The face is definitely improving, my black eyes have slid down my cheeks to form  faintly exotic yellow patches, and I no longer scare little children. I went to the surgery to see the nurse today and we agreed to leave the stitches above my eyebrow until Friday, after I come back from London. That area is still rather painful and I am frightened by the thought of coming apart at the seams while in the big city.  I put my rapid recovery down to copious amounts of Vit E capsule oil smoothed in, alternatively  with olive oil. (Maybe that is why I am turning yellow!)  Tim and Clare came over from Liverpool with Lucy for Saturday night and we had a lovely visit. I hope they enjoyed it as much!

Having a little extra time I copied my blog bits and pieces over to a Word document and realised how careless the spelling has been, so I corrected it all. I apparently can’t spell apparently, or cockerel, – must be the Gloucestershire accent!  My excuse is that I have been writing this mostly on a laptop in bed at 4 in the morning. But we will try harder in future.  The bees are having to learn to read too, as Jane has written out little notices for them to tell them where to drink.  (Poor dear- it must all be getting too much for her!)

On the allotment, I have made the hot bed from the second old bookcase frame I was given, filling it with a bottom layer of cardboard, then a pile of horse manure, then some growbags and finally good soil from the end of the plot, and have planted courgettes into it.  No more rain since last weekend’s day of grace, so I was watering early the corn and potatoes, beans and peas this morning.  The country is divided between the NW/wet, and the SE- very dry. We are just on the east side of the middle.  More terrible floods in the mid-west of the USA, and drought in China.  Fires in Arizona, – another bad aftershock in Christchurch – who said weather people lead boring lives!