Yesterday was a Red Letter Day – a day that is pleasantly noteworthy or memorable. The term has its roots in classical antiquity – important days are indicated in red in a calendar dating from the Roman Republic (509–27 BC).
I bet you always wanted to know that.
Back to yesterday. I did a wee bit of gardening – the first since way before my shoulder op so probably since June – and I didn’t bugger it up. I think I strained my side but that I can cope with.
Hubby has been gardening quite a bit this last year: guy-gardening, such as his beloved vegetable patch (we had one parsnip this year, and tomato blight), raking leaves (why? They just keep a-coming), and sawing branches and bows off our neighbours’ cotoneaster tree that were overhanging our land, all the more exciting because Mrs Neighbour says he didn’t seek her permission first, but Hubby insists he did. Not sure who I believe as they both have ‘form’.
I also have a gardener who should come for about two hours supposedly every week, but it’s been more like every three weeks (not complaining – family illnesses).
As a result, my ‘garden’ looks more like an advert for a Green Party re-wilding project.
I didn’t do a lot yesterday but made satisfactory progress. I swept the cobwebs from the porch and steps, cleaned the front door, scraped the weeds from the granite setts and emptied the pots of dead summer bedding with a view to filling them with winter bedding from the farm shop at the top of the lane. Not so much gardening as tidying and decluttering. Not only was my shoulder happy, but my OCD impulses have been satiated for a while. Hopefully.
I had just finished off and was about to go inside to get ready for lunch with friends in the pub, when Mrs Neighbour popped out for a chat. Her mother-in-law has just died so I didn’t want to give her short shrift. When I eventually managed to politely extricate myself, I only had 20 minutes to change out of gardening garb into luncheon luxuries (oh okay then: jeans and a checked jacket), slap on the slap, find some suitable earrings, and fix my hair that after two days without a wash plus a morning in the drying sun and wind needed more curling cream than usual to stave off the Worzel Gummidge jokes.
We got to the pub without being fashionably late and got straight down to business – wine for the ladies, beer for the gents.
We also dived straight into our usual varied ‘blue stocking’ discussions that included the Ox-CamARC, Parish Council gossip (I couldn’t possibly comment), and whether the Sunday roasts in front of us were as good as those at a pub in a nearby village. Hubby and I couldn’t really say as we haven’t eaten at the other pub since new managers took over. But we thought our chicken was tasty – lots of crispy skin – vegetables weren’t over-cooked, and the – er – Yorkshire pudding was actually edible. Kudos to the Spanish chef! Yeah!! I know!!!
Hubby managed to diffuse a potential flashpoint when the road repairs to our Lane a few years ago was, once again, for the millionth time, criticised as being not a priority. Once again, for the millionth time, I explained that: while that Lane only served seven homes, it was still a public highway; in the worst condition of any with countless, unavoidable category one potholes, i.e. dangerous for vehicle tyres and suspensions, walkers, horses and cyclists; that we seven paid our taxes; and that timing of the works and required funding fitted neatly into Bucks County Council’s scheduling; and I promised the workforce a steady supply of cakes.
Thank goodness we didn’t return to another ancient bête noire topic – the Parish Council asking Thames Water to avoid Stewkley with their emergency pooh lorries that drove through Littlecote instead. When I had realised what was going on, I phoned Thames and explained it was Stewkley’s pooh – Littlecote is served by private septic systems – and if Stewkley didn’t want the lorries, they could do without this temporary sewerage service until the problem at the nearby plant was fixed. I also pointed out that once out of Stewkley, the roads and junctions were more suitable for HGVs, and it was a shorter route to their destination than going through Littlecote. TW agreed. And my name was mud (or worse) in Stewkley for weeks afterwards.
We managed to end our lunch on friendly terms and headed out, thanking the extraordinarily pretty new landlady as we went. So I was even more thrilled than I might have been when she said, “I love your hair. It’s gorgeous.”
Now that really truly unequivocally qualifies yesterday as a Red Letter Day.
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