July
On 5 July, an inspection of the garden:
first, sunflowers, seeds planted 26 May, already over knee-high to
Teresa, and a golden privet, which Teresa is trying to trim in the shape of a
duck
Jay sowed some flower seeds in the shape of a J
Roger looked out of the window one morning to see a young bull calmly
munching our grass. This hasn’t happened
for years – since the farmer next door stopped keeping cattle. We rang him anyway. Apparently the errant animal was from a
notoriously ill-supervised herd from a farm further up the hill. It eventually forced its way through the
hedge and into the adjoining fields.
Luckily the sunflowers have survived.
At the weekend, Jay had a sleepover
party for a few friends. We couldn’t
have picked a worse night for weather.
Just after 6 pm on Tuesday 17 July, we suffered a massive power surge in
our electricity supply, which left us with two totally dead computers, and
sundry other damaged electrical equipment, including two TVs which literally
went up in smoke. We switched off at the
mains, and normal supply was not re-established until the following morning.
We learnt that the fault, in a near-by sub-station, had affected probably
20-30 properties, which typically had TVs, computers, microwaves and CH systems
knocked out.
The following morning we contacted npower, our suppliers, and our
insurance company, thinking that a claim might be necessary. To our relief, at midday, npower rang
to say that they were admitting responsibility and had despatched an engineer
to arrange for repair or replacement of all damaged equipment. He soon allayed our worst fears – that the
computers would need to be replaced – and took away our damaged equipment for
repair. To his eternal credit, he was
absolutely right, and he brought back most items yesterday, just two days
later. The computers, crucially, are OK
and we have not lost any data.
Jay has been learning to drive the mower.
She hasn’t done any actual mowing yet, but
we’re looking forward to the day.
On 24 July, Hazel was admitted to an old people’s psychiatric assessment
unit. We have been concerned at her
general decline in recent weeks. The
assessment should establish whether there are any treatable reasons for this
and what her needs are for future care.
We had in any case been expecting a couple of weeks of respite care for
Hazel. Though, for various reasons, we
have not booked a holiday this year, we hoped to have the freedom to make a few
day trips out, mainly for Juliet’s sake.
The first of these was to
On 27 July we went a little further a-field – to
A
‘fighting knight’ at
We ended July with a trip to