Monday 19th May

The weather is very warm at the moment.....

It doesn't feel anything like as hot as that though, because of the very strong winds we have.

Bubbles obviously feels it, she likes to be out sunbathing on the porch, but comes in and immediately flakes out....

she doesn't even make it to the bed.    But the aroma of hot rotisserie chicken got her to her feet pretty quickly.

Speaking of which........the hot chicken was $6.49.   Near the checkout where they were selling them cold they were $4.49.  I asked why and was told that people on food stamps can't use them to buy hot food, so the cold chickens are for the impoverished poor (my words).

Last Friday my brake warning light came on.  Like it did in the rental car in Oxford, when I was told everything had just been checked over and it was all fine.   So I took it straight off to Terry, he filled up the thingy that holds the brake fluid but suspected it was leaking and told me to take it back this morning, which I did, and it was.  So I needed a new one.  And while he had the car up on the ramp he showed me that the tyres were worn, so I had to get two new ones.    SIGH.

He took me home while he worked on the car, then picked me up.   Apparently there aren't MOT tests here, and no regulations about tyre treads.  He said one of his customer's tyres are completely worn down, but he just doesn't care.   I wish I'd known that on Saturday morning when the Chief of Police was answering our questions.

I had started to pull up the dead stuff from last year's calla lilies, but while I was out at church last night my next door neighbour came and finished off the job.    And moved some of them so they were more spread out along the fence.   I thanked her but am actually struggling to feel gracious.  I just can't imagine what her reaction would be if I let myself into her garden, and started digging about.  The notion boggles my mind. 

While I was out and about in town before taking the  car in, I called at the Senior Centre  to see how the jumble sale went last Friday and Saturday.    They were decidedly less than thrilled, Kate said  that they managed to cover their costs.   Picking my words rather carefully I said that in England we would call it a jumble sale, and I thought 'Community Bazaar' sounded more "high end".   She knew what I was talking about and said she expected it to be more high end too.    I think she thought that by insisting on calling it a bazaar it would all be much nicer......but what do they say about roses, and any other name.....
This was the notice about it that was all over town -

I think next month they need to be a bit more specific.   Buy, Sell or Trade, doesn't cut it.