SORRY BUT I WON'T BE POSTING AGAIN FOR A WHILE..

I am in jail and she's under a tremendous amount of stress and strain.

You all know she's waiting for the UltraSound, it is taking place on August 2nd and then they will decide to operate or not. That's quite enough to drive anyone a bit loopy.. and on the other situation.

The beastly bunch as she calls the thugs in suits who are the bullies from hell, sadly she can't have an officer from the Town Hall with her every time these men roll down her steps, so they march in and are generally quite evil..

And they've delayed the start of the building works, yet again, so this time she has taken the wise precaution of alerting her kind friend from Studio Days, he is a solicitor whose speciality, as the senior memeber of one of the citys' oldest law firms, is property law. They met two years ago when one of the thugs suggested he buy her out.. for a pittance. She said not one word but hot-footed it straight into the city.

And was told the legal stuff about surrendering a statuatory confirmed tenancy, she'd been in the flat then 39 years, now 41 years. And how much exactly her tenancy was worth.. interesting enough, the thug had suggested nothing resembling one tenth of this figure.

Friend told her to keep mouth shut.. "say not one word" he said.. "for he'll be back again and this time, we'll make up our minds if the offer is good enough" and I'll handle him for you.. besides, I know exactly who he is..

So she's alerted him that they are playing silly buggers and that she might need him to act for her. But it is all quite unpleasant and she has to keep her mouth shut (grr) and deal with it. Talk about 'ag & naus'. This means aggravation & nausea to those of you unfamiliar with Cockney rhyming slang.

Anyway, here I am, not at home.. she's got another meeting on Monday with one lot of thugs and then the surveyor thug, a two faced bastard if ever there was one, is back here again on the 21st to take photos of the room.. he'll have a shock! For rather than sit in fear, she's dusted and washed everything, bought new paint from Leylands and painted the cupboards (same colour), the bookcase and the radiator.

Everything looks fresh and clean and tidy.. which is exactly how she expects to find it when she comes back in here when they've finished the works.. but they're in for a very unpleasant shock. For behind a cupboard which is against the wall to the next house, the wall is wet, a piece of lining paper came off in her hand like as if she had only just stuck it up there.

This is the cupboard which she's emptied and which they have to move as they need to look at the plaster but they have no idea, as to yet, that it is wet. Ah well, they'll find out, won't they?

She's moving out on July 28th, then on the 29th Messrs Pickfords are coming to take away all the bedroom furniture, her bed and her clothes and keep them safe for the length of time these building works are going to take. The man from Pickfords was incredibly helpful and nice.

She's going into a flat literally just across the road in the next garden square.. a fourth floor flat but with a lift, you'll be pleased to here, as is her aorta!

Friends are being so kind. Lovely Pat is absolutely refusing to let her go to UltraSound by herself, her GP Dr. Katherine rings her regularly to see how she is coping with the stress of her bulging aorta and the building situation.. it has, afterall, been going on since last November. Which is QUITE long enough, pull your fingers out and get an f'ing move on.

A couple of people are totally ignoring everything that is going on which is odd but their behaviour recently has been 'pretty weird' to say the least.. no more shall I or will she say on them.

Lovely Mr. Tom telephoned from the hospital last night to tell us that Bob was in theatre having a bigger heart operation done.. oi vey.. and then sent us an email to let us know that Bob was well, out of theatre and smiling.. more oi veys..

So.. stay happy and healthy out there all you guys and girls.. take care of your loved ones and tell them you love them. I'll be back but when.. I just don't know. God bless you y vayo con Dios.

GeeGee Parrot.
July 15th, 2016.

A BUSY DAY AT HOME..

Everything has to come out of her bedroom cupboards.. ugh.. most of the clothes are going to be packed in garment boxes and stored, the works are only for three / four weeks and she'll be working the allotments most days so she won't be needing or taking a lot of clothes with her.

But her shoes and bags etc are all staying here, so they had to be transferred into that poor back room. It gets worst by the hour! She, not so quietly, dreads the thought of the task of putting her home back together and just prays that they leave it as dust free as physically possible.

Her office cupboard had to be packed up, her fancy printer and main frame computer will stay here but the rest of the stuff has to be boxed up, likewise her books, discs and dvds, the television will be wrapped in a sheet and put next door.

The good news is.. she's under 9 & 1/2 stone! And that she's now received the date for her Aorta UltraSound. Now, if only she could sleep! But sleep, for her, is pretty elusive. Boring when you're scared and those sneaky, worrisome thoughts start whispering to your brain in the dark.

OI VEY.. is what I say!

Ok, what nice things have happened? The three sweet girls upstairs gave her a birthday tea party on Friday with two little cakes, a lemon and a chocolate. I wasn't allowed anywhere near the chocolate one but nibbled a fair bit of the lemon one which was very scrummydumptious indeed. I have never seen a cake before, they're like Golden Autumn Raspberries that I hear about but never actually get to eat!

And she had a fun thing happen on Saturday morning! She was down in the market and stopped to look at a 'junk' jewellery stall and saw.. to her absolute amazement.. a pair of Tiffany Sterling Silver hoop earrings! For no money.

Being her, she picked them up, they were very tarnished, and said "What's your best price?" The man, who hadn't a clue as to what he'd got, said "I'll take £4.00", so that's what she gave him!

She caught a bus home and cleaned them, put on different clothes and a bit of face and walked into Tiffany in Sloane Street with them and asked for a new travelling bag for her 1997 727 Fifth Avenue earrings. And asked the nice assistant to give the clasp on one of them a tweak.. they were duly tweaked and treated to a new bag..

They, therefore, were authenticated. People should do their research and not be idle! Fancy selling them at £4.00.. silly man.

Not a lot to report otherwise, we hope you're all well and enjoying your Summer, if you are having one? Ours is decidedly iffy.. we have only got another six weeks left and have yet to see any real sunshine or feel warm! But she won £25.00 on this weekends' lottery with three numbers. So that pays for a bit of gas.. yes, there have been some very cold and damp days. Very dreary indeed.

She has to take her proper camera to a Canon stockist tomorrow, it was very happily taking lots of photographs, with new batteries in it, when suddenly it said 'Change Batteries' and died.. and it won't start / go on again! Grrr.. wretched thing.

GeeGee Parrot.
July 10th, 2016.

7th July, her birthday.

And greetings to you all, I did tell you in the postscript of my last post that there was another important date coming up and here it is.. aka her birthday! Route 66 kids.. work that out!

What have we got planned? A seriously important meeting with surveyors, builders etc is happening at 11.00am this morning to finalise all the plans for building works which are supposedly starting July 25th. Grim, our pretty back room is a depository, a nightmare but thank goodness we have that space.

Dearest Dean is coming with his tool kit on next Monday to fit two locks, one for her walk-in clothes cupboard where she has also put stuff and one for the back room. The doors will be covered with plastic sheeting and masking tape.

Brick dust is something you don't want to have getting onto your clothes or upholstered furniture! And there's going to be a lot of that flying about as they're taking the plaster off the walls and hacking out damaged bricks.. ugh.. our poor home. I'm in jail this morning whilst they poke about and leave doors open etc.

She's had a couple of happy days leading up to today. A lovelylovely lunch with a dear elderly friend in her home the day before yesterday, this was such a happy time for both of them.

And an equally happy day yesterday at RackSpace with Debbie, lots of lubbly-jubbly cheese  and four 6 week old kids. They are funny little people young kids and this lot were no exception! Oh.. And the sun shone!

Something is going on later today to celebrate the actual day with friends who rang last week and said "Hey, it's the 7th of the 7th next Thursday and let's do this", we're going to have supper tonight in their house and will be speaking to Fanny at some point who is in Mallorca.

Birthday tea with Tereza and the girls on Friday after she has been to Borough. Joe has the Borough Market Council meeting so she said she'll cover for him whilst he goes to that. Then it is the weekend and the week is over! Poof.. just like that, another year has gone by in a flash!

So.. we'll wait and see what the post brings! Postman and those nice men at MailBox have already given her several things relating to today.. I hope I get cards like she has! HintHint!

GeeGee Parrot.
July 7th, 2016.
PostScript: Today is Marlowe, Siena's daughter, birthday.. "Happy third birthday little twin."

WE SAY WELCOME TO OUR DEAREST FRIEND.. GAYLE (MATSON).

Oh, Dear Readers, you have NO idea how happy I am! After having been given scary news yesterday about her enlarged Abdominal Aorta, who knew such a thing existed, she has had a lovely day.

Rather than sitting in a heap snivelling and dripping hot, salty wet tears onto me at home, she picked herself up out of bed at some hideously early hour, cooked me my boiled egg and took herself off to have the blood tests on an empty tumtum.. aka nil by mouth.

Then went onto the second medical appointment of the day and after that, she came home. She gave me more YumYum and refilled my swimming pool (extra large ceramic bowl full of water into which I KNOW she sneaks that anti-plucking homeopathic medicine).

She donned a waterproof jacket 'cos it was raining, are we ever going to have any sun this Summer? She plundered chilly white larder.. aka fridge.. of a large but slightly unusual tortilla and high-tailed it off to Ellie's Dairy at Borough Market. Anyone would think she works for this company!

But if you're a little bit sad around the edges AND NOT wanting to go down that slippery slope into a depressed state, you do as Liza sang and THAT, Dear Readers.. is to go to the cabaret and Borough Market with its' thousands of tourists along with charming regulars, is a Cabaret with a Capital C!

So off she went with her tortilla to see Joe and Roy, he runs the Caerphilly Cheese stall which is next door to Ellies. So what with these two nice men and lots of funny, both peculiar and haha, customers, the time flew! There was method in her madness!

She returned home in pouring rain.. it will be no more that 9 degrees tonight.. that's a bit of a damp squid for the first night of July, isn't it? Which, of course, you realise is the second of the three months that we have for Summer. The first month being June, which was diabolical.. wet and dismal beyond belief.. old Slimy Slug has been doing his worst and eating everything in sight and what he hasn't eaten, rain and wind have blown into the next door field!

A pox on this filthy British weather!

So we have had supper.. slurpy turkey with onions and garlic! And have retreated to her bed and I'm sitting in pole position on her head making sure with my birds' eye view that she doesn't slip anything into / onto my blog that shouldn't be there.

But now to the title of this post.. many years ago, in 1990, she met a lovelylovely woman called Gayle Matson. They became friends. Gayle moved back to Chicago after about six years but they've kept in touch. Letters, post / Christmas cards etc, telephone calls.. but Gayle didn't know about my blog (!!) shock horror! because she hadn't got an email address.

However, after a call that my mum made this last week to Gayle, a friend of Gayles' called Susan has come to our rescue and is allowing Gayle access to the internet through HER email address and computer until Gayle gets an email address set up.

And so here we are! Now she can read as much as she wants to about what we, my mum and I, get up to, and what is happening in London, a city that Gayle and her lovely husband Norman lived in for those six veryvery happy years in the '90s.

"Welcome dearest Gayle.. yes sweetie, we surely did have a lot of fun in that six years, did we not!"

GeeGee Parrot.
July 1st, 2016.
PostScript: MY birthday is on the 29th of THIS month but there's another important date coming up veryvery soon, like within the week, I hope for your sakes that you remember what it is!