General Chat

Have a lovely day Vera.

It must have been nice to see your cousin and catch up with whats been going on after a long time.

Morning all

I hope Frank manages to do a post as it would be good to hear from him and catch up on some of his news.

There are notices up round here about avian flu in wild birds. Thankfully we haven’t seen any dead or sickly looking gulls.

We had another thunderstorm last night. OH only heard the loudest clap which sounded right overhead but it was rumbling away for a long while. The forecast for today and tomorrow is for showers, some thundery, all day long so I think it will be a couple of days of taking cagoules out with us and trying to dodge the rain.

Yesterday we walked to the shops and bought some bits for a snack lunch and stopped at a nice little tea shop for a morning drink. Then after an early lunch we went to my cousin’s and had a pleasant few hours there. After a cuppa in her garden we went for a walk round the area which was lovely. She lives in the area where 11 Royal Marine bandsmen were killed when a church they were playing in was bombed in 1989. There is just one part of the church left standing and a small memorial garden to them there and their names are on plaques round the bandstand on the front where they used to play. It was quite moving.

After our walk it was back to the house for more tea and cake in the garden before saying goodbye. It was really nice to see my cousin and her OH again as we don’t meet up very often.

OH wants to go out shortly and I’m nowhere near ready so I’ll post this now and come back later. Have a good day everyone

No its not solar powered it is plugged in somewhere but I don't like to take plugs out as it knocks the leccy out then I would have to come indoors to turn it back on again and also the airpump would'nt work if there was no leccy and I have to have that on to clean the filter.

The pump in your water feature could have frozen in the winter and thats what has made it stop. I always tip the water out of my fairy fountain on the patio in the winter and lift it up one side so water can't get to the pump or I cover it with a poly bag.

Good morning all 14 degrees here and cloudy bright PC is saying mostly cloudy.

Mel is the filter that keeps running by any chance solar?
I dread having to get to the pump on the water feature by my patio as to do that I have to remove loads of pebbles and the pump is somehow buried under the large rock that the water runs out of. I guess I just would not be able to do it but will need to get someone to do it as if left it would start to smell. The small bird bath/water feature down the garden, the pump packed up before Tony died, I think it has to be taken apart to fix it or replace it so maybe when we have more time daughter can help with that one.

O meant to say about the pigeon don't worry about it as my percy pigeon just sits on the road in the rain. He even manages to get in a bit of a puddle sometimes and lays in it and he will also lift a wing to get the rain underneath. It is a thing they do and they do look stressed sometimes.

Morning all,

Its been raining in the night but is dry at the mo and quite bright but pc says rain coming and its 15 degrees here by the local one. I had another go at the pond filter yesterday but still can't seem to turn the pump off. I managed to turn it off from the pond but there are three filters in the shed and one keeps running.

I have a couple of calls to do today. I do hope Frank posts today as it will be lovely to see his name pop up again.

We've had those sart plugs a little while ago and they are good. I can turn my magnifying light on with it and the outside light. Then oh bought another set of two and put one on the pond scimmer but it would'nt work it.

It was getting dark when Echo decided to upgrade so I coud'nt turn the dining room light on over the table. I turned the side lamp on instead till she'd finished but it took a while.

I do hope Frank does post tomorrow he told me he'd had a couple of falls and broken his toe on one foot and then broke one on his other foot.

Don't know what to eat tonight but know I must.

Very true AnnG. So many of the sea birds nest so close together it must spread between them easily.and then there are all the migrating birds including the geese. Ours seem to have stopped their practice flights so must have gone now I think.

Good to know Frank is ok Mel. Did he say why he stopped posting? Difficult to know how they are going to control the disease if seagulls have it as they travel huge distances away from their nests to feed and back again. I see flocks go out in the morning and back in the evening

I had another look at some of those plugs today Mandy and ordered 2. The pictures of them look like your description, so thank you for that and hopefully they should be ok. We have the plug socket to the sky mini box in a cupboard in the bedroom and every time it needs rebooting I have to empty the cupboard to switch it off and on again, so I thought the second plug could go in there and I won't have to empty the cupboard then. We had the socket put in the cupboard so the walls weren't cluttered with sockets and wires, but didn't realise at the time we'd need to switch the box off from time to time. Those little clothes you are knitting sound lovely for the knitted pig. We might all want some woolly french knickers this winter if it's cold! :-D I'm looking forward to seeing it when you have finished knitting it. I like Bon Marche things too and our nearest branch is over 20 miles away now, but I have orded a few things online. BHS is another store I miss.

We've so many Pigeons round here I hadn't thought about it being a racing Pigeon. As you say Gwyn it does seem silly to race Pigeons between countries when Bird Flu is around.

How nice that we might hear from Frank tomorrow. Love to him too as we have all missed him.

It's going to be a small painting Mel.

Evening all,

Another nice day here and I got all my washing dry .

Ann we have the bog standard plugs with a little remote ,just plug the tele plug into the plug and press the corresponding letter or number on the remote one side to turn on and other side to turn it off .
Nice to get a bargain on the tops Ann , I'm still waiting for Bon Marche to come back into the town ,seems as they are waiting to bring the winter stock in and not start off with sale stuff ,we had a shop in the precinct it them moved down to a bigger shop then closed when they had to close a few shops so it will be nice to get it back .

That bird could have gone off course ,there was one mentioned on our local news a few weeks ago and it ended up in America.

Oh love to Frank too ,I think we've all missed him on the thread so it will be lovely to hear from him again .

I've been knitting some of the bits in my new knitting book , a little pair of shoes ,some French Knickers and a little shopper bag and now I'm knitting a dress ,I think it will be for a pig ,there's thirteen animals to choose from , the knickers were done on a circular needle as I think some of the other clothes are ,it's been a while since I knitted on a circular needle and its played my fingers up a bit as I'm doing them in double knit but have adjusted the needle size ,the pattern said 5 ply never heard of that before and its between 4ply and double knit so using a smaller needle has worked OK.


Hope Vera has enjoyed her time with her cousin and the weathers been kind to them, looks like we could have a bit of thunder and lightning later ,I thought I heard some this afternoon .

Gwyn, that pigeon could have been blown off course and got lost, poor thing.

Just spoken to Frank and he said he will try and post tomorrow and sends you all his love.

It's a worrying situation with the birds, isn't it?
I was surprised that DEFRA didn't want to check the 2 dead young gulls I found, when we came back from holiday.
After that, we had a racing pigeon corpse one day. A friend suggested that a sparrow-hawk might have attacked that and brought it down.... it had certainly been attacked by something unlike the gulls, which were whole. When I went to clear away the pigeon, I found rings on it's legs and research online showed it had come from France.... surely not a good idea to have races between countries if there is Avian flu about :-0

Looking forward to see what you paint Ann.

Lots of cases of bird flu I expect Mel. Paignton Zoo has had to close because it has cases and Paradise Park in Cornwall has had to cover the Penguin enclosure with mesh to keep the seagulls out and visitors are having to keep to disinfected paths. Dawlish has lost some of the black swans to it. They say fishermen are seeing dead gulls floating out at sea off Mousehole. I was listening to a reporter on Radio 4 in the car this morning. She lives in Penzance and was saying there are dead birds in the streets there. We had a thunderstorm with pouring rain this afternoon and were concerned about a Pigeon sitting where the old tree was while it hammered down with rain. They do sit in the tops of the trees in the rain, but not on the ground and we thought it didn't look well. It had gone last time I looked after the storm though.

That's good you managed to change the leccy over on the PC ok. It often is easier than speaking to someone nowadays.

I've bought a couple of tops on ebay. They are a make I like and appear to be end of lines being sold off cheaply so were bargains which I also like. :-)

OH has had an online interview this afternoon and is out at a meeting soon so I might get my paints out.

O gosh thats a shame Ann. I wonder what they will find when they test them?

I hasve just been trying to change the leccy into my name I was text messaged and replied on the pc and it was much better than trying to hear what a forgien person was saying. Very helpful they were too.

Morning All,

You aren't destined to have a good night's sleep are you Vera. I slept quite well, but OH was off to a business breakfast at the local council office this morning so woke me about 6.30am. He seems incapable of doing anything quietly so drawers go thud and so do doors. I must look those tunnels up as they sound interesting. It's good to hear about all these different places on here. It sounds like you had a much better day at Ramsgate and are certainly getting some walking exercise this week. I like an Italian restaurant. I hope ypu have a nice time with your cousin today.

I was on the way to a garden centre to look for Michaelmas daisies when the boiler man rang on my mobile so I couldn't answer. I tried him just now and no answer so I'll try again tonight. There were some daisies on the bargain bench but none of the deep pink ones like I used to have. No sedums that I fancied either so I came away empty handed.

I was hearing on the car radio about all the gulls that are dying from bird flu in the southwest. People in hasmat suits are collecting them for testing.

Good morning AnnG, Mel and everyone.

That must be the changeable weather that the forecasters are talking about Mel :-), but how strange to have both showing at once.

The tunnels do sound interesting, don't they Ann ? I've never been there, but maybe could visit with my girls sometime. I'd like that.
I have been to Ramsgate itself and remember looking round the harbour at many 'Little Ships' which gather periodically to commemorate the setting off from the town on their mission of mercy to rescue service personnel from Dunkirk.
I hope Vera has a good day in Deal.
We had rain overnight, but have strong sunshine now, so if it's the same for Vera, they will probably be able to look across to France, like we could on Sunday.

Morning Anng and all,

Quite bright here today too pc says 15 degrees on both the forcasts the pc one is saying cloudy and the other one has a big yellow sun on it.

Got a lot to do today and I need to wash my hair and its bin day tomorrow and I must'nt forget like I did with the library.