Drinking swan

I'm feeling a little bit exhausted this evening, thanks in part to a cold virus which seems to be working its way round the family. Alex was off college with a bad sore throat, and Chris was similarly afflicted. My sore throat is milder, but accompanied by that brain fug which slows everything down, and a general aching all over.

Despite feeling under the weather it still turned out to be a busy day. I walked Rosie fairly early on (when I spotted this swan, elegantly having a drink from the Rowing Lake), then assisted Alex with a morning testing water samples for pH, nitrite, nitrate, ammonia and hardness. After lunch we had our new dishwasher delivered, just in time for Christmas.

In the afternoon we were going to do some soil tests, but found that the kits we'd purchased from Notcutt's about a month ago were unusable, probably because they'd been stored in damp conditions, and the reagents had already reacted. So the boys and I decided to go and see if they would replace them,and kill two birds with one stone by buying our Christmas tree there.

The staff were very nice, and agreed to refund the purchase price, as the only soil kit they had in stock was similarly affected. The Christmas tree purchase didn't go so well. The prices were high and there were no trees that seemed right. We prefer a fairly narrow tree, and they were all very broad at the base. So we headed to a nearby pub which sold them, but found the prices equally high. Our last resort was B & Q, but this involved crossing the city, which proved to be a nightmare of grid-locked traffic, so we gave up and headed home, frustratingly slowly.

In the end Pete and I headed out again just after 7, and eventually managed to find a slightly unorthodox shaped tree (slim, very bushy, but with a multiple leading shoot) at a reasonable price - another task crossed off the Christmas list!

I'm so sorry that my commenting has almost ground to a halt. I'm in that familiar pre-Christmas rush, when my to-do lit seems to grow longer every day, and my energy diminishes by a roughly equal amount, leaving little opportunity for browsing blip...