… to the start of A215 and the excitement is mounting on the First Class conferences

I’ve been so busy with work that I haven’t had much time to study the Big Red Book although I’ve browsed through the first couple of chapters. I’ve also been jotting down a few thoughts and impressions in my notebooks, although one or two opportunities have slipped through my fingers because I didn’t have enough time to do it when I thought of it and now they’ve disappeared into the ether. I now have my tutor who is based in Cornwall which is nice and her first course tutorial is due to take place in Truro on Saturday October 13th.

In seven years of study with the Open University I haven’t managed to attend any face-to-face tutorials because of the simple problem (and expense) of getting to the UK mainland from the Islands This year, it looks like I will be able to make that first A215 tutorial which is both an exciting AND a scary prospect. All our mainland visits are usually planned with the precision of a large-scale army manoeuvre and it just so happens that we will be travelling up to Birmingham the weekend after to stay with hubby’s Mother, on our way to collect our autistic daughter from college in Leicestershire. So we’ve agreed that I can go over a week early, attend the tutorial then travel onward to Birmingham.

I’m not having a week off though … oh no, I’m going to take my first driving lessons <ROFL> Yes, I turned fifty last week and I’ve never learned to drive – seems incredible doesn’t it? But when you’ve lived on a tiny island just three and a half miles long by a mile and a half wide for the past 27 years, it doesn’t seem quite so necessary… Obviously I won’t be thinking of a test any time soon,  (I probably won’t get to take any more proper lessons until February at the earliest) but at least it will be a start. I’m hoping to manage ten hours of driving lessons in the five full days between arriving in Birmingham and leaving to collect daughter/drive down south to friends en route for our return flight to the islands. Hubby nearly keeled over in astonishment when I made this suggestion so wish me luck!

I spent most of Sunday gardening … well, in the greenhouse anyway. Four years ago I had a free gift of 30 freesia corms and this year I tipped out the three pots to find hundreds of freesia bulbs ranging from hefty whoppers to tiny sub-pea sized dots. It took me ages to sort the corms from the soil, then I divided them into Big/Medium/Small and potted them up into three separate large pots. They’re now under the greenhouse staging where they’ve joined the five pots of pink and blue hyacinths that have been slowly increasing for the last four or five years too. I moved my Stephanotis Floribunda from the greenhouse up into the Gallery because she is in full bloom – both looking and smelling gorgeous The plant is fifteen years old now and I grew it from a tiny pre-germinated seed – hard to believe when I unwound yards of stephanotis vine that had grown right up to the top of my 18ft x 12ft greenhouse this spring. I did the same to her big sister who is too big to bring up from the greenhouse, tying them firmly to supports and warning them not to get out of hand so quickly next time.

I’ve spent many hours both over the weekend and today trying to sort out an acrimonious squabble between my already installed Kaspersky Antivirus 6 and my newly-updated Zone Alarm free firewall. It turns out that the latest Zone Alarm release is incompatible with Kaspersky Antivirus 7 but also, somehow, managed to wreck my existing installation of KAV 6. If one worked, the other didn’t, and I was close to banging my head against the nearest wall on several occasions. I have installed and uninstalled both and, eventually managed to get them to work together amicably by installing KAV 6 and then the previous release of Zone Alarm (a combination which was working perfectly well until ZA advised me to update to the latest release). The only problem is that the new installation of KAV is insisting on doing a ‘Full System Scan’ and it takes about three and a half to four hours

I’m tired and I ache all over, especially my back, shoulders and neck I spent about six hours working in the greenhouse and garden today and my poor (almost-fifty year old) body has been grumbling and groaning since I came indoors at 6.30pm.

It’s my own fault – I should know better than to drag a whopping great big pallet across the grass when I know such a foolish action could set off my sciatica. Why did I need the pallet? Well, I have mealy bugs on my Christmas and Easter cacti and I bought some Ultimate Bug Killer spray yesterday so I could DEAL with them – nasty little blighters! It comes in a bright yellow spray bottle and the precautions are fairly stringent. So I had to line the cacti up on the wooden pallet and wait until early evening when the wildlife was trundling off home before I could blast the mealybugs lurking in the nooks and crannies of the plants with the death-dealing liquid.

I’ve also sowed seeds of basil and parsley to keep in pots in the greenhouse for winter herbs, taken lots of cuttings of geraniums (zonal pelargoniums) including one of my favourites, Frank Headley, with its silver-edged green leaves and single soft salmon pink blooms, potted up all the hyacinth bulbs that flowered last year as well as three prepared white ones (which have been relegated to a cupboard in the shed), untangled/pruned/tied in and tamed two jasmine polyanthum that were attempting to take over the far end of the greenhouse, lopped off and ditched huge chunks of some of the rather tatty ‘motherplant’ zonal pelargoniums, and evicted about a dozen caterpillars in shades of green, khaki, brown and silver which were chewing holes in said pelargoniums.

Every time I walk past our two pear trees, one a Conference and one a Concorde (but don’t ask me which is which) there is a great kerfuffle as up to a dozen starlings take wing in fright. The bl**dy birds are eating the pears off the branches … well, the ones they can reach anyway, and leaving just the stalk and empty skin. Even worse, they are shi**ing all over the pears below the ones they are eating … URGH!!! I hurl colourful invectives at them, I stamp, I wave my arms and even run around the trees but they come back as soon as I go away. I know there are enough pears to go round, I know they can only eat the pears that they can reach by sitting on a branches, I know that the pears aren’t even properly ripe yet, but the sight of the birds in the trees makes me really cross.

Our house could be called ‘Starling Towers’ because we have nests in three out of four corners of the roof and the resident flock of starlings is just that – resident. They don’t leave in the autumn and return in the spring, they are here all year round. Mind you, they are glorious to watch when they do their ’swooping-as-one’ performance over the beach in the evening, silhouetted against the pale blue, grey and pink evening sky.

The House Martins have been very active again today, feeding and flying, occasionally sitting on the telephone wires and twittering excitedly to each other and the time approaches for the big departure.

Now I think I shall hobble off to bed doing a very good ‘hunchback’ impression … goodnight all.