Battling Procrastination and down memory lane

 I have taken myself by the scruff of the neck these past two days.  Yesterday I finally took photos of and listed Keith's brand new all-terrain wheelchair (hardly used), telescopic ramps (used only in the house at bedtime, just before he was in hospital), and his mobility scooter and expensive 7 ft ramps for the car.  I put them on E-Bay.  However, being in Wales, they probably won't sell.  No-one can sell "medical items" like these on Facebook Marketplace, so if they don't sell on E-Bay, the only place I can think of is Gumtree.  I found it hard to do as it is drawing a line under the final year or so of Keith's life, but I need to move on and do not need any of these items.

Today I baked another Apple Gingerbread cake (for Sunday, though I had a piece for lunch) and I have just been up in the polytunnel - again first time in a couple of years - to cut down the brambles and dead grass which had grown in there from under the edges.  I need to get the cucumbers and Tam's Cantaloupe Melons up there.  It was hot in the polytunnel - the sunshine and higher temperatures have returned so I have just come down and eaten the last icelolly which really hit the spot.

Shortly I intend to go and cut back the Geranium microrrhizum as I have some plants grown from seed which desperately need to go in the ground, as do my Sweet Peas, which were sown late to start with!  Ah well, better late than never.

I received my Journal of the Mortimer History Society today.  I was right about thinking twice about trying to research/write/submit an entry as all the winners have PhD's and access to the sort of documents I cannot access, nor translate (early Latin and Medieval Welsh not being my starters for 10).  The essays will be interesting reading anyway.

Today's podcasts - more from Uncanny - end of programme about Borley Rectory, which was very good.  When I was in my late teens and 20s I was very interested in spooky stories and this was one which stayed in my mind.  Lots was written about it although it's hard to say how much was credible.

I can remember buying books of horror stories (e.g. the 12th Pan Book of Horror Stories etc).  I read one on the train down to Beaminster in Dorset, when I went on a working interview weekend to see if I was suitable for a job as a groom at a Shetland Pony Stud.  I stayed in this big old manor house, and was given a bedroom up towards the attic, with a bed like a plank and a tree branch scraping the window like something from Wuthering Heights!  Reading spooky stories on the way down did little to help my nerves in a strange place.  The stud owner was clearly from a moneyed family and got the family silver out for tea, and in the drawing room there were "hairy rugs" thrown over the backs of the sofas.  When I finally twigged that they were the pelts of past dogs, which they then had skinned and cured so they could be with them after death, I really DID NOT want to stay long.  How bizarre is that?!   There was the current groom, pale and called Beth, with a Pyrenean mountain dog. Things weren't helped by my having a really ghastly asthma attack - my first proper one ever - I thought I was going to die.  I had to phone my dad and get him to drive down and collect me after he finished work on the Saturday (couldn't face a 2nd night in the ghastly bedroom either).  He was not best pleased as he was driving into the sun all the way down there and of course, no-one used sunglasses in those days unless they were a filmstar!  Poor dad.

 Well, with that memory to sit with me all afternoon now I'm sure, I had best go and get my Sweet Peas properly planted on.