Saturday 29 April 2023
It’s before 08:00 and we seem to be ready for our bank holiday weekend visitors, Fiona and Andy. They left Folkestone at 06:15 and have already encountered an unplanned chunk of motorway closure. Having visitors makes us get on with things. We had a flurry of activity yesterday afternoon, putting up more pictures. There is a newly-painted teal wall that we want to fill with pictures. I thought we had loads of framed pictures but it would appear that we need loads more. The sort of theme of that wall is Indian. I bought some pictures in Delhi purposefully for this house in February, then rediscovered a stash of pictures I had bought on an early trip to Mumbai and Elephanta Island. I went a bit crazy, thinking they’d make good presents. I haven’t given any away. Unfortunately, however, they are almost all of elephants so it now looks like we have a bit of an elephant obsession. And the mounts either don’t fit or are completely the wrong size, so in short the pictures look a bit shite, but they’re up and it’s good to get a better idea of how it will look, which both of us are very enthusiastic about.
That has very little to do with differences between London and Scottish Borders. But I will think of something. Ah, yes. In a flat in London, I would have winced with every hammer-hit into the wall. Here, no one else is going to hear so it’s bang-tastic. We also seem to play music fairly loudly when we’re doing house stuff and, again, I’ve realised that I’ve pretty much stopped worrying the neighbours might hear.
We’re both looking forward to a weekend out and about and catching up with friends, though I have yet to find a fully favourable weather forecast. Currently, the positive is that it’s not forecast to rain all the time.
Yesterday, I actually had my phone-camera with me when another spotted flycatcher did its hummingbird thing at our kitchen window. They are so sweet, they hover at the window frame and pull off insects from the ropes of cobweb around the frame, sometimes pulling long cobweb threads. And, yes, that is an amaryllis still in bloom at the end of April from its planting in January.
Chris is up earlier than usual and we’re going to head in to Hawick this morning to pick up some meat and fish for weekend food. Chris is driving so I’m going to be on full lamb-viewing alert.