RIP Uncle Charlie

Last Monday we travelled to the funeral of Uncle Charlie, Ted's older brother. On the way there I asked if he had known any of his family on his dad's side, or if he had met any of his cousins. He had been up to Newcastle to look but had never found any there. He had met one cousin during his army days though.

"Whenever you are posted to a new army billet your name went up on a huge board by the gate giving you your duties while you are there. On the first evening I wandered over to have a look at it and was surprised to find my name already on it, even though I had only just arrived (it usually took a day or two to get your name on there). I asked around and found out there was another bloke on the camp with the same surname. Turns out he was one of the cooks. I found their hut, walked in and shouted out 'anyone here named Hazon?' not realising that these chaps all had to be up and cooking breakfast at 4 the next morning, and were all asleep. The response was a whole lot of boots being thrown at me. Anyway eventually I met my cousin, who knew all about my dad and myself. It was the best I was fed all through my service and when I left he came and handed me a sandbag full of meat and grub (dont forget rationing was still going on) for my mum"

Still going

Today both Martin and I had our days off together for a change, so as we lay in bed deciding what we were going to do today, I made a verbal list of all the things that needed doing. Martin said he had forgotten what they all were by the time I had finished reeling them off, so while he made a cuppa I typed up a long long list of things to do in the house, the garden, and at the shops. I pinned it up in the kitchen and told him to prioritise it!

Our starting point was Compare the Market dot com, as his car insurance was due - only days after mine which is real bad planning. Getting a quote involved looking to see if Martin's points for speeding had come off yet which meant we had to carefully take the bits of tatty paper making up his driving licence out of his wallet and lay them out on the table. The points had come off so I decided it really was time to change paper for photo id license!!

It wasnt on the list but its really easy to do on line now they can use your passport photo and signature plus its lots cheaper than I had been led to believe, so that job came smartly after the insurance quote while on the laptop.

A cup of tea later and we hit the garden, Martin to weed the patio, me to sort out the greenhouse (the packet of cress I had dropped on the floor had now sproated all over the place and needed weeding, plus everything has grown so quickly I needed to get everything tied up to the canes). Despite the lack of rain this year my garden is probably growing the best it every has done, and I have bumper crops of everything on the go. Mind I do have an ongoing war with snails to fight and I'm not sure you is winning, but I reckon we will be eating salad twice a day from now until the end of August. We had home grown cress and rocket in our lunch today.

We ploughed through the list - finishing the filling of holes in the little bedroom, putting the curtains back up from their annual wash, Martin finally replaced the makeshift log in the hole in the wall with a proper brick, he took the old high chair to the tip and we sized up the old cot sides to see if they could be used as a fence around the pond (they can).

Mart reckons we got about 25% of the list done which considering the length of it, and that a lot of it involves hitting up Ikea again, or carpet stores, or other shops, was a good days work.