I Blame The National Health Service......

Oh dear! This jobbing builder has been in hospital for several days and things are getting out of hand. I have absolutely no idea what Grandpa Roland is up to and hope that, what ever it is, Grandma Jean is not talking to her solicitor about a divorce. Grandpa can be quite a handful sometimes......

But then, so can I. Yesterday, I was allowed a day out of my ward. Off I trotted to the local charity shops, pretending to look for the vintage jug my mother has asked me to track down for her Mothering Sunday present for next week. No jug to suit was found....but a Sylvanian Family barge for £3.00 proved too much of a  temptation. The little grey mouse who is looking for lodging chez Les Crawshaws has brought the joy of Sylvania back to my mind. (Sylvanian Families animals were such a big part of family life when my children were small.) Added to that, I have let the Crawshaw couple and their several lodgers down rather a lot, my health issues having got in the way of their various renovation plans, so the prospect of a leisure craft for holidays for them all was just too tempting.

Try as I might, I couldn't hide the Rose of Sylvania. NHS hospital beds are high with no over-hanging blankets allowed, so stuffing it under the bed was not an option. The bedside lockers are way too small for clothing and snacks, never mind a 60cm long boat. So, my only way of handling the situation was to brazen it out.
 Yes I am still mentally 6 years old. 
Yes, I did buy a toy. 
Yes, I am going to keep it.
 No, I don't have children at home. 
YES Dr. A. you can just take the top of and see what's inside. 
Scale, Dr. A? I'm not sure it is to any scale in particular. 
Well designed, Dr. A? Yes, it is very like the real one my brother moors on the Leeds/Liverpool canal.

Dr. A. is coming back sometime this weekend to measure up the Rose of Sylvania with the view to making his own wooden version, using her dimensions as a guide.

Now, if the NHS wheels didn't grind very slowly when it comes to assessing test results, I'd be out of here by now and wouldn't even have seen the barge. Dr. A. wouldn't have seen it either. So, I blame the National Health Service for all of this and, if Dr. A. happens to give up medicine in favour of boat building, I am not prepared to take the blame! Am I beginning to sound like Grandpa?

As I am in a shared room, it has proved impossible to take photos without compromising the privacy of others, so there are none to show on this post. Pictures will follow when I finally arrive home.
Thank you to Dr. A. for lending me his laptop to type up this post.

A Visit From Another Potential Tenant.

Recently, Grandma and I have been sending Grandpa off to the pub every lunch time. We think it is time he found a few friends who might be a steadying influence on him and we need an hour or two to look at wall paper, order furniture and discuss plans which we will then persuade him were his own ideas in the first place. Grandma Jean and I agree that this is the best approach to getting our own way whilst allowing our men folk to believe they are in charge.

It seems Grandpa has met a tall fellow called Arthur who is a retired gardener and now needs a new home. We haven't met him yet but are glad to know there will be another chap taking over a room or two on Dolly Mixture Lane. However, if we hadn't sen her with our very own eyes, we would not have believed Grandpa Roland's claim over another potential tenant that came knocking at the door just after he got home today. We would have been suspecting that his daily pint had grown to rather more substantial quantities.

This little lady is a seamstress and hand launderer, so she and Grandma should have much to chat about, should they be able to find a suitable place for her to call her own. Grandpa, being a generous soul, is going to talk to the bank about another mortgage but Grandma is hoping it will be declined and Sian's House could be turned into two flats instead.

What ever the outcome, she looks as though she would be a clean, respectable little tenant and I'm sure she deserves a new start as she has been living in a box since the early 1990s. What do you think?