… two years later

I’m still retired.  But no longer early retired.  I would have been leaving my job in May this year when I turn 60.  So why re-start blogging now?  Well, the chilli business is taking off and we are ready to go on-line (at last).  Chilli Relish is getting a lot of requests for mail order on our chilli relishes.  As a result, I’ve been looking into web-sites and remembered WordPress.  So I’ve reviewed what was happening 2 years ago when I last posted anything here.

Weight-wise, I got fed up with being a size 16 top and  my bra was digging in on a daily basis.  Rather than spend my life bra-less (not good when you’re that size) or buying all new bras, I went to Slimming World.  I am now a size 12 and had to buy all new bras to fit my new slenderness!  I can recommend SW if you need to lose weight – I’ve never eaten so much in my life and still lost 28lbs.

The chooks are wonderful.  They have started laying eggs again but one of the little buggers eats hers before I can get to it!  Still, 2 eggs a day allows me to give friends lovely fresh eggs and to eat some myself.  One of the chooks has decided that I am at the bottom of the pecking order and likes to attack me every now and again.  She runs at me with her little feathered legs pounding and her neck outstretched and pecks my wellieboots.  They have been through their winter moult and are looking splendid.

The frogs have taken over the allotment pond and really should learn some discretion!  The pond positively bubbled earlier in the year and is now filled with frog spawn.  Daughter #2 coined the term ‘frorgy’.  On a sunny day you can hear the frogs’ gentle burble and see them sunbathing with their heads out of the water.  Weird!

The allotment is looking good.  For the first time in what must be 18 years since I took it on, it is ready for spring planting.  The whole lot has been dug over, fertiliser put on where I want it, lime laid down for the brassicas, and a few bits covered to heat up the soil for early plants.  I know – pride comes before a fall.  But let me wallow in pride for a while.  Since I last blogged I have put in raised beds on the part of the plot that always floods.  I am using these for alliums (onions and garlic) as there is white rot in the soil and I used to lose half my crop.  In the raised beds, I am using ‘lasagne’ cultivation so the soil is fresh each year.  Last year, for the first time, I had so many onions I didn’t know what to do with them all.  But I’ve managed to use them and am now in that really annoying bit of the year when I have to buy onions.

The garden is still covered with fleece.  I don’t trust it not to freeze overnight yet.  But I have had flowers all through the warm winter – passion flowers at Christmas.  The fish in the pond continue to multiply.  The water is looking cleaner than ever, although there is a lot of algae on the sides.  So I can see all the babies and ‘teenagers’ that the original fishkateers have produced.  The original fab four are looking really good – huge compared to when I got them.  The birds are still visiting and I now have 2 dunnocks that visit together.  I heard a thing about them on radio the other day – apparently they can live in complicated family groups.  So not sure if I have two males looking after their mates, a male and a female or two females feeding ‘their men’.  Also two robins.

The cats are getting on but have never been exactly active, so no difference noted!  Helena has got alopaecia.  She is the one that I still can’t pick up and still runs away from me when I am standing up or moving!  But she does come and sit on my lap.  So, no vet for her.  But she seems well in herself.  So I’ve changed the cats’ diet and they are both soft and gorgeous and do seem much better than when on commercial dried food.

I’ll have to update you on the bees when the weather is better and we start regular inspections.  In February, all our colonies had survived winter.  I do now have another apiary on a farm that I keep with four other beekeepers.  The honey is the best I’ve tasted.

What’s new in retirement?  Knitting, art and embroidery.  Mainly through the WI that runs courses.  So I’ve renewed my interest in watercolour painting – although not tried any since the course (just not enough time!), I did a bit of embroidery and am looking into taking more classes and following this up. I love embroidery!  Knitting is great!  I go to a knit and natter group every week and am banning myself from going into wool shops as I just spend too much.  I have to knit all the things I have wool for before buying more!  I may have to move house to fit in all the knitwear I have.  So that’s book shops and craft shops that I can’t go into.  I’ll have to start buying clothes!!!

 

 

 

 

 

Why is it …

… that whatever dress size I am seems to be the size of most of the women in the country?

Until about 5 years ago, maybe more, I had been on one diet or another since I was 12 years old.  Ever encouraged by a similarly large-ish mum, I’ve tried a lot of diets – not silly ones necessarily, but a good variety of diets that allowed you to eat, even if only one or two key foods.  So fillet steak and runner beans; salads; grapefruit before every meal; PLJ before every meal etc etc.  When I got older and wiser, I realised that exercise might have a little something to do with my weight.  So I’ve been through cycles (not bicycles) of exercising too.  Sometimes, diet and exercise together have been the chosen method of weight loss.  Of course, I know that just eating healthily is a good thing.  And I do eat healthily much of the time.  But I’ve not quite got the hang of portion control. So even healthy eating isn’t healthy when you stuff yourself to overfilling.

Anyway, as a result of all this dieting, exercising and whatnot, my dress size has fluctuated considerably too.  I can’t remember ever being an English size 10 (but possibly was because I didn’t eat for a year sometime in my late 20s) but certainly 12-16 is my margin of error!  At the moment, I’m a size 14 but have been buying 16 tops: I like to feel some air circulation around me and I also quite like floatiness in clothing.  (BTW I stopped dieting because a)it wasn’t good for me; b)I’m at that age for a woman when I am invisible – too old to be eye-candy (not that I ever was) or a ‘catch’ (certainly don’t want to be), too young to be easy prey for muggers.  So I am quite happy to be somewhat overweight but not dangerously so).

To the point: when I was a size 12, I couldn’t find clothes that size as it seemed everyone else was a size 12 too.  Ditto size 14, and now size 16.  This even applies to Marks and Sparks undies – briefs even (not the most fashionable undergarments but definitely the most comfortable, as me and a million other women seem to think!).  So today when I was in town I decided to buy a couple of plain T-shirts.  When I was ironing this morning I noticed that all my current T-shirts have marks on them, whether from cooking, eating or my moisturiser marking the collars.  I really should remember to use an apron when cooking, a bib when eating and putting moisturiser on before I get dressed.  All the shirts, T-shirts and trousers I saw that I liked were out of the sizes I need.  Anyway, I still managed to spend nearly £70.00 on clothes.  I must have just seen ‘Size 16’ on the hangers and grabbed it before anyone else could!!

The old routine …

… wake up about 8 or 8.30am.  Listen to Radio 4 for a while.  Get up, shower and generally de-smell and tidy myself up inc getting dressed.  Go downstairs.  Clear cat poo from hall floor and clean up (clear and clean up cat vomit one or two days a week too).  Clean cat litter, feed cats, feed fish in tank, feed fish in garden pond.  Cook and eat breakfast.  Go to allotment or whatever else I am doing on a given day.

New routine … wake up at 4.30am.  Leap out of bed and put on allotment clothes.  Clear cat poo from hall floor.  Feed cats and fish in tank.  Drive to allotment to let chickens out, say hello and talk to them, clean their water, try hand feeding them corn (success with one of them).  Drive home, shower and generally de-smell …

It is now 8.30am and I’ve just done my ironing.   A much neglected activity but necessary as I had literally (in the literal meaning of the word) run out of clean clothes to wear.  While I was at the allotment I gathered today’s crop of ripe strawberries and peas.  Having said in yesterday’s post that I didn’t have time to make jam, I spent about 20 mins yesterday evening making 3 jars of the yumminess.  Had some on matzo for breakfast after, of course, my boiled egg from my very own hen.  Yep, Day 1 and there were 2 eggs in the nest box.  I don’t expect any more for a few days as these 2 were probably already on their way when the hens moved to my allotment.  It may be a while before they feel ready to start making more.   Now ready for a relaxed walk into town for my appointment, a nice  coffee and pastry and a wander round the shops.

The chickens have landed

I am now the proud – and rather nervous – owner of three beautiful Golden Brahma hens.  They are gorg-e-ous!  I’ll get photos as soon as I can but my phone is playing up and I can get the photos out (!).  But I’ll take the proper camera and get some nice shots of them.  I was supposed to be at the community garden today, but instead I spent the morning working with Chicken Man to get the run netted and fox-proof (fingers crossed), then we collected the chooks and spent a bit of time with them.  I just couldn’t leave!  I pottered around on the allotment, listening to my girls clucking away.  They’ve made themselves at home and are eating and drinking; one was sitting in the nest box when I eventually tore myself away for some lunch (at 4pm!).  Admittedly, we’d taken her off a nest box when we moved her, so she was holding an egg in when she got to my plot.  I probably wont get eggs for another few days while the hens get fully settled.  I am going back tonight just to make sure that they go into the coop for the night, and then early tomorrow morning to let them out again before I have to go into town for an appointment.

What else?  Well I never thought I could have enough strawberries … but I am getting there.  This year the strawberries are lovely – big and juicy.  But there are only so many I can eat and I haven’t time to make jam this week.  I’ve just taken my first picking of peas and they are also sweet and juicy.  The garden is looking more established this year.  Well it is only three years old.  But the plants have just excelled themselves this year.

Here’s a selection of aquilegia.  They’d be happier in open ground but they’ve done themselves proud in tubs this year.

Arty farty photo of a clematis flower and another with a bee.  I think that this is a Mr. Bumble as he just stayed on the flower for ages – obviously not a hard worker!

Flag Iris.  There are quite a few leaves but only one stalk is actually flowering. However, the flowers seem to keep coming on that one stalk.

A new plant for me …Veronica.  Beautiful!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Koresia is doing so well this year.  It is covered in lovely scented roses.  A fitting memorial to Lucretia the cat who died about 11 years ago.

 

The honeysuckle Henryii, the memorial to Lucretia’s brother Henry, is covered with small flowers.  When I went out on a snail hunt the other night, the air was full of gorgeous scent.

The cats are both well, the fish all seem fine, one of the snails in the fish tank seems like it might just be a shell of its former self, bees are busy and buzzing.  What more could one want?  Except maybe a nice G&T.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bee attack

I volunteer at an apiary in Manchester one day and one evening a week; and sometimes on other days when we have courses or visits.  Last Thursday we all had a good laugh at a beekeeper who was describing a particularly nasty colony of bees he has in his garden.  Expert beekeepers gave him instructions on what he needed to do to try and calm the bees: check if there were any nice queen cells (the bees were making a new queen); find the current ‘failing’ queen and cull her (the weather means that queens that hatched last year weren’t mated properly and this is causing all sorts of problems this year, including aggressiveness in the colony); spray gently with sugar and water solution so that the angry bees went into grooming mode and didn’t attack; cross fingers, eyes and legs in the hope that the bees would sort themselves out with a new queen and settle down again.  As this beekeeper has hives in his garden and works alone, I offered to go and help him – even if only to phone 999 if they attacked!

Well, today was the day.  I had inspected our allotment bees with other beekeepers, and they are doing nicely.  Then I drove to my friend’s place, getting horribly lost and having to phone at least twice for direction to his house.  We waited for the rain to stop and as soon as the sun came out we togged up in our beesuits, lit the smoker, checked that the sugar water spray was working, and ventured forth into his garden.  The first hive we inspected was lovely; gentle bees doing lots of work and making honey and wax.  The danger hive was something else completely.  I have to say that we have had some very heavy rain with BIG raindrops today.  So when I felt some thumping against my suit and gloves, I thought it was raining again.  But no!  The sodding buggers were bombarding us.  My friend, who was trying to inspect the hive was literally covered with bees to the extent he could hardly see out of his veil.  Then they managed to get inside his suit.  So as he darted away, I took over the inspection.  Obviously, the grooming mode wasn’t in their itinerary, and instead of moving away from smoke, they covered the smoker – even the hot metal funnel.  It got to the point where I couldn’t even take hold of the frames because my gloves were covered in bees.  And the ones that weren’t running around all over me were still bombing me.  At this point we decided to just close the hive and leave them alone.

Bees however had different ideas and didn’t want to leave us alone; especially my friend who had been stung quite a few times (I just got one sting in my side of all places.  Thank heavens all the sting could do was get into one of my many layers of fat!).  So there was I, smoking my friend – the smoke should cover the scent of the attack pheromone and make the bees sod off.  We managed to get into the garage, but quite a few of the bees followed us there.  So we stood there for a while and most of them eventually went to the window where a lot of them got caught in spider webs.  But every time we tried to get back in the garden, we were attacked again.  I’ve been home for about an hour and my friend has just rung me.  He still can’t go into his garden!  So, I’m afraid this colony of bees is likely to be ex-bees fairly soon: they are too close to innocent neighbours for safety and if we can’t get in to the hive to do the things we need to calm them, there is no alternative.  It’s sad, but very occasionally it can’t be helped.  If they weren’t so close to other houses, it might be possible to leave them and see if they sort themselves out, but the danger is that they swarm and you get some very nasty bees in other people’s gardens.

If you want to know what happened to my Top Bar colony, the bees settled down but not in the hive!  When we went to feed them two days after the fiasco I described in the last post, they had settled above the top bars and in the roof.  So we’ve brushed them into a bee box, fed them and we’re leaving them to make ‘wild’ comb there.  Whether we try again is yet to be decided, but I hope that we can have just one more go at ‘natural’ beekeeping when we get the top bar hive adapted.

The next time I have a bright idea …

…shoot me!  Last summer I spent a lovely day with the apiary manager at a workshop on bumblebees, solitary bees and the environment.  During the lunch break we had a look at some Warre bee hives and spoke to some ‘natural’ beekeepers.  You might ask what can be unnatural about beekeeping.  Well, we inspect hives on a weekly basis during the swarming season, we manipulate the colonies in an attempt to prevent swarming which, after all, is a natural activity for honeybees, and we feed and, when absolutely necessary, medicate them.  We even take samples of them to check for pests and diseases, which means killing a few of them to check the health of the rest.  Indeed, there are few wild colonies of honeybees in the UK as the pests and diseases that we interfere with them to prevent actually kill them if left to their own devices.  So, what is natural about ‘natural’ beekeeping?  Theory and practice range from less intervention and not using chemicals to siting hives on ley lines and leaving the bees be, so to speak.

I have to admit, I was struck by the idea of ‘natural’ beekeeping.  So I turned into a petulant toddler until the apiary manager agreed to let me experiment with a top bar hive at the Manchester apiary in Heaton Park.  Top bar hives allow the bees to build their own comb, unlike ‘unnatural’ beekeeping which gives the bees a foundation on which to build their comb.  Basically, they replicate logs where honeybees naturally build nests in the wild of Africa.  They look like a coffin on legs with some holes in the side to allow entry/exit for the bees and inside there are bars of wood laid across the top.

Yesterday, we got some bees for the top bar hive.  They came from a rooftop apiary in Manchester.  So now I was faced with how to get the bees from a ‘nucleus’ (small hive used to transport new colonies of bees among other things) into a top bar with no frames and without upsetting the bees so much that they upped and left without so much as saying ‘hello’.  Some very seasoned and experienced beekeepers were all involved and I sort of awaited orders being completely stumped.  There were beekeepers on standby with smokers and water sprinklers, we had a feeder and ambrosia ready so that we could put the bees in the hive then close it and leave them to settle in and have dinner(!). I’d arranged the hive so that the bees would be confined to a limited space (it would be opened up more as the bees built comb and wanted more space).  Hmmm… theory and practice.  Huh!  As the bees went into the hive, the mesh floor bent so that the container no longer worked and the bees could crawl and fly wherever they wanted to.  The feed dripped through the hive and out of the floor on to the flags underneath (very bad practice as the ambrosia would attract the other bees in the apiary, wasps and other bees which is something we didn’t want.  That was my fault for over-filling the feeder so that it didn’t set up a vacuum).  The bees had other ideas than settling into the hive and all the beekeepers working on the transfer were covered with bees – but none of us were stung.  Eventually, we got as many bees into the hive as we could, with some hanging around outside.  Hopefully they’ll find a nice warm space inside the hive and by today they’ll have started building comb and foraging around the park for pollen and nectar.  On the other hand, they might have buggered off.

So, never let me have a ‘good’ idea – it doesn’t do anybody any good you know!  And ‘natural’ beekeeping?  The verdict is still open … we’ll see how it goes.

Top bar hive in the making. It is on a table awaiting attachment of legs. It has since been completed, painted and sited in the apiary.

There’s a monster in my pond

Cue the theme from  Jaws.  A few weeks ago I saw a monster in the allotment pond.  It looked like a big, thick nasty spider, but it was under water.  It scurried away quickly when I got up close to get a good look at it.  I kept telling fellow allotmenteers about it but never saw it again, so couldn’t share the experience and get a possible identification of said ‘thingy’.  Until yesterday.  Since the frorgy, the pond water has been like a thick green soup.  I don’t want to think why, thank you!  So anything below the surface was invisible to me.  But in the past couple of days, the water has cleared and I can see the hundreds of huge tadpoles around and in the pond and … two monsters.  This time I got up close and personal.  I called my neighbour over to have a look, just so that I had a witness in case anyone thought I was mad and making up stories of pondlife.  The monsters were not spiders as they only had 6 legs – insects then.  They seemed to have a sting at one end and a couple of short antennae or mouth parts at the opposite end.  The backs seemed armoured almost, and the bodies were segmented.  Anyway, thanks to my faithful iPad and Google, I’ve found out that these ‘monsters’ are, in fact, dragonfly nymphs.  They can stay at the nymph stage for up to 4 years, then they climb up a pond plant and metamorphose into dragonfly which can live up to a year.  These little critters are voracious carnivores but the tadpoles seem safe – they were in very close proximity and even swam against the nymphs, at one point covering them almost completely without damage to either species.  However, I have noticed a distinct lack of water boatmen this year.  Seems like you win some and lose some.

What is it about nice weather that brings the macho out in drivers (in this case, when I say ‘drivers’ I tend to mean male drivers)? Maybe the sun melts their brain cells and turns them into complete dicks!  Today (a) I’ve seen young chappie sporting a baseball cap, ‘driving’ along in a nice Megane with some crap (I think he might call it music), belting out and clapping his hands to the beat instead of actually driving. He nearly missed his turn.  But luckily managed to get his stupid hands on the steering wheel in time to almost turn his car over in the attempt to turn the corner.  And (b) I’ve been undertaken in a 30 zone by another young chap in a nice metallic blue car of some description who just had to get past me in the inside lane which happened to also be a bus lane.  The sound of his car screeching by me as it accelerated was a joy to behold, as you can imagine.  And why do drivers of all genders have to open all the car windows, and roofs if they can, and pump up the volume?  If I can hear it in my car, surely they can hear it in theirs at a much lower volume.  And finally, as soon as the sun shines, guys, please keep your shirts on.  Over the summer I lose weight not so much because I eat salads, but because the sight of so many lardy, either pasty white or lobster red bellies and man-boobs just puts me off eating.

That’s another fine mess …

… I’ve gotten me into!  Anyone I know who’s retired said that they don’t know how they fitted work in to their lives, they’re just so busy post-retirement.  Indeed, it is something that I’ve said myself, what with beekeeping, newsletter-editing, chilli-ing, allotmenting, WI-ing, and generally living.  So how come I’ve just taken on yet another project? Well, fallen into another project really.  I was talking with a beekeeping friend who was telling me about a community centre nearby where I live.  He had just weedkillered raised garden beds that go all the way around the car park.  The community centre manager is under pressure to get the garden looking neat and tidy.  So I just happened to say that I’d ask at the WI if we could get a gardening group going.  There is already a WI Community Garden that ‘the ladies’ look after.  But I was willing to lead a sub-group to look after the community centre raised beds.  The WI turned me down flat, but I still seem to be the new gardener at the community centre!

I really don’t mind doing this, but I have explained that I am not a professional gardener.  And as there is no dosh forthcoming (hence the need for a volunteer), the beds will have to make do with anything I can scrounge, propagate myself or otherwise obtain.  So far, I have a tray of limnanthes (poached egg plant, that bees love), some rhubarb that I grew from seed last year, and a sack full of seed potatoes and onions that the aforementioned friend has given me.  Should be attractive, huh?  And I think that a call for volunteers to help me will be going out … especially to WI members!!!

There’s slow …. and then there’s slow!

I have the slowest decorator in the world in my house.  I know that it’s taken me 27 years to complete decorating my home, but I didn’t think that the last hurdle would take another 27!  Okay, so most of the house was decorated, and then I had a lot of construction work done: an extension to house a super new kitchen, the bathroom completely stripped down and redone, built-in wardrobes, cupboards and bookshelves.  So that meant that the whole house had to be redecorated.  The hall is the last bastion of the ancient regime that was me as a somewhat reluctant housekeeper/home-owner.  As the extension is only on the ground floor, upstairs is still somewhat on the squashy side of small.  But there is a deep stairwell which I cannot tackle.  Brother Jnr has offered to decorate for me, and I was going to ask him to oblige.  However, it is not just a matter of putting up some wallpaper and painting the ceiling.  There was a lot of plastering, filling and generally holding the house together to do before decorating could commence.  Also Brother Jnr does so much for so many people, that when he ventures ‘up north’, I’d rather spend time with him and doing enjoyable things rather than him climbing ladders and doing my shit-work.  (Last time he papered the hall, there was a ladder-falling-down-the-stairs incident.  Luckily, he jumped off the offending implement before it took it’s dive.  That was many years ago and I’m not sure he’s so agile nowadays!).  So, I had some building work to do in the house (rubble removed from the wall cavity so that I can get cavity wall insulation, laying a floor, generally putting right things that have broken or gone a bit awry since being installed), and called in my trusted builder who recommended the decorator.  Decorator was duly asked for an estimate – monetary rather than how long the job would take – and started work.  That was 8 days ago.  To date, he has still only got so far as papering one side of the hallway.  Each piece of paper is lovingly measured, cut, pasted and hung … taking a long, long time.  In one day, he managed to put up a couple of short pieces on the stairway.  Today he has done the bit around the front door.  I should have guessed it would be a trying experience on the first day when he turned up without dust sheets or ladders (he’s using my ladder but he’s had to get a dust sheet).  A few days ago when he was ready to start papering, he rang me when I was in Liverpool visiting a friend to ask if I had a pasting table.  As a fairly polite person, I usually offer workmen drinks and lunch.  I’ve given up with this one.  Thinking whether he wants a cuppa or not seems a really effortful exercise.  So he gets drinks when I make them – and I am almost hooked up to a green tea IV drip!  Problem is that I am out most of the time so I have to trust him to get his own and not die of dehydration! I know that the job will be a good one.  I just hope I live long enough to see it finished.

Other happenings have happened.  One of the new building bits I’ve had done is some shelving put up in my kitchen.  I’d asked the builder to put up a shelf above my lovely Kenwood food mixer (see earlier blog), so that I could put all the mixer paraphernalia there.  You know the sort of thing: the blender, the food processor, the attachments.  I’ve also put the pasta maker, hand mixers and stick blenders there.  But when I was talking to the builder about this shelf and deciding on brackets etc, he told me about a void left behind a screed wall when the extension was built.  ‘You know you could put some built-in book shelves there if you want’.  Books!  Shelves! Do I want?  Hell yeah!!!  So I now have the most gorgeous built-in shelves for my cookery books, bee books and few other ‘reference’ type tomes.  There is room for ornaments too.  And it looks lush – as the yoof say.  Last night I was up until about 1am rearranging books, CDs and all sorts of things on shelves around the house.  Heaven!

Lastly, that damned azalea that never flowers and has caused me all sorts of angst over the years … is flowering.  At last!   The flowers aren’t as lovely as I remembered them from their first year here with me so many years ago.  But the smell is as divine as I remember.  Oh well, back to watching paint dry…

TGFWI

That’s right; thank G-d for the WI!  I moved here nearly 27 years ago and ever since I passed a  chocolatier, Slattery’s, I’ve been meaning to go in and sample their wears.  That’s 27 years of wanting.  Well today my wish has come true.  A group of 20+ women from the WI met at said establishment.  Slattery’s started as a family bakery in a corner shop in Crumpsall, Manchester, 47 years ago.  Today it has moved to Whitefield (nr Manchester), expanded, but it is still run by the family.  It was like visiting Willy Wonka’s factory.  The wedding and celebration cakes are fantabulous, ordinary cakes and pies are amazing, the chocolates are incredible and really inventive, and there were additional supplies for home-based chocolatiers, bakers and foodie gluttons.  Upstairs there is a restaurant which was full to bursting.  Above that, there is a School of Excellence where courses are run, not just on chocolate-making and cake decorating but sugar craft and baking.  That’s where we met.

Our visit started with a nice cuppa and a talk on the business over the years, the process of producing edible chocolate from harvest to the finished product, and making chocolates.  But then we had lunch.  Oh boy!  Everything was made on the premises.  This might read like an Enid Blyton description of the famous five’s picnics!  There were plates of sandwiches and sausage rolls (no good for veggies, of course), the most delicious quiche I have ever tasted, tiered cake plates of Slattery’s cakes and pastries, and chocolate discs, scones with cream and jam (or jam and cream depending on your preference).  Family head honcho, who had taken the talk, kept our cups filled with tea and coffee.  And to top it all, we were all given a goodie bag.

We certainly got our money’s-worth.  AND I’m all chocolated out now.  So off for a nice snooze and hope I stop feeling sick soon!!!