Dogs, Chickens and Vintage China

  Helen and I were reclining in the sitting room just the other day, watching something improving on the television when I received a text from the guests in the Airbnb…”Hi Charlie, there is something wrong with the shower and we can’t turn it off”. This was not good news and I apprehensively made my way over to the cottage.  Sure enough there was water pouring out of the shower hose and no conceivable way of turning it off as the tap had come loose. The tap was just merrily turning round and round with no obvious way of tightening it up. I swore, gently, under my breath…can’t upset the paying customers after all.  The tap was too close to the wall to see how to remove it.    After paddling around in a shower tray full of water for something like two days it eventually occurred to me to look at the other tap to see how it was affixed.  Hurrah, it has a cap that you can prise off, or at least you could prise off if it wasn’t so close to the wall that you can...

Sooo... last year I did a diabetes review where the numbers were up considerably, this means I am in more danger from the exploding brain..not good in other words I tried reducing said numbers by being good, this had absolutely no effect...almost certainly because rather than being good I was crap and couldn't help, basically, inhaling the contents of the fridge.  Another diabetes review and they put me on a higher dose of Metformin and told me to come back in three months and they would tell me whether I should get my affairs in order and call the funeral director or whether I was good for another year or so.   Life rolls on and we enter 2020, the year of the Rat, and things have changed somewhat. Ocean and Alberto are living with us, we are in lockdown and we've been on a totally vegetarian diet for getting on for six months. The only animal fat I'm having is milk, butter and cheese.  No really, you don't understand...there are times when I have proposed marriage ...