CONFINED TO BARRACKS!

Fear not, Dear Readers, she has not run away and joined the Army. She has dodgy knees and appalling hearing so they wouldn't take her anyway!

It was a day of fasting, taking pills and liquids and staying very close to home, you know what I mean without me having to spell it out for you.

It was all in preparation for a Colonoscopy this morning. Fascinating what goes on inside of one, is it not? The doctor complimented her on "having such clean and shiny plumbing" which made them all laugh.

But the best laugh came when he told her, which she had actually seen for herself, that there was absolutely nothing evil, horrid or nasty lurking in her 'pipes'. Isn't that good news!

And although she chose not to be sedated before the proceedure, she was mighty weary having not slept very well last night and she went straight to bed when she got home. Our sweet friend,Tereza, collected her from the hospital and had offered her coffee but her legs and energy were flagging so home and bed was where she came to.

Good to have some stores in a cupboard for she wanted something very unusual (for her) to eat, she suddenly wanted baked beans with an egg on top, she does something curious to baked beans, to increase the amount of fibre, she adds two small teaspoons of Oat bran.

It bulks the sauce up a bit and with a dash of chilli and black pepper it becomes just what you need when you haven't eaten for thirty hours!

Tomorrow is another day as Scarlet said so wisely and she needs to replenish our supply of that yummy Sauerkraut, my Rye bread and her Lithuanian bread, all of these items come from shops up on Streatham Hill, so she will pop into see Mala and look at how the basement progress is getting on whilst she is up there.

Parson's Green Farmer's Market is on our list for Sunday, followed by a trip out to the allotment. But that, of course, depends on.. is it going to rain or not this week end? 

If it is raining, then she plans instead of going gardening, to make a quick trip to Brixton to collect some plants that she saw a couple of weeks ago. The seller said he is there every Sunday.

The weather forecast for this coming week end is dire, with reports of huge amounts of rain, the like of which has caused chaos in the South of France around Var and elsewhere along that coast.

But why is she surprised? It is Glastonbury week end.. it always rains for the Glastonbury Festival!

So there you are, that is why we have been quiet on the posting front but we are back and I am so very happy to report that all is well, we still have no idea what causes her to haemorrhage but at least we know for certain that she has no GIST growing inside her, they are not nice things GISTs.

A plate of beef tomato, goaty curd, spring onion, fresh basil, olive oil, chilli flakes and black pepper is a'calling us. I hope that you too have scrummy yumyum for your supper?

And I am very pleased to say that I have lots of truly delicious recipes to share with you this week. With fruit and particularly of yellow and red gooseberries and all the currants.. black, red and white.

PipPip.. Dear Readers.. PipPip..

GeeGee Parrot.
June 27th, 2014.
Post Script: 
GIST stands for Gastrointestinal Stromal Tumour.

Two inches at the most is what we like.

Up early to a cloudy sky but it was warm and besides which, she had stuff to do so the sky or whether it was sunny or not did not enter really enter the equation.

Yum.. soft boiled egg plus rye bread for me and a grapefruit, a glass of kefir and two slices of rye toast plus new butter for her, plus two mugs of black coffee.

New butter being from a never before tried butter supplier. Lincolnshire Poacher is the company's name, they were the next door stall to Ellie's Dairy yesterday at the Marylebone Farmer's Farmer.

Armed with that in her tummy she left early for the allotment. 

Pruning fifty trees takes a lot of time and effort! The growth on all the trees has been spectacular this year and there are a couple that have grown so tall she will have to borrow kind Andrew's ladder, as hers was stolen in the last shed break-in.. grrrr.

As previously written, there is not a sweet cherry to be seen on any of the trees, the Morello and the Montmorency (which are both sour cherries) trees have a few but not enough to make a pie with! Another grrrr! As she does love those cherries.

Miss Victoria plum is not at all happy, for she is covered in a cloud of tiny, tiny white flies, this is the first time this has ever happened, and there is not much fruit to be seen either.

It is a good thing Miss Seneca plum is covered in her fruit, is it not!

The pepper and courgette plants that she planted on Saturday were all happy, she gave two big buckets of water to each plant as she won't be back out there again until Wednesday.

Then it was time to pick produce for us.

Yum.. baby mange tout, french beans and broad beans aka fava. We like them as short or shorter than her little finger. This is our favourite supper at the moment and it might be yours too when you read what it is!

We look for the big beef tomatoes in the market and we look for Italian or Spanish ones to buy, yes, I know the Isle of Wight grow them but they, at this time of year, have NO taste because they are green house tomatoes and they have had no sun to bake them into ripeness! Whereas the Italian and the Spanish have had lots of sun and so they are very tasty.. slurp.

She grows LOTS of Basil on the front wall at home, you can never have enough of this delicious herb and she grows the Genovese variety plus others but most of the tubs are full of Genovese.

A fat ripe beef tomato is sliced, not too thinly, onto a plate, the basil is torn up and put on top, then a generous helping of fresh white goaty Curd is sprinkled on top, followed by a small amount of good olive oil, some black pepper and sea salt.

This disappears straight down out throats, yes, mine too! I love a good tomato and cannot wait for our fat little yellow cherry tommies to grow.

Whilst we are eating this, a small pan of water is put onto boil and when it is at full boil, the peas and beans are added, we finish the tomato, strain the peas and beans, they will have had NO more than a minute in the water, then they are put onto the plate with the remains of the oil and cheese from the tomatoes.

She drinks a large glass of kefir with a shot of pure beet juice with this.

Slurp-the-durp.. No wonder she has decreased in size, for it is not a very fattening supper, is it?

We will sleep breathing sweetly perfumed air tonight! She was given a glorious bunch of Sweet Peas and they are in a pretty glass vase in our bedroom, they have such a unique smell, the whole flat smells of them and people on the bus coming home sniffed and asked her if she had them in her basket.

Stuff to do in the morning and then to the shop in the afternoon for a few hours.

Early bed time. PipPip.. Dear Readers.. PipPip.

GeeGee Parrot.
June 23rd, 2014.

I do not have a great deal of gossip or news to give you..

Our life is quiet, nothing out of the ordinary is happening, summer has appeared, the sun is shining, everything at the garden, and at home, is growing at a fast pace, including those pesky weeds.

She has become a fan of Kefir. It is, Dear Readers, the most delicious thing to drink, I know this as I am allowed to drink some every day out of a spoon. 

It all started when she was given a bottle with some Kefir grains by Debbie of Ellie's Dairy, she brought them home and fed them to two pints of raw goaty milk. Where they hubbled and bubbled and brewed a scrummy fermented drink. Nothing that you buy in a shop will taste anything like the 'real' stuff that you can make at home.

She likes it chilled and neat for breakfast and chilled but mixed with a slug of pure beetroot juice for supper, oh slurp.

Now we have three large glass bottles lined up on the work surface, the open tops are covered with a linen cloth held in place by a stout elastic band, this allows the brew to breath. 

It all depends on the temperature and each bottle is different, the quickest fermentation was nineteen hours with a huge amount of whey showing at the bottom of the jar. The one next to it took thirty hours!

That's not the only stuff that is hubbly bubbling in YumYum HQ, there is a huge glass jar, a monster of a thing and it is full of chopped beetroot. She is making beetroot Kvass. 

She thinks beetroots are God's Gifts and this stuff sounds truly scrummydumptious. The first recipe she came across said to ferment it for two days, well, those two days came and went on the 20th that was two days ago, it is only today that there are just beginning to be a few, a very few, bubbles at the top of the liquid!

It looks as if the other recipes which talk of ten days are more accurate, I will report back but it is all good 'live' stuff indeed!

What else has she been doing? Gardening and working is the answer, I know it doesn't sound very exciting but we are quite content and happy. 

The red and the yellow pepper plants have gone and are planted at the allotment together with the courgette plants, we have passed the last frost date so all the plants can be planted.

It is easier to grow the tomatoes at home, they get stroked as she walks up the stairs, this movement makes for thick and strong stems and they can be watered twice or even three times a day if the day is hot and sunny.

The last things to be planted will be the purple sprouting brocolli and some lettuce seeds that she sewed in a seed tray, they will go under the mini fruit trees and benefit from the tiny amount of shade.

The Seneca plum tree who was completely covered in pure white blossom has out done herself and she must take a lot of the smaller ones off this coming week, otherwise damage will be done to some branches, they are bent to the floor with a magnificent crop of these superb plums.

The poor cherries, those days of frost and that evil wind which whipped off the blossom, mean there are very few fruits. It is very sad as all of the trees were absolutely covered in their pink blossoms and it would have been a brilliant harvest. But as they are the last to come into flower they missed that spell of fine weather that all of the other fruit trees benefitted from.

Ah well.. that's gardening and life for you.

What has happened this week end? Jack, as you know, died last September and Ros has had so much to deal with that the plots have rather taken a back seat. It takes her no time to whiz the big trimmer over the plots to keep them neat for her friend. Dear Jack, such a nice gardening friend, they all miss him.

She has tied the currant bushes up, she does this just before she wraps them in the nylon bags. She admits they do look funny but at least WE get to pick the fruit instead of those greedy fat pigeons. She tells them to go and eat the elderberries but they take no notice and keep casting their beady eyes on our currants.

June.. this means it is time to prune the stone fruit trees and to give the pip fruit trees a light prune to shorten this years new growth.

The figs have all been pruned and yippee.. finally miss Violetta fig has decided to grow! She was grown especially for a really cold climate.. huh.. she was planted in the spring of 2012 and the last two winters nearly saw her turn her 'toes up', for she has never grown one leaf! But now she is in leaf with one minute fig! 

Meanwhile miss Greek Cypriot fig has never ever minded our cold winters and, bless her heart, is covered in fat figs!

But the raspberries ARE going to get the chop and to be dug out. They are showing a few fruits but far too few to justify the space that they occupy, so maybe the solar house will be built this autumn after all. 

We have a busy week ahead of us, well, she has a busy week, I get to loll about as grey parrots do.

She has to make a claim at the post office and to sort out stuff, work one day at the shop and she has a hospital test to go through on friday, which means no food for twenty four hours, rather her than me!

I don't know when I'll be back, long gone are the days of May when we posted every day but it will be some day this week, I hope.

PipPip.. Dear Readers.. PipPip..

GeeGee Parrot.
June 22nd, 2014

THERE WAS NOT A WHITE GOAT IN SIGHT.. THANK GOODNESS!

She keeps her emotions out of sight, in fact, most of the time they are so far out of sight that sometimes not even she knows what she is feeling.

We are going back to last Wednesday, when we got up at some unearthly hour so that she could go to the allotments to pick Rosemary and other herbs for the goats.

That was the plan, but 'life' had other plans for her, the radio told us about the traffic which was gridlocked and backed up along the roads to the Hogarth Roundabout.

This is exactly the route she would have to take, so quick think, did the goaty folk already know about the herbs? She thought not, they can have them a other day as a surprise.

And so she left at a more civilised hour to meet Debbie of Ellie's Dairy. But en route a quick stop at our very local Italian Deli produced some delicious things, like the biscotti that Joe in Ottawa has been promising us the recipe, for how many years is it now Joe? Two or three!


It was a snap of a journey, very quick District Line to Ealing Broadway and main line to Heathrow and her getting off at Hayes & Harlington and a ten minute walk brought her to a space with greenlawns, nice amounts of tree planting and smart office blocks.

And a parked up Goat trailer FULL of goaty folk and their mum.. aka Debbie.

She had not really thought of how she would feel about talking to a goat again after fifty years, she had just thought that would be a fun thing to do but not considered her emotional response to the situation.

She greeted Debbie and then peered into the back of the trailer to find Husky, a year old and a veteran at jaunting about like this, she is grey and white and very people friendly.

In the front were four little kids, a band of three little brothers of mixed colours and a little black boy with white edgings to his face and ears.

If she was capable of putting photos on to my Blog, you, Dear Readers, would be chuckling by now for they were all very cute indeed! 

She realised that she had been holding her breath because to see a Sanaan, which was the breed that Victoria was, would have set her back a pace or two by bringing back memories of a particularly unhappy period of her life.

But everything was ok, the day was warm, all the 'techy' folk were thrilled to see the goaty folk, Debbie sold some milk and cheese and then it was time to pack up and go home.

A very pleasant day out with non-humans!

The rest of the last few days has been very busy, she has been working in the shop and organising stuff at home to either donate, give away, put away or throw away! 

She is giving away a beautiful chair, it needs a bit of work by re-springing but it is a lovely piece of furniture and why is she giving it away, you ask? Well, she can't keep everything and it needs to go to someone who will love and use this chair and so it is off down to Brighton to go to Katy.

And IS summer here, what do you think? She was putting winter clothes away with anti-moth stuff when it, from being sunny and warm, plunged backwards and down into low temperatures again!

Saturday was overcast and chilly-billy, she had to go to pick up milk from Debbie at Balham midday on Saturday and it 'thought' about raining or doing a quick bit of thunderstorm all day and yesterday was not much better.

But time can always be profitably spent, if you get down to it and the next post will tell you about something she found in a cupboard!

So there you have it, a week of goats and stuff, nothing dramatic but a pleasant week none the less.

PipPip.. Dear Readers.. PipPip.

GeeGee Parrot.
June 16th, 2014.

OFF TO PICK HERBS FOR GOATY FOLK!

This post, Dear Readers, is literally a five-liner!

Blink-blink-yawn it is early and we are up at this unusual hour because she is going to the garden with WW to pick herbs to give to Husky and her goaty friends. I will tell you all about it tomorrow.

GeeGee Parrot.
June 11th, 2014.
Post Script: WW stands for Wicker Wheelie.

The Moscow State Circus has packed up and gone back on the road.

To where? She wondered when she saw that all the trailers and the big tent have gone. There is just the open space with not a sign left to show that the circus had ever been there.

They went on Saturday afternoon, it was a treat for Rebecca's birthday and she, along with her elder sister Georgia, four school friends, their mother, Tereza, and my mama went to see the Moscow State Circus.

There were no animal acts, the acts were of people doing extraordinarily clever things. The opening act was an acrobat / contortionist who was a marvel at getting his body to go into amaazing (deliberate spelling error) positions!

So that was Saturday, yesterday she went 'sarf of the river' to Brixton to rendezvous with Debbie of Ellie's Dairy.

She is a naughty woman that Debbie, she has got her 'hooked' on making fresh Kefir with her raw Goat milk, talk about scrummydumptious! And it makes her tummy behave, this is a major plus as her tummy misbehaves given half a chance, if the wind blows sideways or the wrong way at her.

The street where the Brixton Farmer's Market is located, each Sunday from 10.00am until 2.00pm, is directly opposite the old Bon Marche store, very close to Brixton Underground Station.

It was a lovely day yesterday, warm with a bit of a breeze, they sat, when not serving customers, on the big milk chiller boxes, drank coffee and ate Moroccan food, what a treat. 

She had taken Debbie a packet of Lebanese Seven Spice Mix, a tub of CousCous Spices, a bottle of her own home-made Vanilla Essence (this has been brewing since June 16th, 2011!), a just-dug up fresh Garlic and a weird looking Shallot.

She considers it her role in life to keep her friends, who do not have such easy access to all of the wonderful food shops that she frequents, supplied and stocked with delicious edible goodies. 

Barberries, White Mulberries, Freekeh, Sumac, Zatar (she lurves this), especially as this particular friend is a vegetarian. 

Pack up, time to go, this was very quick, Debbie fetched her van, loaded it up and off the two friends went, Debbie back to the farm and she to catch a bus up to Streatham Hill to go and see how the newly refurbished basement is coming along in her friends' shop, most of the stock is now on shelves downstairs.. it is lots of work.. expensive.. time consuming work!

Then it really was time to go home, poor old Wicker Wheelie was creaking a bit as he rolled along beside her, he was carrying a huge bucket which was full to the brim of bottles of goat's milk (eighteen pints) and a large tub of that delicious curd cheese which we both love so much.

Dear Wicker Wheelie, for she could never carry anything like the amount of stuff he carries for her so amiably.

BumpBump, down the stairs they came, I flew to the coat hooks in the hall to greet them. Wow, such a lot of milk!

She has several massive glass jars with screw lids, they originally held baby artichokes, she got them from our local Italian Delicatessen, they hold just over eight pints of fluid and they are absolutely the perfect containers for making Kefir.

They were washed and sterilised again, the new milk emptied into them, the Kefir Grains were taken out of the fridge where they had been waiting for their new milk and they were put into the jars, which will now sit out of the fridge for anywhere between twenty four to seventy two hours, to 'brew' for as Debbie said "it all depends on each batch and how fermented you like it".

Today was a glorious early morning and before the sun was even really up and about his business, she had watered all the plants outside and decided to go to the garden to make the two new beds.

It used to be a large single bed, she has enlarged it and made a path up the middle, this allows her access to a lovely rose tree and to have two raised beds.

They were dug over, de-stoned and weeded, then the contents of two big bags of well rotted horse manure were spread over the beds.

There are courgette and patty pan squash plants at home waiting to be planted out, they love horse manure and will do well in these beds.

What are not doing well are her climbing beans!
When was she there last? Not many days ago but between then and today, slimy slug and his evil brothers have decimated all of the bean plants! All that are left are some pathetic stalks looking very bereft and completely leafless. Grrrrr. 

They have not gone for the peas, only the french and the runner beans.. which we both love.. grrr.

But a most peculiarly nice thing has happened. We wrote about the raspberries growing so well and showing signs of a good crop. Well, today she saw that there were a few of both the red and the gold / yellow varieties ready to be picked! 

So she did and brought them home to show me, normally she eats them straight off the canes, so I have never ever actually seen one of the golden ones before.

So, has summer been and gone in the past two or three days? For these raspberries should not be ready for picking until late August, they are the 'Autumn' raspberries, what are they doing being ready to pick in the second week of June?

Glorious day, sunshine, very quiet, there were a couple of other people working their plots but no time to sit and chat and drink coffee, everyone is very busy-busy at this time of year. 

At five of the after noon clock, she was tired and done.

Tools away, herbs and four large artichokes were picked, a mixed bunch of peonies were cut and put into a bucket of water, she collected a bit pot for Tereza's lilac and, having locked up shed, she and Wicker Wheelie trundled their way to the bus stop.

What a lovely day but still even more lovely things were going to happen!

A bowl of cold freekeh with barberries and some cold chicken cut her pangs of hunger whilst a large, very fresh artichoke boiled in a pot along with the leaves and the long stem cut into fat chunks.

She eats the leaves and the artichoke, I eat the stem. I love this. Very tasty and good for me, I am sure.

Tomorrow is a volunteer work day, then she will go straight to the garden to pick herbs and branches of rosemary, for tomorrow she is, after a gap of fifty years, going to talk to a Goat.

No.. she has not lost the or any other plot, she last spoke to a goat, her Goat Victoria, in 1964, that was fifty years ago. Debbie is bring a trailer full of goaty folk up to Hayes on Wednesday and she is going there to meet Husky and her friends. 

Taking a bag of rosemary for them as a treat.. as you do.. when you haven't spoken to a goat for so long.

Then she has to go to Bartek in Streatham to pick us up some human goodies for the week.

There are three packages that have to go to our local Post Office, she has to collect a package from Mail Box Etc and a delivery has to go up to Piccadilly, all in all, it is shaping up to be a busy week folks and she has to, at some point in time, plant out the remainder of the seedlings that are tucked away at home.

The good news is that, as she is tapping this, some blissful soft rain is falling! After these two hot and sunny days, we need this and it is perfect for the two new beds which have just been dug over and covered with manure.

Time for me to go to bed. It is nearly a quarter to ten, this is way past my bed time and she is not far behind me I think.

PipPip.. Dear Readers.. PipPip.

GeeGee Parrot.
June 9th, 2014.

SAVANNAH & HER CREW ARE BACK.. THE GRASS IS GROWING & SO ARE OUR RASPBERRIES & PEAS!

Savannah's mother and she are friends from long-gone-years, way before her daughters, Savannah and Sienna, were born. 

She had had very major surgery in 1975 and her lovely surgeon recommended Jo as the person to whom she should go to get fit.

So every morning, five days a week for several months, she went to Granny's and either Jo or one of the two other instructors would take the class. Her body mended and the two became friends. 

Years went by, Jo married Ed Miller, had her two beautiful daughters, travelled the world and then came back to London and Jo and she met again in the strangest of ways and renewed their friendship. 

She is privy to a lot of friend's very personal stuff which she never has divulged to anyone else, for people's 'stuff' is just that, Dear Readers, it is their stuff, not yours to blab or blag about to other folk or, God forbid, to the press!


So she knew about Savannah's year in Panama but she also knew that Savannah was going to write an article in British Vogue about her and her family's 
stay there. 

Having worked for a publishing house, she knows that a magazine or newspaper take a very dim view if 'their' story, for which they have paid the writer, is written up before their publication goes on sale.

Having had lunch with Jo back in, was it January or February, she knew that Savannah was not planning to stay for 'ever and ever' in this Central South American country and indeed Jo had recounted to her recently the safe arrival back into her care of the family's pets, with the family due to arrive shortly afterwards.

The family are now back in the UK and Savannah has written an article which appeared in the UK's press today, so she is 'cleared' to tell you that they are all back, when a family is tight knit as these three woman are and with a situation as 'unusual' as where they were, well, it is bound to make most people 'homesick & family-sick' to some degree.

Back to mundane things like long grass which never stops growing and gardens.

Vroom, that lovely new grass trimmer and she had a good time last week. Whoosh and it was soon neat and tidy. There has been, as you are probably aware, lots of very wet rain but equally lots of very hot sunshine!

Vegetables have leapt into growth, the beans are a'winding their way around the bamboo sticks and reaching for the sky, the peas are twisting their strange tentacles onto the wire supports and the potato crop is going to be wonderful, if the size of their plants is anything to go by!

She has a large patch of autumn raspberries, last year's crop was dismal and she realised that the canes are twelve years old and so, this February, instead of cutting them down, which is what you are supposed to do, she left them so to make digging them up and out easier.

She was going to erect a Solar green house in their place and plant new canes elsewhere. But what is this! Well, fiddle-the-diddle! They are all bigger than ever and looking very fat, happy and are covered in baby fruits! 

So watch that space, we might have a really great crop of these delicious fruits of both the red and yellow varities. 

We will have a great, probably our best ever crop of blackberries. Yes, indeed and of figs and apples and pears and plums and pluots, in fact, all the fruit trees and bushes this year are absolutely covered in fruit, all that is, except the cherry trees! 

They came into blossom just at the same time as we had that gruesome weather in early April and with the freezing frosts, rain and strong wind, the blossom did not stand a chance, there will not be an abundance of these glorious fruits this year. On one tree, there is not a single fruit to be seen! 

But at least they are not our livelihod, there is dire news from Turkey, for they have had the same appalling weather conditions which has devastated their apricot harvest. 

They have lost a huge percentage of the crop, those delicious dried fruits will be very scarce this coming winter, poor farmers.

She has had a very happy week-end. It is too late now to tell you about the visit to the Moscow State Circus with Tereza and six 'smallish' people and other such exciting things and places such as Brixton Market and, of Kefir and Popcorn, her two new addictions!

I will be back soon. I know that I did not post for seven days but last week, for which I apologise for the lack of no new news, was a 'strange' week. It, and we, were discombobulated (to put it politely).

But that's all gone, thank goodness. I have Tales to tell of weird and wonderful things. I hope you, Dear Readers, are fit and happy and healthy and if you are, be joyful and kind and thankful, for not everyone is!

PipPip, Dear Readers, PipPip.

GeeGee Parrot.
June 8th, 2014.

PILES OF DVD'S.. HIDING IN A CUPBOARD.

Did you know, Dear Readers, that your tv or dvd player can be made to play and view ALL dvd's?

The makers make dvd's for different regions but if you enter your television or dvd player's serial or model number into a search engine, you can find the code to de-programme your equipment so that it can play all region dvd's. 

She has a charming American friend who is a film addict and she has sent us a huge number of truly wonderful films, they are American films (which I believe is Region 1) and so she got the code which enabled her to 'unlock' her tv to play all regions. 

But they are stacked up in a cupboard as there is 'no room in the inn' on a shelf and there are lots that she hasn't seen yet.

Many posts ago, I wrote about her doing someone else's kitchen garden and the necessary sequence of events.

You think about something, you realise, yes, it would be very useful to have it (in our case extra shelves). So you.

Decide what you want, plan it, measure, write the measurements down, check your measurements, double check them, purchase supplies needed, bring them home and execute the plan, if you can't do it yourself, find someone who is reliable and good at their job to do it for you.

In our case, she has used Power Tools ever since she was a young teenager and has both electric and battery operated drills, plus all the various bits needed for drilling masonry, wood etc.

Lolling on her bed studying the insides of her eyelids as per a pal's instructions, made her think about a certain film. Huh, she thought, I've got that and have never watched it!

Now where could she build shelves for dvd's and there, literally, right in front of her was the perfect spot, where the television and the dvd player sit on a little table would be the perfect place for four long shelves! 

Eureeka. 

Measure the height of the bedside cupboard with book shelves above it, measure and make a mark on wall for the top shelf, 140cm is a good length. The three lower shelves need to be shorter to allow the cupboard doors to open easily. 

Check measurements. Go and look in the store cupboard for the shelf brackets which made the old bookcase in the hall. 

Brilliant, they are the right length, She took one with her and off she and Wicker Wheelie trundled on a 391 bus to B&Q to see if they still made the same upright supports to fit these brackets.

Indeed, they do! So four supports of a metre length slid into WW, along with the correct screws and a packet of the smallest rawl plugs for another job that has to done.

That was on Friday, a quick rootle in the store cupboard produced an old shelf, the spirit level and the power drill.

They were put together in a box with the things from B&Q and she said to herself "a little job for Sunday", for she knew she was going to be too busy to do it the next day, which was Saturday.

Why was she going to be too busy to put the supports up on Saturday? Well, she was going to the Farmer's Market in Balham to see Debbie, aka Goaty Mum, she had been told where to find a good, but not too expensive, De-Humifier, we needed fruit and it was the last time she thought she'd get to see Calvin, her old friend from Homebase on the Warwick Road which is closing.

Saturday promised to be a full day and it was!

Come back later to read about delicious Albanian Cheesecake and Pretzels, Goaty Kefir Grains and all about Calvin's new job in my next post.

Me, I am plum tuckered out by all the shenanigans that have been going on or have been discussed or measured or planned in this joint! 

And, she has been wrapping 'things' in pretty paper and bags, no, of course, I cannot tell you what they are / were, they're birthday presents for people who read my Blog!

GeeGee Parrot.
June 1st, 2014.
Post Script: Sorry, no ditties for the First of June.