January

It's 1st February and I (Chris) haven't posted since way back in December so I thought it was time to record for posterity (or for whoever reads this) some of the things we did in january.

Early in the month, on the way back from an appointment at Rochdale Infirmary*,  we browsed in a Littleborough sofa shop and ended up buying the above matching chair and footstool in a sale.  John had been saying for some time that he wanted a more comfortable chair and he thought this might be it.  It isn't - it''s OK for a while.  I think the answer is to not stay sitting in any one place for too long.

* The appointment was for John to see a rheumatologist who agreed to tell John's GP it was OK to keep prescribing anti-inflammatories for his arthritis.

 Another purchase was the green metal trolley - £5 in a secondhand shop in Hebden.  It's shown here with John's new 'integrated music system' set up on it.

The green rocking chair has been brought out from a bedroom as it goes better with the new chair.  The beige leather chairs are now in bedrooms and will be brought back into use when needed.

Esmé came with Molly for a sleepover and they spent time in the bath together.  No water, just a contained environment where Molly could run around with, and on, Ez without fear of her going AWOL again.

Next morning Ez had a porridge face.  I have a section called 'Porridge' in the Faces section of iPhoto.  It contains portraits of several breakfasts that Ez has had here over the years.  I might put them on here sometime.

After Porridge we took a short drive, with Lynne, to Hollingworth Lake for our Sunday morning walk.,

It was extremely cold, but this was Jan 13th - no snow yet.

On 16th we stayed, at no charge, in a pub car park in Northwich.  This is part of the Britstops scheme, which is an attempt to emulate France Passion

As John has posted, next day we drove to the Boughton Park & Ride and took the bus into Chester.

We'd had our Panasonic breadmaker for at least 10 years and it was beginning to fail on the odd occasion.  We thought it was time to replace it and we're very pleased with the updated version.  Above is the 70％ wholemeal.

It did snow eventually.  The above photo was taken on 20th January, when Lynne and I went for our Sunday morning walk along the towpath.  John, I believe, was at an Incredible Edible event.

Next day there was much shovelling of snow from outside the garage in order to get the car out.

 It was wheelbarrowed into the lane to be dumped.

On 24th we were both at the hairdressers.

Here is John being done

And here is Katie, Sue the hairdresser's new puppy.

More snow pictures: this is the standard 'out of the window view of the garden and canal'.  I bet I've posted several of these over the years.

In this one I thought I caught a glimpse of sun and rushed out to try to capture it - and almost managed.

Next day - the standard view with snow melted.

Another wood delivery was due today 1st Feb (Oh No! I've just looked at the clock and we're now just into the 2nd) so we needed to barrow the remaining wood from the last delivery down to the greenhouse to make room for the new.  We did this on Weds 30th Jan.

Here's John taking some down...

 ...and going back up with the empty barrow.

Today (well alright, yesterday) five bags of wood were delivered.  Two were emptied onto the floor...

...and three were left bagged up in return for a £5 bag deposit each.

I stacked the two on the floor, plus a bit from one bag.

The rest can be left for a day or so.