lunch, and walked a mile or so, I suppose.  I think my pace is improving a little cf. pre-surgery, but of course having walked little of late, I'll need to build up a bit.  The Forest is much loved of dog walkers, most of whom behave correctly, many of whom leave the paths littered with dog shit and some of whom take the trouble to bag up their pooches' déjections and then drop the bags on the path.  And one lovable mutt jumped up, leaving paw prints on my waistcoat.  No need to remind me why I hate (most) dogs.

Martyn drove back, his first experience of the new car, which he pronounces satisfactory.  Lunch of unpretentious pub grub at the Crown.  Two lunches out this week: better draw in our horns a bit, I think!

Technology, Ancient and Modern

Forgot to mention that, when we were buying fish in Dungeness on Friday, we were treated to the sight of the Russian aircraft carrier, Admiral Kuznetzov, heading west in the hope that it may make it as far as the Mediterranean.  Notoriously unreliable, she was accompanied by an ocean-going tug and a number of other warships.  Described by one commentator as 'this lumbering old tub, fit only for the scrapheap', she was issuing vast clouds of black smoke as she rounded Dungeness, and is due for a complete new propulsion system if she ever makes it back to the shipyard.

Gradually getting the hang of the car, though the proximity switch for the tailgate generally ignores my choreography - you're supposed to be able to open it with your hands full of shopping by waggling a foot under the back bumper.  Still, between us, we managed to find the button that operates the heated windscreen, but only by elimination, after finding a similarly-labelled button in amongst the air-con controls.  So, former heats the screen with electrical heating wires; latter blasts dehumidified air at the inside of the screen.  Next week's task is to make head or tail of the audio set-up.  I suspect I'm unlikely ever to want to hook up a mobile phone or iPod to it, but you never know... 

Legs and wheels

We enjoyed a sumptious afternoon tea on Wednesday, a birthday present from Martyn's sister.  I can't remember eating so much sweet stuff, and regretted it a bit afterwards, but it was a big treat at the time!  Patisserie Valérie, Disgustedville.  We drove thither in the new machine, of which more anon.

We drove it a little further yesterday, to Benenden Hospital for a chat with Mr Sawbones.  Interesting to be shown pictures of the inside of one's knee.  Cutting a long story short, there's a good bit of cartilage left, which he has tidied up, so I'm evidently not in knee replacement territory meanwhile, he says.  Hope he's right, because things ain't that great right now.

Anyway, the car.  It was a surprise to find that the colour was nowhere close to the colour I'd picked from the brochure: several shades darker, in fact.  Still, it's by no means a bad colour, and we'll get used to it.  In fact it is quite close to the colour of the Altea (which model it replaces in the SEAT range, incidentally).  It is built alongside certain Skoda models at Kvasiny in the East of the Czech Republic, near the Polish border.  So it's a Spanish Volkswagen, built to the East of the Iron Curtain.  Who'da thunk it?

It rides smoothly and quietly and handles well, with less roll - and a noticeably tighter turning circle - than the old car.  As for performance, I've yet really to test it.  It has a number of different engine management settings, and so far I've left it on the eco setting.  There is a point on the dial with a chequered flag symbol on it, for those who like to subsidise the oil companies, no doubt.  I'm less sure about the stop-and-start function, but read in the manual that you can stop it cutting out in traffic queues by keeping light pressure on the brake pedal.  It has its own built-in navigation set-up, which we've also yet to test.  Cars are easier to operate these days, but they come with so many gizmos that you'd need a Master's to understand them all.

Modern times

A Prime Minister, unelected even by her own party, who will deny Parliament a vote on the most significant constitutional measure of the century, and wants to vilify the NHS, inter alia, for employing dedicated and invaluable foreigners.  A Presidential candidate who thinks it acceptable to brush off his bragging about having committed sexual assaults as 'locker room talk'.  A mayor of Béziers who sees fit to put up posters that would have made Hitler blush.  A president of a super-ish power who seems to think it acceptable indiscriminately to bomb the shit out of the people of Aleppo to help shore up a monstrous dictator.

What is our miraculous world coming to?  I sometimes want to bring these jokers together on a starry night and say 'Look!  We have the privilege to live on a habitable planet, and all our energies are devoted to stripping it of its assets and its life-saving atmosphere, the while spending centuries killing off those of our unique life form that we don't happen to fancy because they aren't in our pack. Is that how you discharge your responsibilities?'. 

And muckle guid wid it dae me. OK, I have a terrible post-flu jab cold, and my knee hurts, but have to admit that my Weltanschauung has rarely been darker.

Arts et Métiers

I think the triptych is almost finished now, though I'm advised that, to reinforce its Madeira theme, it wants a strelitzia flower.  We'll see.  The motivation for doing it was far from artistic: the wall where it hangs was disfigured by a couple of ugly blanking plates installed zealously by the sparky when we had the conservatory built.  I bought the canvases without measuring first, so am lucky that they fit the space so well.

Our art group exhibits once in a while at a charity drop-in centre in Edenbridge. and we've each been asked to do a little 10x8" canvas for a separate exhibition in aid of the centre.  Once I'd fiddled a bit with the triptych at last Thursday's class, I knocked out a little piece based on a contre-jour view of the church at Burton Agnes against a February sky.  As a general rule, if a piece isn't starting to come right within 45 minutes, it ain't going to.  The more I fiddle with details, the worse the result.  Or that's my excuse for the rough and ready piece below.  I used some blues that I use rarely: cobalt and indanthrene, knocked back with a trace of cadmium orange.  I also used indanthrene with a spot of burnt umber to make the grey for the masonry.

Is there anything more pathetic than a bloke with a cold?  I had my second annual flu jab last Thursday, and I started sneezing and streaming on the way back from Brighton on Friday.  So I'm feeling proper sorry for myself.  I think it's a bit better today.

Not so our local bird life.  I could see that there was something lying on the grass out the back this morning, and it turned out to be a dead blackbird.  It wasn't obvious what it had died of, but I admit to not having inspected it too closely when I shovelled it away behind the hedge.  Perhaps it been sampling the copious fungi that are growing in the garden.

Elsewhere in the garden, things aren't too bad.  I'm not sure whether we'll get a crop of leeks, since they have been badly infested with blackfly.  I'll give them another squirt of dilute washing up liquid presently, and hope that any we do get to eat will not have an interesting note of Fairy liquid.  I've dismantled and put away the irrigation system, which has done its job for the year.  The grass is long again, so I suppose I/we shall have to tackle that the next time it's dry enough.  That's always a problem hereabouts as we move into autumn.  Our clay soil is the culprit, though the no longer leaky pond can't have helped in the past.  We've had a good show of cyclamen flowers from plants liberated from Jane's garden when she moved - at her invitation, I hasten to add!  We have a few flowers on the nasturtiums that have self-sown from last year, and the fuchsia cuttings are flowering well.  Not so the stock plants, which are only now putting out a bud or two.  But, to be fair, I have not exactly nurtured them, just stripped them of promising shoots and left them to get on with it.  I am fittingly repaid.

Not the happiest day trip to Brighton

Barbara's memorial was well attended, with the notable exception of her remains.  Although it's fully four weeks since she died, the post-mortem won't be performed until next week at the earliest.  Odd feeling.  Anyway, it was amusing to find, on the front of the order of service, a photograph her that I took in Brazil in 1979 (though in mirror image).

Val spent last night here at Forges-l'Evêque, and travelled down with us to Brighton, where we met another friend, Chris, for lunch at a café that we have used with Val and Barbara in the past. 

Val brought us a vast tray of Cumberland sausages, which we shall shortly sample, leaving at least another four meals in the freezer.  Later: the bangers were pretty damn' good.  Suitable end to a day when we paid tribute to a talented and generous hostess.

Getting back to normal?

The offending joint has good days and less good days, but I'm optimistic.  Today anyway, it being a good day.  I drove myself gingerly to art class on Thursday, it being two weeks since the procedure, following which which I was advised not to for that long.  That was also the point at which I was allowed to dispense with the compression stockings, much to my relief.   I have a good range of movement in the knee, but am sticking assiduously to the prescribed exercises meanwhile.  The dressings came off a few days ago, the stitches are disintegrating, and the spectacular bruise on my thigh is fading at last.  I accuse the stockings: I'll ask the sawbones when I see him in a couple of weeks' time.  I suppose I ought to hang on to them in case we go in for long flights at some point.

Martyn tells me that the new car is on the high seas, on its long journey from the Czech Republic, via Emden and Grimsby.  I'm told it'll arrive at the showroom in just over a week's time.  Meanwhile, I must admit, we've been coping pretty well as a one-car family...  I wonder whether the old VW has been sold on.  Whoever buys it will get a good 'un, even if there were starting to be a few electrical funnies, like false alarms from the tyre pressure sensors and the parking brake.  There was also the small matter of an outstanding remedy to the fraudulent emissions software, but that is no longer my problem.

One can never confidently plan the gardening at this time of year.  Yesterday we had torrential showers: today is sunny but with a sneaky north-east wind.  But it was warm before lunch in the sunshine on the terrace (which is a bit of a sun trap), so I've potted up some cuttings that had been braving the wind tunnel outside the kitchen door and moved them to a much more sheltered cold frame.  Potentillas: white, primrose, yellow and orange (though the orange ones have not rooted as strongly as the others), cistus purpureus and I think a rose-pink penstemon.  We already have a couple of cistus cuttings on the go.  Since it's getting on for ten years since we moved here, finding space for stuff is not easy!  The other side of that coin is that a number of hebes have developed to the leggy stage, and want hoiking out and replacing.  The same is true of the cistus pulverulens, close cousin of the cistus we so admire up in the garrigue: I might see whether I can get some cuttings of that to strike before winter sets in: the plants we now have are second or third generation cuttings from one I bought for the garden at Smith Towers, so optimism is once again in order, I'd say.