Dead partridges. The post GCSE era beginneth again.

One of the partridges nesting in the meadow has been killed. I presume by a cat. Left all mangled. So upsetting. I love seeing the line of little chicks running around in the yard. That won't be happening this year. Do partridges pair for life? Don't know. Hope not. Having a broken heart in the meadow seems so sad.

Have just been trying, and failing, to send money via Western Union to Peru, to retrieve a camera left by Daughter on Gap Year. It is not possible to send online, so I shall have to actually get up and go to an agent and send money like in the old days. Mostly I quite like the old days, but right now, looking out at driving rain, I am feeling less enamoured. Incidentally, this rain will completely knock every poppy petal off. Disappointing.

I am not in a particularly up beat mood. 

Plus I have physio later today - more ferocious massage of the tethered scar tissue.

First Son is home! Finished GCSEs yesterday. He lies sleeping in his lair as I write. Building his strength up for a couple of parties before knuckling down to some hard core work experience back at his old school. He will be Canterbury clad, and revelling in the adoration of little children. Think his ego is quite probably large enough already. But still. The alternative, him lying on the sofa flicking through sky options, leaving half drunk cans of coke and cheese crumbs everywhere, is more 'in my face' unappealling. Anyway. It will do him good. Plus he will get all the gossip from the staff room, which I might enjoy.

Pull Buoys and beaches

Plans for the day include experimenting with new leg movements. I plan to take to the waves and swim with my new Pull Buoy. It took me an age to manage to buy a pull buoy because when I was told I needed one, and that it was a swim toy, I naturally assumed it was a 'pool boy'. Searching for 'Pool boys' took me in the wrong direction entirely. Anyway, I survived that and now have my yellow and blue 'Pull Buoy' and am told I must swim. NOT shaped like a shrimp with my back bent and belly reaching south, but FLAT like a plank, clenching this yellow and blue thing between my knees, with whats left of my shrivelled thigh muscles, and somehow get from one end of the pool to another, still flat, and still clenched. The point is not to kick my leg and risk damage to my precious new tendon. I mean ligament. While I am frantically paddling up and down, I will try not to worry about my daughter, who has emailed from Thailand this morning to complain that while she has spent about 2 months lounging around on a beach, because she thought it was THE BEACH, from the film so named, has now found out, just as she leaves to go 'tubing' (?) in Laos, that this was not where the film was made at all. What a waste of time. All that dedicated lolling on the 'most beautiful beach in the world' for nothing. I told her she should send her therapy bill to the local tourist authority.

Which leads me to wonder where I think the most beautiful beach in the world is. Having given it a moment's thought, I would go with either St Martins. Or Iona. Or actually maybe Calgary Bay. All of these in sunshine preferably.

Plans for the day re the cottages? Well, have already delivered the newly laundered little hooded towels to the children in the cottage. Makes me feel surprisingly happy to know these little winnie the poo and minnie mouse towels, so loved by my own children on beaches gone by, (beaches again..) are now in use and being enjoyed by Max and Tavia. A happy find in my slightly groaning towel cupboard.

Also, I must email the lovely Portuguese carpenter about fixing the hole that another child has mined in Piper Lodge wall. Not sure the next guests will think much of it.

Otherwise, things are looking up. The sun is shining, the sweet rocket is going ballistic along the front of the property. I saw at least another 10 cornflowers in the meadow yesterday...

Better get off with my Pull Buoy then.

Chicken phalanx overcomes rowdy lamb problem

No surprise that it is raining again, but this time disappointing.  I had planned to patrol the meadow this morning.. Got a couple of ladies coming to lunch, not something that happens very often, Husband and I generally eat eggs together. Today he is at a funeral, and I am eating eggs with other people. I had thought the meadow might be a nice way to walk the eggs off afterwards, but not unless they come equipped with wellies. Still. Got to make sure the lone cornflower is still there. 

On an animal update, think the sheep may be relocating, which the chickens will be happy about. Last time I went out there with stale cornflakes, the lambs were headbutting the poor chooks off them. The chickens need to work out a kind of strategy, maybe consider forming up into a phalanx and going at them like geese, or red arrows. Such a relief no one but hopefully  a spider is reading this....

Creaking knees and delays in the cleaning regime

Now 7 weeks post ACL reconstruction, I am beginning to creak about the place a bit... not sure I would not have been better staying in bed, at least from a psychological point of view. But the time had come to face the hamsters, the attic where the children roam free, and the dining room, which looks more like a car boot sale without the cars. The knee is coping, so far, going upstairs I am pretty normal looking. I come down like a belly dancer whose speciality is perpendicular hip hitches, in slow motion. My knee, in fact more my leg since the only thing I can feel in my knee is my knee cap, which feels as though it is clinging on for dear life, is not really swollen anymore, except for the lumpy bits where the scar tissue has 'tethered' itself to something. That long hard lump which I thought was a piece of metal (because that's what the physio TOLD me it was) under my knee, which I therefore resolved never to touch, let alone massage, because how disgusting is a piece of metal jutting out under your skin? (The physio actually said I was lucky since she had seen 'them' (the bolt things) that were far 'prouder'). So the hard lump/bolt/scar has had a head start and taken the time to usefully lay in defences, like a tether.

The downside of movement of course, is the dimishing excuse for cleaning the cottages. Ah well.

Royal Stamford

Gorgeously mint green, inciting giggles and flags. Miss M quite beside herself to get time out of school, and definitely felt she had a private wave... Beautiful Stamford a very nice place for the red arrows to fly by as well.

Rain and ancient stone work

Rain. Rain. Rain.  I wonder that anyone wants to come here at all. At least the cottages are uber insulated, unlike this house..

This building has stood through rain for nearly 1000years, well, parts of it have

Was watching a film last night, Legends of the Fall. I find myself looking at the 'characters' as though they could all somehow be ancestors. Like I look at the stone pillers, with the medieval cut marks, so unbelievably old. You can run your fingers along the grooves, and wonder how many people and who else has done the same. Who made the marks? 900 years ago? Who leant against the pillers when they were part of the monastry? Who sat at the foot of them in 1450? 1675? 1780? 1890?1914?