Facing Facts

I came to this house 15 months ago determined to reduce my material presence, but of course the opposite has happened. Over the weekend I compounded my acquisitiveness by buying a pretty, lightly distressed settle for the RWNN, and a charming Victorian-style wrought iron table and chairs for the garden. Come to think of it the garden set is mildly distressed too, but in a more natural, worn way, as if the estate smithy had been ordered to knock something up over his brazier and accidentally left it near a horse which rubbed up against it repeatedly for several days. Anyway, I can tick two more boxes on my "must have" list, all the time wishing I didn't have to have one at all.

Settle, colour to be decided

 

 

 

Tricia modelling Cousin Margaret's beautiful handiwork

 After a hectic bank holiday planting shrubs and ground cover and perennials, I came home from a day's first aid course at Snape Maltings to mow the lawn. First there was the wind to contend with, a brutal south-westerly which swept across the garden forcing every unsecured object in its path along with it, including me. Then there was the slope in the lawn which, to an inexperienced eye might look slight but is NOT insignificant when you're pushing a lawnmower heavy with grass cuttings. I was folded almost double across the mower as I came to the top of the hill, and had to sit down after each pair of stripes. This is not what I planned when I bought a powerful electric mower, and I now think I will either have to replace it with a petrol model or the services of a human grass cutter. Lawn mowing doesn't half make me feel my age.

Tomorrow 50 mph winds are forecast, more than double today's. What with the expected heavy rain to add to the misery, I shall take advantage of the appalling conditions outside to revise Italian, do my mountain of ironing - appropriate cliche that given the Scafell Pike leering out of my laundry  basket. Should this heap fall on any of my visitors, or should I encounter any unfortunate victims of the heavy winds, I can now do CPR and mouth-to-mouth (using a shield, natch), operate a defib machine, do a Heimlich manoeuvre (now renamed an abdominal thrust), deal with an epileptic fit, a faint, a diabetic hypo- or hyper-glycaemic episode, a bout of hysteria, a broken limb and a sprained ankle. Doing any of the above in a full concert hall is likely to be very challenging, but having practised with seven colleagues today, we decided that as long as we are all on duty together we'll be fine.