July 19

I have spent the last week writing and I've done a few thousand words, but am still not finished.  My brain is quite pickled though and I feel I will need a break soon.  Going from online teaching to writing a book is quite hard and I feel I just want to do nothing.  I had great ideas of setting myself up as a proofreader and I haven't got round to that either.

The good news is that the man who runs the piano tuning course that John wanted to do is alive and well.  He was not the dead body found in the car at an airport in Chicago.  However, the chances of John being able to do the course are waning as certain things have to be sent to him before he can start and these are likely to take months to get here and he may be charged duty for bringing them in.

More good news is that my nasturtiums are doing very well.  In fact, they are positively proliferating. We used to have two perfectly good wheelbarrows, but last year on my birthday, Ellie decided to fill one of them with plants as part of a surprise for me.  I didn't have the heart to take them out and so there they have stayed, much to Elizabeth's annoyance as she says it is her favourite wheelbarrow out of the two.  She used to use it to wheel the dustbin outside to the road every week.  Elizabeth is very much a creature of habit and refuses to use the other wheelbarrow instead.  I am sure she has been waiting for every single plant in it to drop dead, but unfortunately for her, they are doing very well.

I used to like petunias.  In fact, I still like petunias, but I find they grow a bit like weeds.  Sian gave me a packet of lupin seeds for Christmas and I planted a whole lot in a pot, watering them every day and singing them all sorts of lullabies.  I was so excited to see the little shoots come through and the plants begin to grow - until I realised they were petunias.  They are doing very well, but I had no idea what happened to the lupin seeds - unless it's a case of theft or even . . . murder.