George Mansions

I’ve been a bad, bad, Blogger!! I just don’t get around to writing as often as I should.

The weekend before last was my birthday and every moment was accounted for.

On the Saturday I went up to Rowley Regis, home of my fore-fathers and checked into a small hotel. There I met a lady I had never met before. We have been ’online friends’ for a couple of years now, maybe longer. We have both been researching our family from Rowley Regis and as she had come down from Scotland on a business trip, we decided to meet up and to extend the invitation to other members of the website that we use.

As soon as we met, face to face, we knew we would get on. We spent Saturday afternoon at the Black Country Museum and had a whale of a time, going down the mine, eating chips fried in dripping and as she said “ Helping out the ladies in the cake shop” by eating up their stock.

In the evening we rolled down the hill from the hotel to an old, traditional Black Country, real ale pub, where we met up with other Members of the website. One of them was a girl I worked with when we were 17 and 18 years old . We hadn’t seen each other for 37 years, yet I knew her as soon as she walked in the door. I’ve no idea when I ever spent from 6.30 until, being thrown out, after midnight, in a pub but we had the best time. Everyone got on so well, it was as if all our online banter had just developed into 3D.

I don’t know if it could ever be as good again but we certainly hope to try.

Sunday was my birthday and I went out for tea and cake with Catherine, Flo and Isabella.

This last weekend was the open garden at Little Larford, Astley Burf . I went two years ago and posted a photo of Catherine, looking largely pregnant. This time I went with her and Isabella. Flo stayed home to watch the Grand Prix.

Mike had done a feature on the opening in his gardening programme. This year there were 20,000 tulips and 3,000 Narcisii.

These were a variety being trialed for a bulb producer. They were my favourite, I think. There are over 140 varieties there, so it's hard to be sure!

And here's my little Isabella Rose, amongst the tulips.

Just a few of the many varities of tulips there.

He’d better not feature it next year! It was far too popular, we couldn’t manage to get any of their wonderful Raspberry fresh cream cake, which was very disappointing.

Isabella is so funny. We went to the farm shop after the garden and as soon as I pulled up outside, she said “Cake!!” She remembered we’d been there the week before for cake.

They had been to Stoke for a fancy dress party the day before. Isabella was dressed as Stephanie from Lazy Town. She looked so cute, I will get some photos of that soon. When the other people turned up in costume, she was a bit scared and started saying. “Mummy’s car, home” She may not say a lot but she knows how to get her point across.

She can count to fourteen in English and six in German. Not bad for twenty two months old. She loves to talk on the phone and will have pretend conversations with her toy phone. This little clip was made for her Grandma in Germany. In German that is Omah, only I don’t know if that is how you spell it.

On my birthday we also went to open a Dog Show at Eastnor Castle. It was for the charity that we got Rowley from.. We managed to get through that without a major incident but he really doesn’t like other dogs. We met up with his ’brother’ Ginger from the family he used to live with. That really freaked him out. They used to get on together but Rowley got very aggressive and then turned his back on Ginger and started backing himself up my leg. I’m convinced he thought that he was going to have to go back to that awful place. Poor boy.

School is a nightmare, never have I known such a badly behaved year group. I have my thoughts on the reasons, they are just not being shown enough discipline and the next year group teachers will be having a very tough time with them in September.

One boy, today, called me a big fat cow! This was upsetting for two reasons. One, I wasn’t having anything to do with him at the time. Two, I’ve lost nine and a half pounds since I joined Slimming World six weeks ago, so I feel that if I’m a big fat cow now, I don’t want to know what I was before.

NO!! This was upsetting for three reasons. The boy that called me that is nine years old and he weighs over fourteen stone! That’s heavier than me. He was obviously using words that have been used against him, which is sad. Then again…. Pot, kettle?????

My football team are going up!! Well, it’s almost certain, so we will be back in the Premier. That’s exciting. I shall have to try and get to a few more matches next season.

The rain is coming down in a way that makes one think of building an Ark, whatever is wrong with our weather? Fingers crossed I don’t have to go and do a chicken rescue in the middle of the night. I pray you all have dry feet.

Linda x.