Mon 19th Apr 0845

Yesterday reminded me what good fun it is living at Cedar Lodge.

After the obligatory cooked breakfast the day was spent in time-honoured fashion, grazing, blogging, drinking tea & people-watching.

Michelle toiled to excess in the veg plot. She is suffering from arthritis in one arm, making movement restricted & painful. So what better form of physio than to dig a leek bed ?

Bloo was roped in to help & it was odd to see him doing ‘The Good Life’. He confessed he had ‘not a clue’ what he was doing & had soon press-ganged the 3 kids (Ashleigh is here visiting) into a game of football.

‘How long can it possibly take to get ready for a game of football ?’ he asked as all 3 girls struggled to find, shoes, socks & all the bits necessary to play football.

A word of advice if you’re female & Bloo invites you to play football. Don’t.

Within half an hour, Ashleigh was back in the house being force-fed Rescue Remedy by a very concerned Alice. Ashleigh has spent the rest of the day hopping. Bloo’s story ? ‘I was nowhere near her when it happened’.
Eat your heart out Razor Ruddock.

Once dinner was under way & Michelle could be persuaded from her veg plot, we retired to the back paddock for clay shooting.

Everyone shot well & Bloo thrust his left leg up to the knee in filthy ditch water when we were retrieving the intact clays. He said he did it deliberately to make me feel better about my rafting dismount. His goodwill didn’t stretch to remaining in situe for the Kodak moment.

I showed him the site of the fire. He seemed suitably impressed with the scorch marks & we did a little re-enactment of how far it is from the trough to the seat of the blaze.

We discussed how lots of people have picked the fire as their favourite Q4A moment & came to the conclusion; there is nothing more amusing than someone else’s misery.

At dusk, we propped ourselves over the pigsty & watched Harriette tormenting the pigs. It was wonderfully quiet & Bloo remarked that he could see how very satisfying The Tanner’s life choice appeared to be.
He also understood how hard it was going to be for me to leave them.

In the evening the grown-ups listened to War of the Worlds. The kids retired to bed, scared after listening for a coupe of minutes. Even Harriette who was desperate to do what the grown-ups were doing, couldn’t listen beyond the lid of the 1st capsule dropping off.

Everyone retired to bed & I called my Gran to wish her Happy Birthday. (89 by the way)

At the end of a very pleasant day, I was to fall asleep in the cottage, which looks prettier than ever, snuggled under freshly washed bed linen, whilst listening to a Dick Francis talking book. Pretty perfect.

Cx