EAT AN APPLE EVERY DAY.. GET TO BED BY THREE..

Golly gosh! Have you heard about the tornado which ripped through Wales and Shrewsbury earlier this afternoon? Blimey! And those winds of over 95 mph! Cor blimey! Well, she's just looked outside and is exceedingly glad that she didn't go to the garden.. aka the allotment.. earlier, for it's gusting and busting a gale out there folks, trees are being battered and leaves are a'tumbling down like snow in a blizzard.

She experienced a tornado at the allotment several years ago, it came a'prancing across Dukes Meadows dancing its' evil twisty dance, hit the structure behind Little Shed and, although this was made of 4" x 4" and 2" x 2" wood, it ripped it apart as if it was a piece of paper and the corrugated roof, plus its' timbers with long screws and nails all sticking out, came sailing through the air in her direction.

Luckily Old Joe was facing that way and yelled "down" and they hit the ground as it flew over them and crash landed the other side of the railway track.

"That was a bit close" said Old Joe "I think we need a cup of very strong tea" and off up the track they went to his big shed where he had rigged up solar panels and a battery with a drip feed. Tea and crumpets, just the thing when you've been that close to being decapitated by your own shed's roof!

What's been going on here today, well, numpty left, they have agreed to leave the gaping hole in the floor open in order for the wet concrete to dry out. Having had what heat that was in our home disappear out of the front door and up the stairs, never to be seen again, she retired to bed and I retired to the top of her head.

It is, after all, certainly the comfiest place to be and certainly the warmest, for her head is toasty and that pleases me greatly as my toes are then very cosy toes.

What have we eaten? Ah, it was truly scrummydumptious indeed! Lentils with carrots, garlic, sweet potatoes, onions and bits of brocolli stalk were reheated in a large frying pan together with a couple of frozen vegetable stock cubes. Then she added three tasty looking sausges from our LubblyJubbly butcher.

If asked, he will make them with no added potato or bread fillings (for people who are allergic to such things) and she buys and freezes them. So three sausges, which had defrosted over night, were added to the pan and cooked over a low heat.

A good dollop of hot and spicy sauce was just what was needed to give the dish a goodly bit of 'ZIP' then we settled down to eat it with much pleasure, it was followed by an equally scrumptious Cox. How we love this variety of apple.

So you see.. even after all these years, she's still following Bill's instructions.. which were in the words of the song.. 'Button up your overcoat.. Eat an apple every day.. get to bed by three.. but he didn't specify which three of the clock he meant!

You'll only know what I am talking about if you've read that particular post.

GeeGee Parrot.
November 17th, 2016.

BUTTON UP YOUR OVERCOAT.. AND WHY IT IS WISE TO HAVE A KNOB ON YOUR FRONT (OR BACK) DOOR!

When the weather turns chillybilly. One should grow extra feathers or in human terms, put another layer of clothing on. The sky is pale grey, the temperature low, heading downwards fast and numpty number one is back which means the front door is open, I'm shut in the bedroom and any heat that was in our home is fast vanishing up our steps and skipping off down the street.

'Drrrrrr' was the noise coming from our bathroom as he dug up the concrete floor, to find, a never before seen pipe! Goodness knows how many other pipes are underneath this thick concrete flooring. She was intensely gratified to see this as she KNOWS he and the landlord thought she was somehow responsible for the large damp patch which steadily grew bigger day by day.

So for him to find, underneath a thick layer of blue flooring plastic, a huge amount of wet concrete validates her saying that she thinks that it is coming from an old down pipe that wasn't disconnected properly. Anyway, he has gone off to get a pipe freezing kit, what truly magical stuff this is!

Onto much more interesting, for you, things! For I'm sure that you must be as bored as we are with the ongoing subject of our wet bathroom floor.

Sadly, she got her weeks muddled up, so no Chinese YumYum for her today, therefore, no Parrot pouch for me. (Dogs have bags, Parrots have pouches, gottit?)

This means that she has an empty space in her day, she cannot do anything in the manner of housework, the kitchen is clean and tidy, she certainly cannot do any washing or painting nor collect the red lantern as grumpy elder brother of her lovely lampmaker says it is not finished yet.

Ah well, she's drilled into ceilings before and as luck would have it, she bought a pack of new masonry bits only yesterday, so if it isn't ready by the time the floor is finished and numpty leaves, well, she'll just have to do the hard wiring herself. When hard wiring into the mains, she ALWAYS turns off the power by throwing the mains switch to OFF! That way she can't electrocute herself.

However, old Mr. Sun has just appeared! Now, this is a double edged sword! For on one side, it makes our bedroom nice and light but on the other, she might disappear to the garden without me. Not that I would actually like to go on this jaunt, for you see, I don't have the front section of my overcoat finished yet and, therefore, I cannot do up any buttons and it doesn't look as if it's very warm out there.

And why should you have a knob on your front or back door.. well.. if you have generous friends who travel and bring you back delicious goodies, where are they going to put them? On the doorstep? Certainly not, the mice would run off with them!

"Thank you Tereza for those very delicious goodies".

GeeGee Parrot.
November 17th, 2016.
PostScript: After publishing this just before 12.30, the clouds drew themselves over Mr. Sun like a dreary curtain and Mr. Sky is growing darker minute by minute. There are splash marks on our steps and heavy rain is forecasted. All thoughts of gardening have been put aside and she has retreated into our bedroom.

The sitting room, if you're up to date with my blog, is a 'No Go Zone', she hasn't even opened its' door for at least a month and as it's more comfy and a great deal warmer to snuggle under bedclothes, that's where she is and I am snuggled down on top of her head.

Which means we both have toasty toes! 

LUCKY BUSTER BOXER DOG, THE ANIMALS SHOWED HIM HOW TO BOUNCE BUT SHE'S TOO BIG TO SHOW ME HOW TO SWING!

It's Winter, we watch more television in Winter which is how we have come to see the advert from John Lewis which features Buster the Boxer dog, who plays on the trampoline after watching all the wild animals playing on it on Christmas Eve.

He saw them through the window and realised it would be such fun to bounce about.. well, today she saw a swing which she thought that I would love to have to swing on. Except I am a silly widget and have to be shown that new toys aren't scary and the problem is that it's just a tad too small for her to swing on to show me how to swing.

Hello, are you up here with me or lolling about at the back of the class fast asleep? Anyway, there it is.. big, new and scary in my night cage! Luckily it's not yet time for her to say the dreaded words "GeeGee, it's bedtime", ugh.. they send me into a blue funk every night. So I have a couple of hours to wish it away, fat chance, I saw her screwing it to the bars.. ah well, such is life.

What's been a going on today? Not a lot I'm afraid, well, she's been out and about but WW stayed home with me and she only took a small basket so I knew she wasn't planning on going anywhere exciting.

She came home with DIY tools, a pack of masonry bits for her power drill, masking tape, sheets of very fine sandpaper and a packet of dried chick peas. They are for my hummus and need to be soaked before being boiled.

I think she mainlines gin, except I've sniffed and there's no smell of juniper! What can it be, she walks around happy as Larry and this is most surprising as she, correction, we are experiencing extraordinary times with these numpty builders not correctly tackling the problem of our wet bathroom floor.

Several friends are going through very tough times physically and emotionally and she was rocked back on her heels by her friend dying two weeks ago. However, she cannot improve other peoples lot, as really all a friend can do is to be supportive and an ear if people want to talk.

So tomorrow, yet again, numpty is coming back and yet again, I shall be locked in the bedroom for the duration of his stay. She has to go out as soon as he arrives to go and collect the red lantern which her lovely lamp maker has made into a splendid electric light. Numpty will drill the ceiling, put in plugs and fix the ceiling rose, then he'll hard wire the lantern into the mains.

Then she and Tereza are going out for lunch, I bet they go 'Chinese', I hope so and that she brings me back a Parrot Pouch, I love Chinese yumyum. Chopchop.. Hullyhully.

GeeGee Parrot.
November 16th, 2016.

FIFTY WAYS TO LEAVE A LOVER OR TO GET TO THE WEMBLEY IKEA!

Don't be foolish! She's much too old and sensible to even think of having a lover, besides, it would take her attention away from me and the garden and WE can't have that, can we!

I think she's nipping at the gin, for she's remarkably happy and sings, hums and whistles all day long, which is a flippin' miracle as this place.. aka our home is a tip! A right tip! There's stuff everywhere which shouldn't be there, that four metre vinyl snake is still in the hall, he's been joined by the pretty rug which is now a fatter shorter snake.

Today was the day the Environmental Health Officer came with his all singing, all dancing damp measure, he greeted the numpty and the other numpty from the landlord's office and stuck the measure into the new screed where it looked suspiciously 'dark'.

The lights ran up the scale to bright red! Ting! Bingo! Wet floor.. so the screed has to come up and a flippin' big hole has to be dug down in order to find out WHERE this wretched water is coming from. The walls are as dry as one of my old bones, so it's rising damp.. oh.. quelle bummer.

But she, in this new strange state of mind, just smiled and nodded and thought happy thoughts about how pretty her little 'Dolls House' will be when it's finished. Which, obviously, is not going to be soon!

They all left, she grinned a particularly wolfy grin and taking her fat torch, went into the fuse room and plunged the flat into darkness and silence, we always have the radio on at home. Then she went into the bathroom, put the torch in her teeth, picked up a flat headed screwdriver, disconnected the lamp wires from a junction box, then stripped the wires out of the front of the bathroom mirror.

Having wrapped masking tape around the wires, she went back into the fuse room and threw the main fuse back on. Action.. lights,. music! And brought out with her a large tin of satinwood brilliant white wood paint, a paint brush, a tub of wood filler, a palette knife, several sheets of 120 and 180 grade sandpaper and a small pair of steps.

She rubbed the entire surface of the mirror's frame with sandpaper, then filled in the holes left by the previous lights. Left the wood filler to dry, after lightly sanding these places, she applied a fine coat of paint. It's always better to apply several fine coats of paint than one heavy coat.

This was sanded down again when dry with a piece of 180 grade sand paper, she is, after all, her father's daughter and she grew up watching him painting everything that didn't move. And those things that did move, like birds, he sketched or painted but in a different style!

You might wonder why she is removing perfectly good lights from this huge mirror? It is all due to EU regulations, within a certain distance of water, as in bath or shower, you have to have a certain type of lights and the old ones didn't conform to the new regulations.

Where do you find such 'exotic' lights? Yes, you can find them if you hunt really hard in John Lewis for mega bucks or specialised bathroom shops, but she knew of another place.. Ikea.. they are brilliant at stuff like this and ALL of their bathroom lights conform to Zone 1 regulations.

So off she went.. to Ikea at Wembley.

Except it isn't at Wembley.. it is miles away from Wembley, she hopped a 206 bus and trundled for ever and a day, eventually arriving at a MONSTER Tesco and Ikea. Sure enough, she found just what she wanted, so she purchased three sets of the lights and a charming metal clock in the shape of a keyhole. A perfect clock for a bathroom, small and red. Just right for a Dolls House.

Then she and WW trundled out to the bus stop and was advised to take a 224 back.

Well, this went all around the houses but the trip, well it was riveting! For she has long known of a Chinese wholesale supply market in north London but never of its' exact location.. and yippee-duda, there it was! Bang opposite a MEGA monster Sainsburys at Alperton! However, the journey took a very long time.

However, further along on this jaunt she spied a Bartek Express! It is run, she knows by the same family as the one that she frequents in Streatham.. my dear Dear Readers! The places she gets to, the swag that WW drags home but now.. we must return to the title of this post.

For it was only whilst waiting for a train at Wenbley Park.. Jubilee Line to Green Park and a bus home.. that she realised that Harlesden Station on the Bakerloo Line is MUCH nearer to the Ikea store and so she could train to Harlesden, bus it to Ikea which is only about seven bus stops, plunder Ikea, hop back onto a 224 to the Chinese supply place, eat Chinese yumyum, plunder their spices and ginger, hop back onto the bus back to Harlesden and be back home in time for next year!

So there are several ways to Ikea.. but you've got to 'hop on the bus Gus..'

GeeGee Parrot.
November 15th, 2016.
PostScript: With thanks to Paul Simon.

GOD'S GIFTS.

Freezing rain, frost, chillybilly nights. Yes, they are a strange list of things to be classified as gifts from God but she is a gardener and it is now Autumn aka Fall in the USA. And any gardener worth their treasured hand fork knows that we need these conditions at this time of year to work their magic.

For summer is not kind to a garden, yes, it gives sunlight and warmth and plants grow but think about the soil? It gets baked and becomes hard. So praise please for Mr. Jack with his icy fingers who comes along and busts up your soil, so that precious rain can enter and get far down into its' lower regions where the roots of trees and bushes are.

Where garlic was last year she's planting beans, they will put back nitrogen into the soil, it is called crop rotation and is quite easy to follow, everything gets planted in the next bed.

She left here late yesterday because there had been a morning full of tomfoolery! Much playing on her bed which is her way of getting me to eat a protein breakfast of different types of nuts.. brazils, there's a womderfully silly joke about them, one day I'll get her to tell it. Then mice-poisonous walnuts, so good for the brain, cashews and almonds. Slurp-the-durp!

Then we went off to YumYum HQ and I had hummus, lubbly-jubbly stuff full of chickpeas, sesame paste, oil and garlic.. and my boiled egg. Burp!

She climbed into thin jeans and her waterproof leggings, socks, boots, t.shirt, a jerkin made of fleece and a jacket and picked up her garlics and packets, I got kissed on Beaky and told to be a 'good girl'. I had no plans not to be, I was so full, I could hardly flap to get from pillar to post!

Traffic was light, she was there in good time and met Rose, another long time plot holder who is Dirty Girty's mum. Dirty Girty is a charming Jack Russell terrier, she and I are old friends and she is a ratter and mouser extraordinaire! They chatted for a few minutes and then parted to go and do serious work!

Wretched trimmer actually fired! And allowed her to cut most of the long grass inside the plots and to do the verges outside. Then it stopped, just when she wanted it to do her parking space! Grrr.

Never mind, lots of other work to do. The soil in the new garlic bed was wonderful! It had been so hard that a big fork wouldn't go all the way in two weeks ago but now, WOW, with a bit of welly, the fork went all the way down into the earth with no problem and was perfect!

Five rows of garlic in this one bed, then she ran out of garlic and went onto dig over the broad bean, aka fava beans, bed. Again, perfect conditions. She'd forgotten to take bed markers, so collected up her tools and went to pick roses.

PICK ROSES! Yes, I heard you, there were lots of roses in her basket when she came home! To name a few: Compassion, Peace, Margaret Merrill and a beautiful pink Bourdon rose whose name she's forgotten. These are now in a glass vase in our bedroom, so you see, there are many gifts to be received at this time of year but I forgot to tell you about the last one.

That it was a glorious autumnal day, the sky was blue, the light was bright, the sun was shining and it was warm, not Summer warm but Autumn warm. The perfect day to be a gardener.

GeeGee Parrot.
November 14th, 2016.

A WET CONCRETE FLOOR & THE DEATH OF A FRIEND.

OI VEY.. what a beastly wretched month this is proving to be. We have wet patches in the screed floor which is confusing everyone, for WHERE is this wetness coming from? But there they are, showing up very dark in the pale grey floor. So the vinyl flooring is still pretending to be a fat snake lying in the hall.

Brian, the gas checking man, came last Monday to look at the boiler, this got the all clear but the gas cooker didn't! It failed and so she was warned not to use the front right hand burner and Brian said he would come today to install a new one.

She went out to see friends on Wednesday, it was chucking it down with rain and cold so I declined the invitation to join her on this jaunt and stayed behind and I was mighty glad I did for she came home whinging about the bitterness of the wind.

As I do not have many underclothes on yet, they're coming through but slowly, I am fussy about my jaunts and I certainly don't want to go out to the plots until next year as the thought of being in a cage in little shed does not fill me with glee!

One of the numpties came again today to see if any clue could be uncovered as to why the 'flippin' floor' is still wet. Then the old cooker was dis-connected from the gas and it was two-manhandled out of the flat and the new one put in. It's tiny! Oh dear, she said many rude words! The grill, which she never uses, is placed between the oven and the gas rings, this means that the oven is just minute!

This goes someway to explain why level of chaos and stress in our home is still at Everest heights!

As she explained to a friend' who was unwise enough to say "what exactly is happening?", she was told.. "everything is out of the bathroom and in the bedroom, therefore, things that should be in the bedroom are in the sitting room, into which I haven't been for almost four months. I sit on either the kitchen sink or the bed.. life is 'strange' to put it politely".

And in case she wasn't sad or unhappy enough, she then received the dreadful news from an old dear friend that her equally dear husband died last Friday.. oi vey.

So we are extremely thankful for what we have, for we know that some of our friends and other people are going through really tough times. We know that the floor will be sorted sooner or later and we have teams of medics who take such good care of her and keep her stable and my 'clothes' will grow back as long.. as I don't nibble them.

There you have it folks.. our first post of the eleventh month written on the eleventh day.

GeeGee Parrot.
November 11, 2016.

GOODBYE OCTOBER.. WE ARE VERY PLEASED TO SEE YOU GO.

I know, I know.. I haven't posted for ages but we, Dear Readers, have had a reallyreally horrid month and she still has a lot of hard work ahead of her. She, of course, being my poor mum.

We have had yet more builders in the flat, the front door has been open all day long and that meant I was confined to our bedroom, so no zoom-a-zooming around for me! Three LONG weeks they were here.

And because they were not her team of builders, she kept her mouth shut and did not fire off emails to the landlord on the stupidity of his workers.. yes, Dear Readers, she practised our favourite saying 'RESTRAINT OF TONGUE & PEN'.

But, of course, stupidity as in cutting corners in building work always comes around and bites you in your bum! HeeHee.. and sure enough the screed floor, which should have been placed immediately after the plumbing was finished and before the woodwork, wasn't done then.

Oh no.. for old cheapo builder only laid the screed just upto the base of the basin units, not all the way underneath them and sure enough old sneaky damp is rising up and getting into the screed! Oh and by the way, photos and damp measures don't lie!

But getting back to October.. it has been a grim time, cold and dirty because of the before mentioned buildings works but it is always a 'painful' month. For Constance died in October and so did Bill, he died on the 30th several years ago, the same day as our most beloved Moley, aka Susan Sams, of Pine Bluff, Arkansas and another old friend Edgar Watkins of NYC and Fredericksburg, Texas.

Anyway, enough of all that doom, gloom and sadness, it's time to cheer up and get cracking at the allotments. Lots to do and chop and down and dig out. There are storage shelves and cupboards to be built in little shed and she wants to make storage rack units at the top for apples and onions that will be mouse or rat proof.

So now you see why she bought the genny.. what? You missed that? Yes, my Dear Readers, she found a petrol generator to give her power at the plots! Yeehaw! Well, you know she lurves power tools and she is after a couple of real toys.. I can't recall their names but you know them, they're things that go zzzzzm (with a hideous noise) through wood!

Back to home.. she found, for veryvery little money, the most wonderful red lantern last week, made of metal with proper glass panels with a fixed base and a door that opens, there are pineapples leaves at the top and a big ball with a handle, she is taking it to one of her magic guys to turn it into a brilliant hanging bathroom lamp.

With bathroom lamps water has to be avoided, as no water could get into this, she has done the sketch and a central column will come down with four light fittings which will take low voltage SES bulbs.. SES stands for small edison screw.

And she has dug out a never-used lamp, made of chrome with chromed mini antlers at the base and the built-in shade is metal, also in chrome. Very smart.. and snappy.. I haven't been allowed into the bathroom as everything has been painted and that means everywhere is wet!

This lamp, is by the way, at the other end of the room, well away from any water!

It's late.. old Cheapo has to come back tomorrow as he allowed a nail to remain in the floor and put the screed over it.. (!) now he has to dig it out as it would puncture our new flooring.

So Chirps to you all.. and we send the lovely Karen our bestest love and many hugs.

GeeGee Parrot.
October 31st, 2016.
All Souls Day.. Aka.. Halloween night.

SHOULD WE BE CALLING HER 'THE BOILER WOMAN'?

This is a very short post as I am laughing so much I might fall off it!

She was suddenly struck by the following..'For goodness sake, why am I being such a wimp? I come from a long line of mechanical & electrical engineers, I rebuilt a Goldring Lenco unit, I must surely be able to fix this wretched boiler?' So she went on-line to look at a website and there, sure enough, were instructions on how to fix our problem of zero pressure.

And having armed herself with a torch and removed me from her head, she went into the boiler cupboard and there, lo and behold, were the two valves. A quick turn to both of them into the FULL position and there was instantly the most intensely gratifying sound of water going somewhere!

The lever in the pressure valve swung up from 0 towards 2 and after switching on the boiler to heating and hot water, the unit stopped flashing E119 and showed the temperature! "GeeGee, I've done it, we can warm up the flat AND have a hot bath tonight.. oh, yubba-dubba-doo!", she cried.

No, she's not for hire, she's now doing what she should be doing which is emptying the cabinets in the bathroom, prior to woman-handling them into the old boiler room where they will do splendidly for storage of things that are vital, like spare Bissell vacuum bits and carpet shampoo, you know the sort of things that are of great importantance but that you don't use all the time.

Me, I'm safely out of harms way in yumyum high up on Goosie head. One of my favourite place to perch.. smelling bones in stock. Very slurpicious it smells too. Chirp.

GeeGee Parrot.
October 2nd, 2016.

OTHER RECIPES FOR TURKEY NECKS ARE PRETTY WEIRD, READ OURS!

Greetings from sunny London where here, in deepest Knightsbridge, we are not yet doing what we, or rather she, 'should' be doing, which is emptying the bathroom of its' contents. Oh no, we have been having much more fun in the yumyum HQ!

That fun has involved eating hard boiled eggs, drinking delicious coffee and stripping meat from those turkey necks I wrote about in the last post. Out of interest, she did a search on-line about turkey neck soup and up came all manner of ways of cooking them, none of which were like what she does.

So I decided that as ours is truly scrummydumptious and dead easy, I would ask her to share it with you.

Now, first up is to find the turkey necks! For a start, you will not find them in a supermarket, no mattter how 'SUPER' it is, they will not be there! Secondly, if you buy your meat from a supermarket, shame upon you! For it is these evil companies who have driven many a meat and or milk farmer to commit suicide let alone bankruptcy.

Go and find a butcher.. a proper butcher who knows his cuts of meat and can 'bone out' properly. Frequent them and get and take their advice, ask them for their 'specials', take your seasonings to them and ask them to make you some sausages, you can then freeze them and have delicious things to eat with no additives.

She frequents two butchers and you know their names if you read this blog regularly. Dickinsons in the North End Road, in Fulham are our local butcher and then up on Central Parade in Streatham is Bartek Express, aka the suppliers of IshPol.

She gets our turkey necks from Bartek. She has never seen them in Dickinsons, they do sell trays of chicken, lamb, pork and beef bones for a £1.00 but she has never seen turkey necks for sale and rather thinks that they are taken home (very fast) by the staff!

Our yumyum HQ is minute but high up on top of a wall unit is just enough space for two stock pots, one gigantic one and one medium sized one. Up she went and down she came with the medium one.

It was given a good scrub with boiling water from the kettle, remember the flippin' boiler blinked' so there's none from a tap, and into the pot went the turkey necks together with home grown garlic, carrots, celariac, a leek, a hamburg parsley and seasoning.

After it had come to the boil, the heat was turned way down and it simmered for 20 minutes. Then it was turned off and it sat over-night with the lid on.

We 'Rised and shined' this morning at some disgracefully late hour after.. teehee.. cuddles in bed with my mum playing silly games under the covers. One cannot be serious all the time and it, life, has been a 'bit' too serious around here for a long while.

Why? Well, what with the cost of the solicitors aka lawyer's bill, the bill for the restoration of the rug and the cost of my three week sojourn in jail, her budget was pared to the bone and nothing, in the way of money, has been spent that was not absolutely vital.

Back to the those turkey necks! More hot water from the kettle into a bowl, she scrubbed her nails with soap and a nail brush and set about the necks. Yes, you take the meat off fiddly neck bones with your thumb and finger nails, you could do it with a knife but it would take forever and you'd get very frustrated doing it like that, so why drive yourself nuts?

The cold meat slipped off the bones easily into a bowl, the bones went back into the stock, she then put the meat, which by the way was all brown meat and no fat, into a tub and weighed it, the tub she knew weighed 20g. She had 578g of meat in the tub, that meant there was 558g of pure meat! Tub went into the chilly white larder.

After adding more root vegetables and seasoning to the stock, she brought it up to boil, it is now simmering on the stove and will do so for about four hours. The vegetables will add flavour and the neck bones will release their goodness.

I don't have to be anxious, I know my mum and I saw a couple of the neck vertibrae didn't go back into the stockpot, I'll 'find' them at some point today and what a cruncy treat they'll be!

Yes, of course, most of us avian folk aka birds are carnivores, why are you surprised? Do you honestly think Mr. Robin Red Breast is taking that Centipede back to the nest to use as a tape measure! Or that Mr. Thrush is playing the cymbals whilst he bashes Mr. Snail on a rock?

I am off! My swimming pool is calling me to go and play 'Splish & Splosh' and she, the poor dear, has to get it together and empty the bathroom of everything today.. because all though Richard and his motley crew aren't arriving until Wednesday morning, she is gardening tomorrow and doing something with an old friend on Tuesday.

And she is a fully paid-up member of the 'Do It Now' school (in this case slightly later today) for if you do it now, then you know it is done and you don't get into a panic at the last minute. Plus, you'll know where you put everything. Which reminds me, she has to put the old lock back into the bedroom door with those longer screws she found.

Back momentarily to the stock.. after being simmered, she'll strain the stock, pick out the bones and puree the vegetables which get added back to the liquid. Some will be chilled and then frozen, but a big bowl, with some of the meat added to it, will be her supper tonight.

She has an all-day jaunt planned for next Saturday and I already know what her lunch will be. Can you guess? It involves her old trusty Thermos flask (for food), you got it, she'll be slurping thick vegetable and turkey potage with a couple of savoury linseed flapjacks.. about which I will write soon, they're our latest best-thing-ever and made in Sussex.

So it's PipPip from us both but before we go, I have to say "Welcome home Nikki, we wish you, Bob and Karen a very happy life, remember to play nice, they've never had a German Shepherd before!"

GeeGee Parrot.
October 2nd, 2016.

TURKEY NECK.. AND HIVES!

No, I'm not talking about her neck, she doesn't have a 'turkey' neck, that's for sure, both Dr. Katherine and Valerie have remarked upon the appearance of her neck which certainly doesn't tell her true age!

No, I'm talking about the necks which came from three mighty large beasts, they're now in a large stock pot with garlic, carrots, hamburg parsley roots and a large leek together with a goodly amount of seasoning. Simmering slowly, the end result will be a wonderful rich turkey meat and vegetable soup! Slurp! And I'll get the neck bones to munch.

Well, that's the good news in this post! Now for all the rest!

It was wet today.. very wet indeed! Luckily it was already raining when she ventured forth at midday so she was wearing a rainproof jacket and there was an umbrella was in her hand, she didn't fool around with buses but went straight underground heading for Oxford Street.

But, oh dearie me, she was sorely disappointed by the choice available in John Lewis's flooring department, they may have the best fitters but they have the dullest and the smallest selection of bathroom flooring!

Thank goodness for the Greek guy on the North End Road, for he stocks pretty stuff and at very reasonable prices, even old CarpetRight have a prettier selection of vinyls than John Lewis and they certainly have much better prices, that's for sure!

So now you know it was wet today and wet weather equals cooler weather and today is the first day of October and it was a little chilly-billy, so she turned the Combi-Boiler onto hot water plus heating.. except the heating didn't turn on. The flipping pressure had dropped like a stone and the boiler is now not producing anything, not even hot water.

Oh, she's mighty bored with this farce. What else did those numpty builders do? Did they disconnect another radiator? She'll have to call / email the landlord on Monday and hopes that Richard will be able to come and kick the f'ing thing into touch.. aka go!

Oh! What a jolly thing to look forward to! Two days of no hot water or heating. Thank goodness for: kettle, gas cooker, wool sweaters, socks and, of course, me to keep her head warm whilst she taps iPad or watches television.

Now onto hives!

I know you're thinking of lots of happy buzzing bees buzzing about making honey! Well, I am sorry to disappoint you but I am talking about her hives, yes, she presently is covered in hives (!) and all because of a cereal company.

She had been eating it, her usual oat cereal, for several days and wondered why she felt weird, as in strange. She knew she wasn't eating any of the dreaded nightshade family and hadn't eaten, or so she thought, any wheat. Until the hives arrived this week and settled in to spring out all over her!

Every bit of her..

And as she knew the only thing she was eating that wasn't raw was the cereal, she picked up the packet and saw to her anger and horror that the greedy company has changed the ingredients and has slipped in toasted wheat flakes.

So it's these wretched flakes that are causing her skin to erupt in these awfully ugly and terribly painful sores. But thank God for her darling Lebanese friend, who saw one of these painful sores on the inside of her wrist and flew upstairs to fetch a tube of some wonderfully soothing gel with which she proceeded to cover my mum in.. such bliss.

Now she has to wait for the poison to leave her system.. oh, and beware those of you who are unable to tolerate wheat.. it's in instant coffee. No, we kid you not.

We are off.. there is lots of work to do because she has to completely empty the bathroom, because Richard is coming in on Wednesday to dig out the wet bathroom concrete floor.. oh, more joy! Joke.

GeeGee Parrot.
October 1st, 2016.