Hi,

I hope you are all managing to avoid the horrible cold that is going around and are staying well. It really feels like autumn has dug in and is properly here. There is a bite to the air in the evenings, my kitchen floor is a constant battle of gruesomeness and the dogs are always soggy…especially the spaniel Mali, she is a small ball of bouncy disgustingness. Usually we give her a quick wipe over because 2 seconds later she goes back to just as bad but last week I gave in and filled the bath with warm water, added some bubble bath…and a spaniel. I gave her a proper scrub, shampoo and conditioner, and she returned to being a colour I hadn’t seen for quite a while. The water was so grim after it I thought I was going to have to cut it into slices to make it go down the plug hole!

This is a clean version of Mali, after her bath, sitting in her dressing gown.

If any of you have ever owned a spaniel, you will understand why she needs a dressing gown. The minute she is picked from the bath, holding on to as much bath water as possible, particularly in her ears, she goes zooming round the house, over the beds, over every chair, cushion, soft furnishing in the house, making everything just as soggy as her.

As I’ve told you already, my son is a farmer. He works long and very strange hours. He is later back than he’s supposed to be very regularly and is very often grumpy and tired. He comes in from work, grumbles at us, eats his dinner and goes to bed. If dinner isn’t made or put on a plate fast enough he is often asleep before he can eat it. He always has Mondays off though and he’s got into a habit where he thinks that my Mondays are just his.

Every Sunday night, he checks if ‘I’m around’ on Monday and I ask him what he wants to do. Usually it is go get red diesel for the tractor, which is quite a trek, or he wants to go to the farm supplies place to get wormer or mineral dose for the sheep, or we need to go and pick up a piece for the tractor, and every time we go somewhere there is always some biker cafe or farming canteen that he knows of that I could, if I’d like to, take him for lunch.

He has also bought himself a car and is learning to drive. Honestly, ‘car’ is an exaggeration….I’ve seen sardine cans which would drive better than that thing, that I’d be safer in. So he insists on driving us whenever we go out. The good thing is he has mostly driven a tractor so he rarely goes very fast, the bad thing is he’s mostly driven a tractor so he’s used to being the biggest thing on the road and everyone giving way to him…doesn’t work quite the same when you reverse your tin can out of a parking space and no-one give way or even notices you at all.

Last week he announced that he didn’t have any important farm things to sort and he thought we ought to have a day out…to Anglesey. If you had met his car, I’m sure you can imagine it, you would know why it was a bit worrying….all that way in a fish tin, could it even make it that far?! Then, to make it worse, he decided that we would go via Snowdonia! Did I mention that the car regularly goes into limp-home-mode just for fun and locks itself into going 17 miles per hour until you can find a lay-by, pull over, switch off and hope it has a word with itself.

Off we set, me, Dilys the sausage dog and my son driving….it was stunning!…it was slow! We stopped at a farm that my son knows sells lunches (how does he always know these things?) and Dilys got to eat the leftovers. Snowdonia is stunning, especially in autumn. All the rivers were in spate after the storm and the waterfalls were amazing.

When we started out my son was still pretty anxious about driving….I wish he’d stayed like that. We got to the big bridge over the Menai Straits and on to Anglesey. It’s a stupid fear I know, but my big phobia is bridges…they terrify me for no good reason at all. My son decides, going over the bridge, that his tyres need warming up as if his sardine can was a formula one car and starts zigzagging across the bridge. So Christmas is going to be loads cheaper now I’ve told him he’s off my Christmas present list!

We went to Penmon Point, a rocky beach right opposite a lighthouse. Dilys ran along the beach and we collected beach pebbles. We have to watch Dilys cos even though she’s 10 years old she sometimes forgets she’s a creaky old sausage dog and mistakes herself for a fierce, wave-conquering warrior. She dives into the sea and heads for faraway shores, paddling as fast as the least aerodynamic stump of a dog can paddle….which means that she gets all of a couple of inches from the beach but one of us has to get our feet wet and go in after her to bring her back to shore.

This is the beach and lighthouse, with Puffin Island in the background.

It was cold though, and a bite to the air and when Dilys started to shiver, we headed back to a drive through coffee place and Dilys was allowed a puppachino too…yes, seriously, they are called puppachino and Dilys insists on ordering hers through the window too! We made it back home in one piece, after stopping about 8 times to reset the limp-home-mode and my son, despite all threats, still finding it hilarious to ‘warm his tyres up’ on the way back over the bridge and any other bridges he could find on the way back.

This week, we shall see, I am hoping that my arrangements will work and we should be able to celebrate Transfiguration Day together with some food and prayers….It was really short notice, so I’m not sure what can be provided, especially as I can’t do any of the arranging yet and I sprung it on Chaplaincy with less than a week to go!

I wanted to explain something to those who don’t know me. When I started helping the Rastafari Group run I had no knowledge or books but wanted to make sure there was provision for it to run. Now I have many books and have read and looked at websites and learned from people but the way to get more knowledge is to carry on asking and being corrected if I get facts wrong…which is what I want to do. I try my best to use valid and reliable resources so that you know this isn’t just stuff I’m making up as I go along, but I will get it wrong many times and I would like to be corrected please 🙂

Okay, so if you are still with me here….you haven’t all fallen into a coma of boredom, I am praying that the food turns up and we can celebrate Transfiguration Day (a little late I know).

Blessings,

Elizabeth