Splice the mainbrace

We had unexpected light rain as well not long after I’d applied washing up liquid solution onto our patio to kill the moss, I’ll have to do it again if the rain nullified it.

14c bright with a light breeze here at the moment. Getting ready to spend 4 days watching the Masters golf, like tennis I only watch the major tournaments but love it when they are on, part of my sporting year. However I need to contact Sky to go through the 18 month charade of getting their renewal price down, it’s very annoying, I’ve been with them for 32 years and they have VIP this and that but not on renewal price for loyalty. I accessed my blood test results online yesterday for statin lipids, liver and kidney analysis and all is ok apart from slightly low sodium and high 2.3 mmol hdl (good) cholesterol.

Supposedly the Man City and Chelsea investigations are more complex so will take longer, however if found guilty they should have a HUGE punishment but the Premier League will probably not.

Good draw last night👍

8c, cloudy but dry at the moment but rain not far off according to the rain radar. Our lawn treatment service was postponed yesterday due to the deluge and storm yesterday, now coming tomorrow. Following the travel insurance chat, with the Nationwide I get free cover for one prescription statin drug, I wonder how the new arrangement with Aviva will view this. However my wife’s charge is £63 for statin plus one other. I am classed as high cholesterol because I had a total cholesterol of over 6 nearly 20 years ago in my mid forties and have been on statins ever since. However my bad cholesterol since has always been below the 4mmol max but I have higher good at around 2 when the minimum target is 1 so still around a total of 5 overall.

We’ve been very satisfied with the Nationwide flexplus travel insurance for many years. They paid out quickly when we had to curtail our holiday in Vietnam when the world was locking down 4 years ago. I have just renewed our add ons which means we will be with UK insurance until next year however renewals after 30th April? will be with Aviva. We’ll have to see what health renewal costs are with Aviva if we continue with flexplus or not.

7c, rainy and stormy here this morning and the forecast is for it to stay this way until mid afternoon😩 Since I retired we only have one car now and we manage ok between us, it is 4 1/2 years old and we have had it for 3 1/2 years. A complete contrast to when I was working when we had 2 cars from the company which we changed every 6 months, so 4 new cars a year. It’s taken a bit of getting used to having to arrange servicing and MOTs after 20 years not having to do so.

This is where the mobility shop is. MIL managed to buy a rollator that suited her.

The shop is on Tunstall Trade Park so we can park right outside. MIL is only 4ft 10in so it’s important that the rollator is comfortable for her height, so she needs to try before she buys.

12c and cloudy here but at least it isn’t raining, for now. We’re taking my MIL to Stoke (Tunstall) today to buy a rollator. Her mobility has deteriorated a lot in the last year and after starting to use a stick last year she has reached the stage where she needs the stability of a rollator, much to her disgust as she has always prided her mobility compared to others of similar age. She is 90 next month.

11c and quite bright here this morning after overnight rain. Even though the grass was still bit wet I managed to cut it yesterday because looking forward there doesn’t seem to be many dry opportunities coming up😩☔️

7c, bright and light breeze here at the moment. MIL is round for lunch today and it’s home made fish pie including cod, haddock and salmon. Tomorrow we are driving down to spend a few days at my sister and BIL who live near London, it will be the first time that we have met since November 2019, although we have had regular zoom calls over the past 4 years. On Sunday our cousin and family from New Zealand are coming around to meet up and have afternoon tea, and on Monday we are going into central London to meet up with friends that we made last year on a cruise. So quite a busy weekend for us. Have a good weekend everyone 🐣🐥🐇🐑🥚

The Titanic disaster hit Southampton very hard, there are many monuments around the city, there is a Titanic trail and the Seacity Museum. 546 crew members who lived/resided in Southampton lost their lives and many came from the same streets. (see link below). The amount of residents lost was a huge shock to the city. Passenger shipping was booming at that time and there was a shortage of crew to spread around all of the expanding shipping fleets, my great grandfather was approached to go on Titanic but he was happy to stay with American Line (thank goodness), he did the Southampton to New York run for nearly 20 years as a steward. https://historicsouthampton.co.uk/crew/

We've had problems booking our flights for our Pacific cruise next January/February. We asked for a Premium Economy quote from our TA who contacted P&O and got us some good flight times and a reasonable on cost last week. For comparison we asked for a quote with Economy flights to San Francisco (relative shorter flight) and Premium back from Sydney, after 2 more emails and apparent confusion at the TA we yesterday got an 'automated' Economy standard flight conformation via TA from P&O that also didn't account for us staying in Sydney 2 more nights after the end of the cruise. We have this morning emailed the TA again to clear things up. Why don't P&O contact the customer or via the TA at the time of flight booking to see what grade of flight they want and dates of flight required?

I was up early today with alarm set for 3.55 this morning to get up and watch the Australian Grand Prix but went back to sleep for a couple of hours afterwards. 8c dry but cloudy here at the moment, the forecast is for it to remain dry for the rest of the day. MIL is round for Sunday lunch, my wife is cooking pork, leek and apple casserole with new potatoes and P&O style squeaky beans.

We’re on Sky Princess in September for a 31 day USA and Canada cruise and then again in May 2025 for a 14 day med cruise with Tony Hadley ( Spandau Ballet), Anton Du Beke/Erin Boag (Strictly) and Brian Conley doing shows.

Rained earlier but passed over now. One pair of our resident black birds are building a nest in the ivy, but it is close to the bird feeders where squirrels and magpies also frequent so if they are seen I fear for their eggs or chicks. Our forsythia is in full bloom now and the spirea Bridal Wreath is just coming out, spring is here😀🪻🍾

We are spending 5 days based at St Merryn just outside Padstow in June, it's the first time that I have been to this area and my first time to Cornwall since 1980!! Really looking forward to it.

Lovely sunny but chilly start to the day here. Wife is taking our 5yo grandson to the local Agricultural College this morning for the Lambing 🐑 open day and I’m just going to do some more gardening and sport watching.

13c and bright here, we had a bit of light rain earlier. I cut the grass yesterday and did some general garden tidying. The lawn is as much moss as grass so I will get some quotes from local firms to apply weed, feed and moss killer, then later scarify and reseed.

8c here and the rain has just stopped, it’s looking brighter in the west and coming this way. I need to cut the grass but finding a dry day this week according to the forecast might be difficult.

I'm glad that you asked the question. We are on Arcadia from San Francisco to Sydney next Jan/Feb so will need flights. It's a bit early for flights to be arranged by our TA or P&O but I've started researching flight options so that I have info for our favoured options for when the time comes, we try and avoid 'crack of dawn' flights.

Yes, we’ve just come back from a QM2 26 nighter $$🥂🍷$$

We booked a cruise last night for October 2025 on Queen Victoria to Madeira, Azores and Porto. Apart from Madeira the others are new ports for us. It’s very reasonably priced as well, 13 nights from £1100 per person for a balcony cabin.

We got back on Thursday from our QM2 cruise from Cape Town to Sydney and surprisingly had virtually zero jet lag. Our management of the return flight seemed to work, i.e. live uk time after leaving Sydney with regards to when to sleep and eat on the flight, get the pain over before landing. We had a couple of uncontrolled 10 minutes naps over the first couple of days back but a part from that we got back into uk sleep patterns without a problem. We normally book cruises 18 to 24 months in advance but we have nothing booked after next February so are starting to look at possible cruises for 2025/6. We have now (after next February) been on all of our bucket list world area cruises so going forward it will be mostly cruising for cruising sake not the destination. We have cruised Cunard, P&O and Princess but the Princess cruises seem to appeal to us more after initial browsing.