Good morning Negative Soundbyters! And what a lovely morning it appears to be and the rest of the week looks to be shaping up quite nicely as well. Is Summer too early to call? That sort of trap is easy to fall into in the UK; one minute you are breaking out the Pimms and the next minute you are scurrying for cover as a squall blows in off the Atlantic – usually about the time Andy Murray is serving up an ace at Wimbledon!
Mrs H and I had a very relaxing time in Lime Wood as you might have guessed from my attempted review. I take my hat and sunglasses off to “reviewers”; it was a lot harder than I thought it would be and while I most certainly will not be gracing the cover of Conde Nast Traveller anytime soon, it was fun to try something a little bit different.
Impending fatherhood is becoming ever more real. Mrs H has informed me that our NCT classes begin this week; it goes on for two hours and there are seven of them! I was like NO WAY and she was like YES WAY! Fourteen hours on how to look after Baby H. Feels like overkill to me. Don’t drop him; Feed him when Mrs H tells me to; Burp him; Bath him; Change nappy; Have a glass of wine ready; Repeat. Apparently you meet other Dads-and-Mums-to-be which I suppose is comforting in a sense; it’s like you are all sharing a landing craft heading towards the beaches at Normandy not having a clue what to expect; okay maybe that’s not quite the right analogy although these NCT classes might well put the fear of God in us men! (That’s when we escape to the pub together to de-stress!)
Watch this space; I will let you know how it goes!
Events of geopolitical significance to report?
We are gearing up for an election here in the UK. Jezza Corbyn is keen to nationalise everything with not a clue how to pay for it; and Theresa May….well I am not sure exactly what she wants to do, other than to crush the Labour Party and fiddle with immigration targets. What is it with the Tories and immigration? Toffee nosed Dave also promised to meet some ridiculous target which of course he never got even close to (but I suppose that is the point of being a politician; set an agenda which you cannot hope to deliver but which you hope someone will vote for and then fail – but blame someone else) and now May has done the same – except this time there is no real deadline for meeting it nor are there any repercussions if it is not met. Bah Humbug – it’s a bit of a farce really. And we haven’t even started the Brexit negotiations yet. Jezza or May-hem at the table – take your pick! (I think I know which camp I am in…)
Let’s move onto happier thoughts!
Hoddy X
Gardening.
Our builder is slowly decamping from our back garden. We now have a third of it back and despite the trauma that it has been through (think one of The Donald’s stray Tomahawk missiles landing squarely on it!) plants are still growing. The lawn has ceased to exist as a conventional lawn; it looks like somebody has given it a very bad haircut with clumps of green dotted in-and-amongst the rubble, stray tools, clay – and just plain dirt. But what’s important is that there are signs of life; and that’s where Mrs H and I come in…
I do not consider myself a gardener in the classic sense. I know what a rose looks like and I managed to cut the lawn (when it was still a lawn) without sheering my toe off, but in terms of getting my hands dirty I haven’t needed to, having lived in a flat for many years and then shortly after we moved into our new house, the back garden became the setting for the new Armageddon movie, so there was certainly no need for me to pull my proverbial green finger out of my ass and get weeding, but that is about to change methinks…
It is a multi-faceted pastime. And one that has significant scale. Mrs H and I went down to the local garden centre this weekend and that was an experience – not quite on par with Ikea but close. Plants of all descriptions and sizes, tubs, containers, compost sacks (some which guarantee that your plants would grow twice as fast – the “creatine” of composts!), weed killers, forks, spades, rakes, poison for those pesky pests – and a very cool Weber stand for braai-ing purposes. (Okay that last one isn’t really gardening related, but I needed some respite so withdrew into an area I am a bit more familiar with!)
We did quite well on our first visit. Two pots, some herb plants, jasmine and a very large bag of compost; not exactly the ingredients for setting the Chelsea Flower Show alight but definitely the makings of a………..small herb garden with a hint of jasmine!
Back at the homestead I began to tackle the garden’s resurrection with my spade while Mrs H tended to the pots. Suffice to say, my back is hurting a little more this morning. (Watch out Hoddy, are you carrying a baby??) At times I couldn’t quite distinguish between bona fide plants and weeds, so I just pulled and hoped for the best. (Bit like my early days at school discos!) One weed had the sort of root system more associated with a small tree but it finally succumbed once I had taken the saw to it! Eventually after a lot of speculative digging (and a few choice words thrown in for good measure) I was finally able to identify the outlines of a garden bed, which is a “pat-me-on-the-back” result considering the Hurricane Katerina-style devastation wrought by my builder!
There is some way to go before the garden is returned to its former glory (okay a LONG way to go), but I feel like a few more sessions with the spade (and associated back ache) and who knows what our humble postage stamp could blossom into. I look forward to the challenge….I think :)
OUT.
Pic of the Week
My Mom took this from the balcony of our house in Cape Town. Special place...
