Mowing

A reasonable night on our lovely comfortable new mattresses.
The day dawned grey and miserable. And cold. I was in no hurry to get up, but daycare beckoned which meant I had to get T going. Usual stressful battle followed.
It goes something like this: I get clothes ready for him and lay them on the bed. He puts them away somewhere mysterious, sort of tidying them away. After that, he can no longer find clothes to put on. Where are my socks? My pants? Is this T shirt alright? Does this pass the sniff test?
So we begin all over again whilst he wanders around forgetting what he wants to put on next.

Eventually, if we are lucky, he has enough clothes on to go out. However, these are sometimes the wrong combination of clothes. eg shorts are not a good idea at the end of November. We begin again and almost reach the car. But wait… the washing up needs doing, the clothes washing needs folding, there’s a barely visible crumb on the floor. Heidi sighs and sits down, her tail thumping the floor.

Eventually, we get into the car and drive the 7 minutes to Cholsey and I drop him, cut and run. And walk H.

This morning, the sun was feeling grumpy. And I was too, This was because cattle were back on the upper meadows again which was annoying. They were not even huddled together; they were widely spread.

The walk was quite pleasant but dull. H spent a fair bit of time investigating long-grassy areas.

Upon my return, I bit the bullet and toured the house gathering up rubbish and dumping it in the bins. Recycling bin day tomorrow, including the garden waste bin. It was already full of grass clippings from 10 days ago. It is even fuller now.
I grabbed the mower and shaved a few more centimetres off the grass, exposing lots of weeds and various bald patches.

Memo to self – buy some lawn weed killer and some special cold weather grass seeds.
I tested how much walking this involved, by calling it a workout – and it was over 1km. It was tough, heavy work because the grass was quite long and still wet, but it was a question of do it now, or never.

I sat down for a bit after I had set a load of washing going. And enjoyed left over soup from yesterday.

It was soon time to collect T from daycare.
I took him straight to the Turkish barber in Goring, who mowed his head with clippers and tarted up what was left with scissors. The last time his hair was cut was on 10 October in Palaiochora. He was pretty woolly.

Ukrainian news – Timur started his new school today. I hope it went well for him. One of Lena’s friends who returned to Ukraine in the summer is looking to return. She was here with her baby, her six year old and her mother in law. Mother in law wanted to return to Ukraine in the summer, so they did. But returning after more than two weeks away, puts them outside the Homes for Ukraine scheme and they are looking to rent. She has decided life in Ukraine is not very pleasant at the moment.