Category: My Lovely Man

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Happy birthday girls

My mother would have been 81 today. We lost her when she was 46. So, today, as I do most days, I mourn the loss of my extraordinary mother.

Today is also the birthday of one of my little fur babies. Bella pup. She is 9. Actually, I am not sure her exact age or birthday, as I had to estimate it. But, I chose it to fall on my mum’s birthday.

My lovely man is very kind to all the little animals I impose on him. It’s difficult to say if he has a favourite, but he certainly has a soft spot for dear little Bella.

Bella has selected to sleep at the top of the bed, between our pillows. Her little head on my lovely man’s pillow. I get the arse end, I’m not sure if you picked that up. She gets a little kiss on the head from him good night. I refrain from kissing the bit next to my face.

The other day she had a dodgy tummy and we listened to it rumbling something terrible. It was still rumbling like crazy when we retired to bed and she settled into her spot.

As I went off to shower, we glanced at each other and the unspoken thought was ‘is she gonna shit the bed?’

I climbed into bed, my lovely man tenderly stroking her little face and he announced…. ‘you might want to sleep facing the other way, she’s farting like a dragon’.

No thought of removing her from the vicinity. Isn’t he the loveliest?

Happy birthday mum and Bella. We count our blessings for our lovely fella.

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The continuing bee saga

You may remember our attempts at bee keeping. Apiculture for those in the know.

We are far from in the know. A few You Tube videos and we were thoroughly daunted and reaching for the wine.

Our newly purchased hive was attracting nothing, until we put it in the garage and it became the location of choice. Making getting in the car hazardous.

So… We moved them all out the garage into the common area corner of our complex. As a result of my fear of my dear Alfie pup enraging them into a killing frenzy if they were in the garden.

The entrepid Mandova maintains them somewhat. Making sure water is available and that there are lots of pebbles to sit on so that they don’t drown.

I am learning so much about all the animals you take in and I have to look after Mandova advised me. I’m sure with gratitude for the opportunity.

Just as we did this and beamed at each other proudly as to how they were thriving, some of the gorgeous young mums in the complex invested in and built a playground for the little ones in same common area.

What could go wrong we thought.

Maybe if we tell the mums and kids to stay away from the hive my lovely man suggested.

Have you met a toddler I replied.

So… We have given away our hive and some bee fellow took it and most of the bees away in the dead of night.

Supervised, of course, by our self named Estate Manager, Mandova.

Some anti histamine was required. The less said about that the better.

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What are you trying to say?

I play Wordle every day, do you?

We have a little group and we share our results. It’s my dad’s group actually. We are a motley crew of various age groups, backgrounds and not everyone has English as their first language.

I started to do a little ranking graph and then my dad took over and he does a brilliant job of a daily commentary. Great fun.

I am, alarmingly, totally rubbish. Often last.

Fortunately, I am not particularly competitive or this would bother me.

But, it does interest me that I like to read and write, but I’m dismal at Wordle.

I used to get my lovely man to give me a start word every day, but I’ve abandoned that because I do even worse.

I was pondering on my incompetence when I noticed my lovely man reading one of my blogs. My lovely man lies right next to me, reads all my blogs, closes them and carries on with his life with nary a word. Always.

If I’m looking for affirmation, this is not the place to get it.

So, to my regret as it turns out, I asked him his opinion on what he was reading.

I sometimes struggle to get what you are saying, he advised me, you write strangely.

Not a fan then.

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Yes, there’s a parallel here

I’m reading a book at the moment called ‘The Running Grave’ . Actually I’m listening to it on Audible. What a blessing audible books are.

Anyway, it’s very gripping. It’s about the goings on in a cult.

I’ve not had a lot of experience with cults. I don’t think a cult would tolerate me for too long. I’d either be expelled or locked up in a box until I realised the error of my ways.

It occurred to me, as I gazed across the lawn at the tortoise antics and listened to their bellows, that we are, in fact, housing a cult.

There’s a great deal of free love going on.

Even battered old Tamara is getting her fair share. And honestly, I’ve considered getting her adult diapers.

Incontinence, it appears, is of no consequence. Tamara, the hottie, is rocking it.

I’m considering playing something from Woodstock for them, it seems fitting.

My lovely man, watching this lot, commented ‘inspiring’. And then he gave a little roar.

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What skulduggery is this now

Some time ago a fellow knocked on our door and asked me if he could have the details of my lovely man’s Interpol contact because he had been sold something that turned out to be stolen (and not functioning, which was perhaps the bigger issue).

Darling, I enquired, how on earth do you have Interpol contacts (best I can do is the Douglasdale police station), and what espionage are you involved in?

Also, I continued, this can be added to the alarmingly long list of things NOT disclosed prior to our involvement.

Turns out my lovely man is not connected to Interpol, or New Scotland Yard or any of that ilk.

I’m not sure, he advised our hopeful and somewhat misinformed visitor, that they would much bother with that kind of case. They would probably just arrest you for buying stolen goods.

They would surely be interested he objected, I can finger the thieves.

Well, too tempting isn’t it….

I’m not sure it will matter how confident you are in satisfying the thieves I advised him, they are likely to lock you up.

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Yes, yes it’s on ice

The other night we had friends around for dinner.

I know this doesn’t sound particularly exciting, other people do it all the time don’t they? Weirdos. But for us, this is epic!

First of all, we don’t do the evenings. Ever really. The other day a friend asked me how my car’s headlights were at night and I said ‘I have no idea, and I’m never likely to find out’. I am tucked up where I should be at night, as is my car.

The other thing is hosting (and cooking), that comes so very easily to some, is alien and stressful to me.

So, the best you gonna get is take aways.

It was Thai last night. Graciously and gratefully received. They are good friends. My good friends have low expectations of me luckily.

If I had attempted to feed them something I had actually cooked, they may not have been as gracious.

My lovely man, as always, such a big help. He is a delight. Doesn’t judge, just collects the take aways, heats up the take aways and gets drinks out. Bless him! Love him the most.

Part of the drinks process is filling up the ice bucket with ice for the drinks tray.

Well! Who would have thought how much excitement this would engender?

Is that an Oude Meester ice bucket my friend cried out suddenly. An original one? If it’s an original one your ice will still be OK in there for three days. The new ones are crap, but this looks like a winner!

We discussed this at some length. Oohing and aaahing.

This is what happens when you get past your 50’s people. Just wait.

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Hello, hello, what’s this now?

The other morning my lovely man approached my side of the bed as I was drinking my morning cuppa and writing in my journal.

What does he want I thought, looking up adoringly… Surely not sex? I haven’t even finished my choccie biccie, and neither of us had taken our morning vitamins.

But no, he produced the tweezers and asked me to pluck an extraordinarily long hair growing from the top of his ear.

And this is quite normal actually. We ask this of each other regularly it seems.

I suspect this is what a middle aged relationship looks like. This is why they warn you to not grow old alone.

We need each other to pluck, prune and preen.

Should we be setting up support groups to offer this to our single friends?

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Be better

We had a handyman come in recently to help with a few things.

Didn’t you find him slow to grasp the problem and provide a solution I commented to my lovely man after he’d left.

No, he said, he was fine, you were impossible. When you are very busy with a million tasks on your mind you are impatient and don’t express yourself clearly. Nobody can read your mind, he continued. (Probably just as well I swear he muttered).

This must be wrong, I am, of course, sweetness and light.

And also, why aren’t people more intuitive for the love of…?

So, I sent an apology to the fellow for being ratty, rude and impatient.

No problem he replied, I didn’t notice you were any different.

Great, this is my resting personality.

Eventually my torrid day ended and I settled down with my lovely man and lovely wine.

Looked at the TV and it had a screen saver displaying. Looked at my lovely man.

Can you help me change the channel he said, I’m not sure what I did.

When did this happen? This morning. Why did you not ask me for help? Not today he replied.

I can do better people. I can be better.

Also, does anyone have cannabis?

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We can all retire now

My lovely man realised he hadn’t received his Zimbabwe pension for a time, so said that he wanted to look into it.

A Zimbabwe pension is not really worth too much fuss. It and another $2 can buy you a cup of coffee really.

But still, something to sort out.

My lovely man’s way of sorting things out is to get in his car and find someone to speak to.

Ridiculous hey?

We’ll write to them I said, try and find a whatsapp number or an email address.

He came back victorious with an email address and so we compiled an enquiry and sent it off.

The pension fund is called the NSSA.

We received a very prompt reply. Amazing.

We are a little confused, they replied, and wondered if you could supply a little bit more information on your lovely man because we don’t have him in our database. Was he an astronaut, an astro physicist or a systems engineer?

I’m sure if we keep the pressure on by name dropping Buzz Lightyear, Neil Armstrong and perhaps ‘one giant step.. ‘ shit we can persuade NASA to fork out a pension for my lovely man.

He deserves it!

I’ll keep you posted on how it goes.

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Buzz off already

My lovely man and I are both bee appreciators. He is a big fan of Bee Vectoring actually. Very interesting stuff. Bees and bats. He loves them. And birds. The birds and the bees with the old bat (did you see what I did there?).

Anyway, we got some fellow (The Bee Man, most originally), to make us a hive. Immediately we realised we were out of our depth, because he kept on telling us the extra things we needed and when we received it, it all looked quite complicated.

Slightly daunted, but nevertheless optimistic that we were single handedly going to save the planet and really, how difficult could it be, we persevered. We put it in the bottom of the garden and started going with a little pot to collect our honey every morning. The Bee Man (lying bastard), had told us they would just ‘come’.

They did not. We paid another fellow to relocate a swarm to our hive. They left.

Location, location… we were not it.

We need a Queen my lovely man lamented, do we know if our swarm had a queen? We knew nothing and also, is there really room for another queen in this household?

Then… a couple of things happened. I read that Jodi Picoult book and realised just how ignorant we were on bee-keeping (and transgenders for that matter). And then, there were at least two horrific incidents that I heard of where dogs were attacked by bees.

I looked at my dear little Alfie pup and with a sinking heart acknowledged that he could irritate anything into a killing frenzy.

Give the hive away I ordered my lovely man… we can’t have bees.

We’ll sell it he said. We are not sellers of anything really. We are givers away or hoarders. He is the latter.

So, the hive has sat in the garage, on top of the bat box (we never attracted bats either). Once again, is there really room for another bat in this household?

And then, a year later, the bees arrived and made their home in the hive, in the garage.

I am not sure how we are suddenly the location of choice, but there you go.

So, we have moved the hive to a safe location nearby, out of the reach of my little Alfie and we are tending, in an ignorant way really, to bees.

The bees have chosen us. What a blessing.