A change of scene

I’m staying with my parents for a week from today onwards, just for a change of scene (and also because I suspect Mum feels better if I am within checking distance at the moment!). I’m currently sitting in my childhood bedroom, which is now the spare room, typing this on my parents’ computer, which I used to think was fast, but which is slower than I remember it and apparently has a tendency to lose connection to the internet with no warning!

Still, the view is lovely. My parents are fortunate enough to live on the edge of a small market town, very near to the countryside and the view out of the window above the desk is trees, trees, trees, road, glimpse of house through trees opposite. There are some nice fat pigeons in the trees - the ones Mum often threatens to bake in pies (poor pigeons) and you can often see squirrels, although I haven’t seen any yet today. The pigeons are flying from the trees over the roof above my head, which is quite disconcerting because I keep thinking they’re going to crash into the window. Unfortunately, this has happened before. (Don’t worry, Mum didn’t put any of the pigeons into pies).

So far today I have travelled here on the train, the bus and another train. I couldn’t face the Underground, scaredy-cat that I am, so we took the number 73 bus from Victoria to King’s Cross. This takes about 45 minutes as opposed to the 20 minutes on the tube, but never mind. It’s marginally less crowded and there are windows and air! It was one of the infamous bendy buses. I quite like them.

This afternoon we went for a walk (we being Mr C and I - he is staying until tomorrow then back home for work on Monday). There is a really sweet minature pony in one of the fields nearby. I wish I’d had my camera with me, but unfortunately I left it at home. The pony came over to say hello and eat some grass from our side of the fence, despite having plenty over on his side, thereby illustrating that well-known saying!

Other than the walk we have spent the afternoon in the garden reading the paper and talking. All very relaxing. There is definitely a greater choice of scenic places to walk round here, so hopefully I will get back into the routine of three walks a day. I’m afraid to say that I have been slacking in the past few days - it’s a lot harder to keep up the routine when there’s no one there to prod me. Of course, now Mum and Dad are both here to make sure I do the walks, so that will help with my motivation. I also need to increase the length of my walks even more - apparently by this time I should be doing about 40 minutes per walk, which I hadn’t realised until Mum told me this the other day! Whoops.

I’m hoping to continue to blog every day while I’m staying with my parents, but, as I’m using their computer, the time that I can spend writing might be limited. Dad is quite a keen eBayer and Mum is researching her family history, so the computer is likely to be in demand. If I’d thought ahead a bit more I could have written some posts in advance and set them to publish on future dates but, as it is, I’ll just have to see how it goes.