'Nails' Day - Portrait of Ralph

It gives me great pleasure to publish this 'Portrait of Ralph' who, like the rest of us, is becoming quite an elderly gentleman. My lady readers are, of course, excluded from the designation, as are the young.

I think you can tell from his face, he is a super dog and we sympathise with his failing faculties and inability to leap around as he once did. If a dog ever deserved Portugese sardines, it is Ralph !

You wouldn't believe that 3 weeks plus has passed since Y's 'nails service' but it has and we went over to Carlton as usual. We gave Frantinis a miss but Y was in 'being done' nearly an hour, so I managed a detailed investigation of the charity shops. Apparently one of the nails-girls has had a baby who was carefully passed from person to person. Her name is to be Jennifer, which might seem odd for a Vietnamese child, but Y said it suited her and that she looked divine! Babies don't appeal to me I'm afraid - wet, smelly, fragile things who you can't have a decent conversation with. I think it is a lady thing.

The we nipped over to Mapperley Top to look into the Estate Agents and to lunch in the Cheesecake Shop which is very popular in the area for lunch. One isn't restricted to cheesecake and we had chicken soup with toasted ciabatta. Both were delicious ! The soup was more of a broth with vegetables rather than 'creamed' and the bread had certainly never seen the inside of a freezer. It was light and airy and even Y (not being a keen bread person) finished both of her slices with relish. We saw a chalet bungalow in one of the Agents which we both like the look of and we are going tomorrow afternoon for a viewing. But still ! Trying not to get excited ! We were favoured by a gorgeous afternoon. Ideal for house-viewing and it surprising that almost each time Y has had her nails done the weather has been like this. The temperature reached 71F and there was no wind.

Y then went further down the road to look in other agents and I found yet another charity shop where I bought 3 more poetry books. If you wonder why, at nearly 72 I am still buying poetry books, I will explain. When I was depressed following my heart op, I threw out nearly all my poetry. It is only thanks to Y's good sense in retrieving many of them, that I still have any at all.

I couldn't resist this John Hegley collection which I haven't previously read. He is an excellent performance poet who also comes over well from the written page. His sense of humour is of Roger McGough quality. And, as you will see from the title and the cover, we residents of a Christian country, do retain a sense of humour perhaps denied to certain other faiths.

We are actually going to look at 2 bungalows tomorrow afternoon and I will, of course, keep you informed.

Re 'blog pictures'. The glitch whereby pictures which I have used, seem to vanish when one researches past blog posts, is widespread.

I visited the 'blogger' forums this morning and people have been bemoaning this trait since July. Nobody from Google has emerged to give an explanation or suggest a cure. From fellow sufferers, it appears that if you shrink your pictures to around 600 x 600pixels it doesn't seem to happen. But most of us don't want to do that, we want the pictures to be big enough for readers to enjoy. I guess, as with other google-glitches, eventually it will resolve itself.

Picture 3 is yet another artichoke-head study. The thistledown type seeds were just hanging on by a thread so to speak and I was attracted by their etherealness ( if in fact that is a word)

Tomorrow we are mounting the EPS exhibition in the refurbished Eastwood Library which is not yet officially open. So we can all have a 'neb' and see what it is like. Then we need to go to Coney Grey Farm where the butcher has opened a farm shop. They are farmers as well as butchers and all their beef and lamb is grown on their own land, hence its undoubted quality. That also will be interesting because I have never been to the farm!

Then we need shopping and we will have to eat, so another action-packed day lies ahead.

And I learnt several useful wrinkles last night at our club night, so I would enoy an hour messing about with my pictures.

Lots of reading to do too. The crossword defeated us both today. We did maybe three-quarters but I like it to be completed. It is a sort of household challenge.

Yesterday's quotation on my igoogle homepage amused me :-

"Do not accustom yourself to use big words for little matters"

Samuel Johnson - 'naturellement' - ha ha!

..Not tired at all tonight. We both slept well last night. Lets hope we do so again. Hope everybody does. Steven rang to say thanks for the sticks. As predicted he liked the 'gadget' one. It is his pub quiz night tonight and he intends to walk. Hope he doesn't overdo it.