Ducks’ Tea Break

Ironically, after commenting in yesterday’s entry that I ought to sleep in the garden to stop the slugs eating my new plants, I had one of those nights when I couldn’t get to sleep and ended up reading and listening to music until we’ll past 2am, managing to have the same effect on Tess in the process. At least the slugs had the decency to leave the plants alone.

Typically, when we eventually did fall asleep we slept late, meaning I was too late for today’s golf round - probably a blessing in disguise as my back still isn’t fully recovered.

Instead we had a short walk, stopping to chat with 3 sets of friends we bumped into, before heading down to the hospital in Taunton for the third time in recent weeks as Tess had a bone density scan to check for any possible sins of osteoporosis; apparently this is a standard precautionary measure when people our age, particularly women, suffer a broken limb.

Once again the NHS service was brilliant: Tess was called in 10 minutes before her scheduled appointment time for her scan, which took less than 10 minutes, then was sent for a blood test in another department where the nurse was waiting for at the door to greet her and take her blood. We were back in the car within 35 minutes of parking it. Totally efficient and impressive from start to finish.

On the way back we stopped at a garden centre to  buy some more plants and grab a drink and the pond-side cafe, where these ducks took time off from looking after their brood of 9 tiny ducklings, who were busy chasing each other around the pond, to see if there were any crumbs to cadge. They were out of luck.