bunn

Yesterday, I saw a huge black crow eating a similarly huge dead white gull. It looked very Ominous.

Today I went for a swim and didn't get stung by a jellyfish, though one of the people I was swimming with did.

Pp and I decided we didn't know enough about the history of  countries in Africa, so we're doing a blitz on African history doing a quick Wikipedia read-up/ Youtube whiz through on one country a day.  Yesterday was Ethiopia, today is Sudan. Tomorrow is Eritrea. 

I'm not sure how much of it will stick, but hopefully the odd bit? At a minimum I hope to more accurately be able to point to places on a map! 

Speaking of maps, the Shop on the Borderlands now has sold things to customers in 46 countries.  We've bought a map and some flag pins so we can see where they all are. 

I took Theo for a social walk at the amazingly named Wolf's Castle, where, supposedly, the last wolf in Wales was killed.  It seemed a pleasant spot for a stroll and Theo managed to not shout more than a token amount, even onlead and surrounded by other on-lead dogs (he finds leads hard!  He's so much happier greeting off the lead.) 

Pp has been diagnosed diabetic, which has come as a bit of a shock to him, given his usual diet of white bread cheese sandwiches, chocolate and (nearly) no veg.   But he has risen to the challenge and bought an under-desk cycle, for exercise.  He's eating a lot of boiled eggs now,but I need to work out some more low-carb recipes. 

One of my clients rang, because she remembered that last year I had been quite badly ill with a patch of eczema that had got infected.  She had been talking to an old friend who is a world specialist in eczema who is in the UK for a month or so, and wondered if I wanted to get some advice from him.

Fortunately my eczema is very mild and minor and I only ran into problems that one time because I was rushing about and stressing and didn't take it seriously, or take proper care of a tiny itchy patch and was unlucky that it went on and got infected, but I'm still very touched that she rang up specially about it. 

On the Lemsip box, the contents claims to treat:

• Headache
• Fever
• Blocked Nose
• Body Aches and Pains
• Sore Throat.

It does not mention:

• That feeling as if the top of your head had come off and your brain had become filled with helium, and is now hovering about half a mile up, connected to your body only by the slowest and most tenuous connections.
• Extreme enfeeblement of the upper arms, making one feel like a rather limp Tyrannosaurus Rex.
• whatever that thing is that makes you rub your eyebrows.
• Timeslip effects : sit down for 5 minutes, when you stand up it is three hours later
• The proliferation of typos.

I am one of the 'fluoride generation': or so my shiny new dentist tells me. Although this was my first dentist visit in 9 years, my teeth are reported to be in amazingly good condition and astonishingly clean.  Go teeth! 

Dentist tried to sell me Colgate as apparently far more effective than other toothpastes.  Told him I didn't like the taste.  Dentist non-plussed by this but as he'd just been raving about my astonishingly clean teeth, I felt it was OK to go on using toothpaste that doesn't make me retch. 

I don't know why practically all toothpaste is minty -  and why it has to be such a powerful mint!  It's horrible!.    My currently preferred one is Kingfisher Fennel (sort of aniseedy) , though I reckon a really good flavour would be clove and cinnamon.  Mmmmm cinnamon.