Numbers

 It's all Greek to me. This is the week that I have been obsessed with numbers. Every morning I check Amazon books to see where my book is the rankings. When it was first published on the site it ranked over a million down the rankings. Amazon has that many books for sale! I would never have guessed. Over the days it has gone up and then slipped down again. Imagine my delight when I saw it had reached number 2 in Middle East history/ biography. This leads me to ask the question: how many people have bought my book for it to reach that rank? 

Before the swim

My support team

On another string of thought, I have been preparing for the Brighton 5k open-water swim that was postponed from July. Last July I was raring to go. I was ready to do the swim and confident that I could complete it within the time. Now not so much. The last two times I have tried to do 5k in the pool, I have had to give up because of agonising cramp. Added to that, I have a dodgy earache and a sniffle. I promised myself I'd give it my best shot...I did. However, I failed. I missed the first buoy I was supposed to turn at and had to go back and round it, then I overshot the one at the far end of the course by such a long way that a nice young man on a paddle board told my to hop on and he'd paddle me back to the course. I did and instantly got griping cramp in my hamstring. He phoned the safety boat that then towed me close to shore and I swam in from there. I only completed 2.5k. 

Even worse, my cramp was so bad, I couldn't stand up so I got out of the water on all fours and was helped up the beach by two of the organisers. I can happily say I wasn't the only one who needed help and I wasn't the first one. Two of the competitors who were out before me had become overly cold and then at the cut-off time, there were still twenty swimmers in the water. Hopefully with all this going on, they will have forgotten about the old lady with cramp!

The car is finally fixed. The wing mirrors fold in and I am happy once more. The funny thing is, I still use my left foot on the clutch that isn't there and try to change gear when I slow down. The previous hire cars had seven gears so I was going up and down through the gears all the time on my jaunts around town. Silly me. Why I can't unlearn what I have been doing while my car was being repaired, I'll never know. 

While we are on the topic of numbers, I am pleased to see so many countries supporting Palestine. It should have happened years ago. We just need to support them getting their land back and giving them stability, security and safety. My biggest concern is that Israel has gone above and beyond in promoting a future "Hamas" through its barbarity and disproportionate response to the initial attacks. Sons and daughters seeing their families killed will find it hard to forgive and move on. Also, Israelis around the world have been complicit in not speaking out against the actions. They too will be looking over their shoulders for some time to come. For Netanyahu, there will be no victory, however many Palestinians he has killed. He is a war criminal of the lowest kind. He is the loser just like I was in the swim this weekend.

Eating squash flowers at Anne's

Coffee

Sammi in his Community Garden!

One Elephant, Two Elephants...

Keep counting and breathe deeply. I should be happy. Thame Crash Repair - the company that are repairing my car -  told me that my car would be ready on Tuesday 16th September. Wonderful, I thought. This is the end of driving a hire car that has cost the insurance company over £90 a day for the last seven weeks. I went into planning mode and rearranged the planned service on my car. I found there was no way I could get the MOT done at the same garage on the same day. This meant involving more planning and I needed to let the car hire company know that I was returning their car. 

It only took me about ten phone calls to co-ordinate this. Then I was told on Monday that the car wouldn't be ready on Tuesday. It would be ready on Wednesday. Again I went through the process of rearranging and co-ordinating getting the crash repair place to deliver the car to the garage for its service, for the car rental people to pick the car up the following day and for the other garage to postpone the MOT for one more day. All this took time. 

Things are never simple and a little human intervention from the various companies involved would have made my ordeal much easier. I got an email demanding the return of the hire car on 15th September. I called them again and told them this had already been sorted. I got nasty emails and a phone call from the Toyota dealership saying I had missed my service appointment. No I hadn't. I told them I had to cancel. That was not the only phone call I got from them confusing the planning. On top of that, my insurance company threatened to cancel my policy because they had no driving data from me. This was the second warning. I contacted them previously, got an apology and then they sent another warning out. I scored well over 80/100 when I was driving. I had the numbers to prove I was a good driver and still they were nasty to me. 

I was told I could collect my car on Thursday!!! With excitement and purpose I got ready to pick up my car. I got to the garage and it wasn't there. It hadn't been delivered from the repair company. Eventually I did pick it up by the close of play on Thursday though and as a sympathy note, my garage did the MOT despite saying they couldn't. Then I needed to apologise to the MOT garage for mucking them around. This is but a small summary of my ordeal. The more mundane bits have been omitted. I won't tell you what I had to go through to update everyone of my new timings. So why the delay? Well, the crash repair team ordered the trim for the passenger side and received the trim for the driver's side more than once. This small bit of stupidity has cost the insurance company so much more because of delays caused by error. Errrh. 

I am going through similar frustrations with HMRC. I joined a webinar to learn about the new developments -  MTD - Making Tax Digital. I then had a look at the suggested software I'll need to use. This has to be compliant with the HMRC and cover all the areas I receive income from. So far I haven't found one that fits my needs. Then I went to sign up as a user to get used to the new procedure. That part of the HMRC website is currently not working. OMG HMRC WTF! MTD - Making Things Difficult.

Keeping breathing deeply... one elephant, two elephants, three eleph...

...at least the village school September fair was relatively dry...

...and loads of fun

Rain stopped play

Sheltering from the rain

 At the Community Orchard we celebrated the coming of Autumn by opening it up for Heritage Week. Our spot was 2-5pm on Saturday afternoon. We also hosted the Scarecrow festival at the same time. All this needed a bit of planning. The only thing you can't plan for is rain. 

Because we are still experiencing vandalism, I thought it would be a good idea to get to the orchard by 11 to set up the gazeboes and the rest of the stuff we need to make the orchard ready for our event. Normally we would have got things ready on the Thursday and left it out until the day. No more. When we got there, the "Stickman" scarecrow had been broken up by vandals  - what a surprise! Danielle had worked hard to get it made. This time she needed help to fix it. It was unusually hot in the morning. I sweated my way to getting the place ready. We used wheelbarrows to empty my car full of beer, cakes and gazebos. That alone was an effort. At the same time the Wildlife Trust and the Town Council put up their stalls. For a couple of hours it was "All Go!"

The stickman

People came wandering through the orchard from early morning on, following their Scarecrow trail. Ours was on the floor in bits. This was a  big message to the local community that there are idiots living close by! We advertised the afternoon event and most people were keen to come back. By opening time when the music started and the refreshments were ready, the place was packed. We were heading for an all time best event. Then it rained. People squashed up under the gazebos. It was that heavy, wet rain you just can't go out in. Soon as it eased most people left. For the rest of the afternoon it was quiet - apart from the music. One of the cakes I made was untouched. Maybe it didn't look appetizing - nonetheless, it is always a kick in the teeth when no one wants to eat the food you make. 

Juicing

Childrens' artwork

By 5pm the event had fizzled out, dampened by the rain no doubt. We dismantled the gazebos and put everything away. I was exhausted and I hadn't done any exercise for two days! When I got home, I spread the wet canopies out across my floor and then got up early on Sunday morning to fold them up. Sunday, of course, was a sunny day - a perfect day for tennis. If only it had rained overnight and not in the middle of our event things would have been so different. C'est la vie.

Exploding tyres and other misdemeanours

This tale is part of the long running bike and trailer saga. Danielle had almost got herself sorted for the first day of school - she had gone to Cycle Saviours to make sure the bike was properly hitched to the trailer. I had confirmed that the new inner tubes I bought for her were actually OK - she hadn't screwed the valve tight! Everything was moving in the right direction. I told her we should do a few practice runs to Willen Lake and back but time had run away with us. There was just one more thing to do. Danielle asked to borrow my pump as the front wheel had gone flat again. I cycled the pump over and watched her blow the tyre up. All good. That was until a loud gunshot rang out. The front tyre had exploded - she really did blow it up! The bike, lying on the ground moved at least a foot. BANG! 

I laughed. This was just one more thing to stop Danielle getting sorted. It really was funny after all that had gone before. Wednesday came around and true to her word Danielle brought Ezra-Mae over to my place in good time for school. There are lots of lovely photos of a pristine young girl bristling with excitement. Little does she know this is the next twelve years of her life! As for Danielle and her plans to do 160 miles a month taking the girls to and from school, these fell by the wayside at the first hurdle. She asked me to cycle her bike and the empty trailer home while she stayed at my place. 

As any good grandmother would, I stepped up and helped her out. Half way home, the front tyre went flat. I walked the bike back, got the dog and returned in miserable weather only to find that Danielle had fallen asleep in my spare room. Thursday, Ezra-Mae had a sleepover with me. I collected her from school, we did all sorts of things - we made a present and a card for Danielle's birthday, we read books and looked for Wally. We even watched The Wrong Trousers. I had fun. Ezra-Mae loves her new school - Thank Goodness - she told me that everything was best about it. What a great recommendation! 

Almost the last one left!

Meanwhile... Mattaya, who eats everything, ate a receipt I had put to one side to claim some money back from The Orchard. Uh oh, this wasn't a little misdemeanour. On many levels it was not a good thing to happen. If only Danielle fed her properly! Mattaya has an eye for anything that could be digested. Her tastes go far beyond receipts too. She has a penchant for the unripe tomatoes on the vine. As yet she has not equated green tomatoes with not nice taste!! She eyed Danielle's birthday cake with a relish you would not expect from a thirteen month old.  I made a chocolate cake with caramel topping that seeped down the sides. When I made it, it looked neat. After the topping oozed, the pattern of chocolate buttons spread to a random splurge. Luckily the cake tasted OK or at least Mattaya thought so.

First day at school... the compulsory pic

As with all the times Danielle comes over to my place, she leaves something behind. I joked to Naser and Amira that she would have left something as we waved her goodbye. Upstairs there was a small pink sock. Ah ha, one thing... then we found two yellow socks slightly larger than the pink one and a cardigan - a very large one.. No doubt Danielle and entourage will be back! 

Yay for the blue team!

And in my spare time... I managed a game or two of tennis