Normal service is now resumed

It's been a while since I wrote on my blog, there's been a lot of things going on here and I just wasn't in the mood to write on here for a while. But things have calmed down a bit now, and hopefully it'll stay that way.

A couple of weeks ago on our way to take our dog for his dily walk we spotted what looked like a scene from Time Team in a field we passed. We were quite intrigued but didn't really think much more of it. The following day when we went past there were loads of signs saying open day, so we decided to go and have a look. It was an archealogical dig, as a few finds in the field had led people to believe that there was a Roman site there. Their finds were correct and when the field was excavated a number of Roman finds were dug up. The guy that was talking to us showed us a piece of pottery that they could date back to between 140AD - 160AD, it was the bottom of a pot which was in 2 pieces. One piece was found one day and the 2nd half 2 days later. Impressed in the clay was the makers name too, which is quite rare, we also learnt how to tell the difference between expensive pottery and normal househld pottery back in those days. It was fasinating, just a shame that it wasn't more widely known about, I've got a couple of friends who would have loved to have seen it, but we couldn't get hold of either of them. For anyone that would like to read more about the dig, there is a blog here >>>>>> Tai Cochion Dig Diary

We've also been off on our travels to a friends wedding last weekend. This time we stayed in Leamington Spa my old home town with my oldest son, his girlfriend and her daughter. My sons girlfriend and I get on really well, so quite a few nights were spent cackling late into the night lol.

These two pics are of the dig down by Menai Straits.

For now ...

For now I've shelved the idea of doing the african themed panels. I'm not 100% sure why, they just don't seem to appeal to me at the moment. Instead I've doing a sort of abstract 2D long thin panel. It's coming along nicely just a case of waiting for glue to dry all the time as usual *sigh*

I went to see a friend of mine the day and he asked me to do an oil painting for him. So that'll make a nice change from doing mosaics. I shan't be able to start it for a week or so though as we're off on our travels again next week. A wedding this time, with what is looking like a brilliant party to follow !!

Freegle/ Freecycle

Despite the best of intentions I never did get round to varnishing this flipping heart mosaic !! I'm beginning to really hate the sight of this particular mosaic which is currently sitting behind me on the back of the settee. It's not a big job, and yet every day something seems to distract me from doing it grrrrr.

Yesterday was a pretty good day though. Via Freegle ... the old Freecycle website, I managed to acquire a pine bed base the kind with slats across it. This is going to be a perfect fence to stop my dog escaping down the side of the house !! Up till now I've been using the top half of a welsh dresser ( which wouldn't fit on it's base in this house ). This dresser top has been the bane of my life since we moved here, because it was so solid it was constantly getting blown down in the winds, and god was it heavy to heave back up again too !!! I've also driven my daughter mad with my constant hunt for wood to make a fence before yesterday lol. Until I can come up with some kind of way to attach this new fence to the wall it's being held in place with some string lol. One side is attached to a plastic down pipe, the other side very precariously hanging on to a very long nail that I've managed bang into the wall. It's not a pretty sight but until I can do the job properly it's stopping my wayward dog, so I'm happy. While we were picking this wood, up my daughter spotted a very nice funky coloured, comfy computer chair abandoned at the same place, so she smiled sweetly and we got given that too. Trying to get this bed base and a computer chair and a rather large dog into the back of a tiny Peugeot 106 was no easy feat trust me, and our attempts amused the workers where we got these goodies from. But after getting the dog in and out several times, dropping the back seats and having the afore said fence digging in the back of our heads all the way home, we managed it whoooooo lol. We will of course recycle my daughters other pc chair back on to Freegle.

Seeing as photo's have been a bit low on the ground lately, here's a couple of photo's of my little grand daughter Kacey Louise I took last week.

Neglecting my blog

Oh dear I've sadly been neglecting my blog of late. Truth is the lovely sunny weather we've been having recently means I've spent most of time sat in the garden enjoying it ...can you blame me lol. But that also means there isn't a lot to write about on here !!

My mosaic making has been very low on the agenda oooops, I have almost finished the mosaic heart I started quite a while ago though. A couple of coats of varnish and it'll be heading off to the gallery, I seem to remember saying about the varnish just needing to be done about 10 days ago, ooops lol. Although the wood is cut for the African themed panels, the arthritis in my hands has halted me starting on those too, because they are too painful. I've also noticed the last two days that the dreaded arthritis is spreading to my right elbow as well as the left one. It's not a bad pain just irritating.

I went back to the doctors last week for the results of all my tests I'd had done previously. I was dreading this and the doctors had even written to me saying that I needed to go and see them, which I have to say scared me. I was most frightened about the result of the chest xray I had, especially as I'm a heavy smoker. But as it happened I needn't have worried, most of the tests were all good, in fact the only one that showed anything slightly wrong was the x ray and my blood pressure. However the x ray showed an angular shadow on my heart, which they said could be due to previous surgery, but they had no other xrays of me to compare it with. It just so happens that I had heart surgery when I was 4, so this is no doubt what the shadow is and the doctor agreed. The blood pressure is treatable with tablets, the trouble is I know I find going to the doctors or the hospital stressful anyway so maybe this is what pushes my blood pressure up.

The doctor also did a test on his computer which would predict what my chances of having a stroke or heart attack in the next 10 years would be. This involved using all the results of the blood test I had, and putting how much I smoke, my height and my weight. Before the results came up he told me for my age group the average is 10%, anything 20% or over would mean steps being taken to reduce this number ..... being overweight, with high blood pressure and a smoker I wasn't too optimistic about the results to be honest. But much to my surprise and even more so for the doctor my results came in at 14% !!! So that was really good news. The original reason for me having all these tests were because I was having weird feelings in my chest, which the doctor diagnosed at the time as my heart beating too many beats. He rightly diagnosed this as nothing serious at the time and the test were just to be on the safe side. Out of the 3 reasons he suggested might be causing this .... alcohol, drinking or stress, the stress option is the only one that it can possibly be the one. So he's decided not to give me any medication for it, and I'll just try and keep my stress levels at a minimum :o) If you manged to get to the end of this medical waffle blog post today ...gold stars for you lol.