Garden day

I had planned to go to Norwich for a walk around the historical bits. But after I had got up, and gone to the allotment, then gone out into the garden and seen how much work there was to get it looking nice, i suggested to Jon we just stayed here - away from any chance of catching the virus. So that is where I was most of the day, collecting up all the fallen leaves, and revealing my lovely snowdrops,which are peeking through in various clumps all around my garden.

Still lots to do, but ended up in the front planting a few bulbs that should have been put in last month, getting down into the stream in my wellies, to plant by the edge.

Henry got a hammock for Christmas, and they went up the lane to a field where Jon did some work for the owner earlier in the year. They put up his hammock and Mollie sent me some pictures. It has it's own mosquito net built in. I'll add one as extra.

Mollie cooked a nice quiche for dinner and I have been looking through old voice recordings on my old laptop. One from 2014 where I did a 44 minute recording chatting to dad. I am trying to transcribe it, but it is slow going as I can't type fast enough to keep up with him talking. Really nice to hear his voice, so I haven't minded rewinding and replaying over and over. I have learnt a bit about the doodle bug, and discovered where my pedantic insistence on writing the time in my blips comes from. So a bit from dad..

'..it was in '44 when the first doodlebugs came over, it was a Thursday, I think, if I remember rightly....the all clear didn't go, and we had to catch the bus at 10 past 7, I think....we were at school all day and the all clear didn't go until about 4 o'clock friday afternoon ..then later on you had the V2, you couldn't hear them coming because it was going faster than the speed of sound....the first thing you knew about it was when it went bang! I saw them explode in the sky..I mean, one Sunday afternoon I was getting off the bus at Potters Bar, and there was a bloody great bang, and I looked up in the sky, and there was one, just exploded...'

Just a bit of the first 4 minutes of my 44 minute interview with dad from 2014. I have various things from interviews I've done with dad , and with his mum, my nana. I'm so glad I have some snippets of their life, in their own words. There are so many stories dad told that I didn't write down. I always knew time would eventually run out for me to catch everything. If you haven't sat down with your older relatives and talked about their lives, I urge you to do it. You need to record it, because even if you think you will remember it - believe me you won't!