My twice-weekly post.............

Yes I KNOW what I said about posting twice a week. I meant it but I reckoned without the intervention Keith, who decided now would be a good time to redecorate half the house and lay new wooden floors.

The hallway got done first. All the walls and paintwork were done and what you see here is the quarry tiled floor waiting for levelling concrete to be poured on. The floor is finished now but I can't show it to you yet because it has the living room furniture piled up on it! The rest of it was in front of my 'office' door.

Cut to living room! It's all stripped out ready for action. The painitng and walls are done (this isn't it; I'll show you when it's put straight). The new floor in here is proving a little more problematic than the hallway but it's almost done. Keith and a friend, M, are working on it as I write. I hope they will be done by lunchtime...fingers crossed!

It's Mimuther's 81st birthday today. I spoke to her on the phone earlier but she's at my sister's so I won't see her. She called in here one afternoon in the week after she'd been to the optician, who has decided that her cataracts must now be dealt with by a surgeon. I don't know, there she was, telling me all about it while running around in her killer heels making tea - they looked pretty 'killer' to me anyway! Killer Heels and Cataracts - sounds like a good title for when she writes her autobiography!

A lovely surprise last night. The phone rang and a voice said "Mrs. M?". "Who's this?" I asked. " Well WHO is it?" -don't you just hate it when they say that? It was Keith's brother Stewart who lives in Canada but is at their holiday home in Arizona until the end of March - lucky bloke. He had $34 left on a cellphone which they wanted to stop using but didn't want to lose all the money so he decided to fritter it away calling us. How wonderful it was to speak to him and our sister in law Jill and more so because we were not expecting it. We keep in close touch by email but never phone -costs too much!

This is the three brothers (L-R Keith, Stewart, Michael) when Stewart visited us last June. Thirty-odd years ago, before they went to Canada, Keith and I lived next door to them. I could never have imagined then that Stewart and I would ever spend hours in each other's company and never want for something to say! Nor spend ages on the phone talking to Jill and we talked right up until their $34 ran out. Unfortunately we spent the last couple of minutes discussing what the 'beeps' were that Jill kept hearing. Light dawned when the line went dead!

And finally.........a very rare photo of our Sally, who is even more camera shy than Marie. Fortunately for all of us we've never yet seen a photo of Marie having a good scratch.

Coffee pot needs recharging or there'll be a strike!

much love

P.S. THE FLOOR IS DONE! Now it's the turn of the new skirting boards.