Musical Mondays

We have a big Book show coming up when we will be selling at the East of England showground's annual Autumn Show, being held this coming Sunday. This meant that we needed to go through the stock and see where the gaps were, and then file an order to remedy the gaps, if you see what I mean. This took up most of the morning, but it has been done and then there will be a lot of sorting out to do when all the boxes arrive later in the week. The FH and I were busily scanning the bookshelves when all of a sudden I noticed the time, and had to send the FH scurrying to the car as he had an appointment for a flu jab, and only had 10 minutes to travel 8 rural miles to the surgery! My trans-atlantic reader will know that a "rural" mile around here can take longer to travel than normal!! He arrived in time, and came home with a sore arm.

I cycled to school and back today with the YFG, so I travelled 4 miles to her 2, but I hope it was worth the exercise - it has been the first fine day for a week today and I really wanted to enjoy the fresh air and sunshine. Sunshine - yes! The temperature in the greenhouse was in the 90s this morning by 9 am so I had to open the rooflight to ventilate it for the quail - I don't want the eggs baked before they are laid, not that any have actually started to lay yet. The chickens are not happy in this current cold snap that we are having and have dropped production to one a day between them - which is not good! I have had to buy eggs tonight to be able to bake tomorrow.

This evening we have all been to band practice - my euphonium skills are improving, I am told! It is lovely to be doing something as a family, although I think that it may be next Christmas before we can play carols together. I managed to play half the C-scale tonight, so that was an improvement on last week. Our teacher is in his early seventies and has been playing for 64 years, so I have a long way to go. He plays a tuba, but seems to know how to teach us all these different things so I guess his experience is wide ranging.

I have ordered myself a book by Cath Kidston from the the discount internet BookPeople website, and I am hoping that it will have some simple things in it that I can have a go at. I have downloaded some instructions from the net for the sewing machine and will be setting aside some time at the weekend (no, the show is on this weekend, so maybe the next!) to get the machine out and see if I can sort it out. There are some really great tutorials on the internet that I looked at one day last week, and I want to have a go at some of these things too - pencil cases, shoe bags, basket linings, etc, but my trouble is TIME - there just isn't enough of it. I could sleep less, I guess, but I'd feel so bad that it wouldn't be worth it.

The chicken feed was delivered this afternoon so that took about 45 minutes to move it from where it was unloaded on the driveway to the shed for storage. There were 22 bags to move, each weighing in at 20kg, so they were Heavy. I took three at a time in the wheelbarrow, but had to take a circuitous route around the garden to get round the raised beds, whereas the FH took 2 at a time on a trolley but was able to take a straighter route because the trolley was narrower and could get through the gaps more easily. Between us, we got them all put away safely. I don't know how long they will last because we have bought layers' mash, growers' pellets, chick crumbs and mixed corn, and they are all used at different rates for the various birds; I think that the chick crumbs will be enough for the baby chicks until they are ready to go onto growers' pellets, so we may be OK for about three months, I hope! There is enough mash for longer than that - we had to order 25 bags (a friend took 3 bags of corn) to get it delivered, so it was a bit of guesswork this time. The prices are excellent though - Bearts of Stowbridge, if anyone needs animal feed!

Have to go and do some ironing before I head to the bath, so will send hugs to those I know and good wishes to everyone else!