Home on the range again

Wake at 5:00 to use the toilet and Norman decides that whilst I am up he may as well have breakfast. I open the Garden Room door to let him out and there is a thick fog outside, nothing visible beyond the hedge. I return to bed and sleep until eight and wake up feeling a little better than of late. After a full English breakfast and black coffee, I phone the doctors and cancel my appointment. The decision not to take more antibiotics having been made, there seemed little point in wasting their time. After breakfast I fry up some mince in the bacon fat with an onion, add a couple of oxo's and put it in the slow cooker with some brown rice, barley, and a mixture of all the vegetables in my freezer, peas, broad beans, peppers, aubergine etc. This done, I shower and change and drive to Cherry for about a quarter past ten to pick up the other two dogs. There are road works on the York Road and it takes us a little longer than usual to get to the Westwood. The early fog has nearly burned off, but is still not too hot, which is good for Norman. By the time we reach Black Mill however the sun is blazing and it is now really hot, so we sit and rest for a while on a bench under the shade of a tree. There are cattle all over the common and a small group of highland bullocks have staked out their turf around the old windmill behind us. I can't recall seeing any on here before. After a couple of minutes we make our way back to the car and we arrive back at Pip's for half past eleven. I am still feeling better than yesterday, so I mow the lawns and then do a little weeding. I pack it in after an hour because it is just too hot to work. We get back to Tickton about one o'clock and I give Normy a schmacko and take a glass of soya milk and some oaties into the garden, where I sit under the umbrella in the shade and try to crack another puzzle. After an hour of getting nowhere, I pack it in, it has clouded over again this afternoon and cooled down a bit, so I dig out the ironing board and tackle the last two baskets of clean clothes. Like yesterday, I motivate myself with a pot of tea and my audio book about the cattle drive. Occasionally the sun breaks through and it is hot for a while, but I manage to iron everything, apart from a pair of jeans and a couple of long sleeved shirts. By now it is half past four and I have only two chapters left in my audiobook. So I save them for another day and decide to have a late lunch/early dinner. Unfortunately I forgot to turn the slow cooker on this morning, so it looks like casserole is on the menu tomorrow instead. I rustle up a salad nicoise, using a tin of salmon rather than the usual tuna. The taste is not dissimilar and it works OK, I have no new potatoes but plenty of salad and olives, and I boil up an egg and quarter it and add it to the mixture. Norman has run out of dog meat, so he gets half the tin of salmon instead. We take our meal back into the garden and I have a nice chilled glass of dry white Italian wine and some ryvita with my salad. It works OK, it's not quite the same as a crusty baguette, but with enough alcohol anything is palatable. I only used one egg in the salad because as the French say, "un oeuf, is enough!" (that one is for Lilliane). After eating, Norman and I have forty winks until it is time for his walk, by now it has cooled down, summer has really arrived at last. There are high cirrus clouds in the sky and just the hint of a breeze, as we exit our cul de sac. Three little girls who are playing on the green come over to pat Norman and make a fuss of him, ever the gentleman, he waits till they have gone before laying an enormous turd, which I hastily wrap in kitchen roll and deposit in the bin in the snickett . We walk down Carr Lane as far as the little wooden bridge, and when we get there a group of boys are spotting sticklebacks in the water below. Two weeks ago the drain was nearly overflowing and now there is just barely a trickle of water in the bottom. We get back for eight, I give the dog some dry dog food and then he settles down next to my thigh in the armchair whilst I wrestle with my puzzle and eat oatcakes and drink a decaff coffee before bedtime. I call it a day after an hour or so, this puzzle is really tough! It's been a better day, slowly I seem to be recovering and catching up on the backlog of work that has accumulated whilst I have been ill.