A while since my last post and mixed news to report. Had a fairly quiet weekend. Made the most of a dry spot and had a BBQ out the garden on Saturday night. Went extremely well. Although the weather is generally atrocious at the moment, the garden is a lush green jungle, and is looking good. The pond is fuller than I have ever seen it. A friend I was talking to on the phone last night made me laugh. She was describing how she went out to her garden to harvest some potatoes for her supper, and as she was pulling them out,the hole was filling up with water. I imagined a paddy field of rice, rather than a Carmarthenshire farm garden.

This coming weekend, I am looking forward to my chicken workshop. I received the list of requirements in the post yesterday e.g. fabric, buttons, felt etc... On Saturday, I may also be going to a craft workshop at Inkspot.

I mentioned the news was mixed. Was talking to another friend on the phone and it turns out that she is dealing with a recurrence of her cancer after fifteen years. She's at the unfortunate stage where dealing with the medication and its side effects is temporarily worse than the original illness. We discussed this a bit- one of the other difficulties is dealing with how other people treat you. She doesn't want to be treated any differently, or spoken about in hushed reverent tones as though she were already dead - unfortunately this often happens. We also talked a bit about how it feels when cancer recurs. For me, this is the hard issue to deal with, even only four years on from my original diagnosis. How do you maintain normal life and relationships while also juggling the waiting - I don't always manage this very well - sometimes you have a paranoia about every little ache, twinge and cough. It really is a hypochondriac's charter. The one good thing about talking to her last night was that for much of the conversation we both knew what it was like - this is enormously powerful as a shared experience and is one of the few things in life I think where even the most skilled and empathetic friend or listener cannot totally understand. Even a clutz like me was able to get my head round at least some of what she's going through at the moment. Fortunately, she hasn't lost her sense of humour, which was wonderfully anarchic anyway and was also sharing a funny story about a greyhound she is fostering (Charlie, who probably deserves his own blog, as he is such a character). Charlie decided to do a midnight raid on a fruit bowl and was accumulating a stock of clementines - not to eat, just to collect. Because of that tip tap tip tap of little grey hound feet on the floor as they trot around, she was kept awake at 2 in the morning, and said she felt like simply throwing the entire fruit bowl and its contents at him... I sympathise as we've got our own strange kleptomaniac here although I am very relieved that he doesn't do so at night, generally.

Last night was particularly eventful for us. We had an early night as A had an early train this morning to London. All peacefully asleep when some neighbours decided (at 11.30 p.m.) to have a huge firework party with the loudest and brightest they could find. Booty was terrified by the noise and was shaking - she leapt onto our bed and hid between us - I ended up cuddling her as much as I could. Andy hid behind the sofa and was also very unhappy. Neither of us could sleep for ages and the lights were so bright that flashes were visible even through our blackout curtain linings. Eventually stopped around midnight - is this really appropriate for a week night, this late, so loud? I love fireworks myself but do think there has to be a balance between the pleasure of the individual and the respect for neighbours. It would be much easier to sympathise too if they weren't so damn loud. Apart from terrifying the dogs, most people at this time of year sleep with a window open, and the sheer volume sounded like a re-enactment of the Blitz. As a consequence of all this, we were all very sleepy this morning. Took Andrew to the station at 6.20 and was in the park by around 6.45. Had it to ourselves apart from lots of ducks, cormorants on the river and the usual wonderful array of flowers, butterflies and swallows.