This weekend I seem to have done more than my fair share of socializing. By no means am I against socialising, and do on occasion enjoy it, but I am becoming more intolerant the older I get. The thought of spending time in the company of people that I don't particularly like and don't have anything in common with now fills me with dread.

On Friday night I spent several hours in the company of some good friends, shared food and wine with them and thoroughly enjoyed myself. Sunday afternoon was a different matter I had to spend time with people that I find neither witty or intelligent. I suppose on balance it wasn't too bad, actually that is not strictly true, it was about as much fun as being stuck in Ibiza and having to watch several hundred red-faced, beer-bellied,holiday makers doing the Conga around the hotel pool to that bloody awful version of "hey baby", while you sip a sickly cocktail with unfunny names like "up against the wall", which have those little pink umberallas in them that always go up your nose when you try and drink.

Ah well my duty is done and I will not have to see them again for a while.

I went to see my dentist yesterday. I am sure that he is really a very nice man. Witty charming with a sense of humour to die for. But anybody who wakes up one morning thinking I want to ferret around in peoples' mouths for the rest of my life has to my mind, got to be a little odd. Still there is a need for them and on balance mine is a good one. He doesn't seem to do any un necessary work and what work is done is relatively pain free.

All in all I suppose that I don't mind going to see him, well when I say I don't mind that is an exaggeration. What I really mean is that I'd rather be stuck on a smelly overcrowded train in a heat wave, with the heater full on and the windows stuck shut, sat between one hygienically challenged chap who's chain smoking while slowly sucking all the flavouring off an oversize bag of pickled onion crisps and another who is talking loudly into his mobile about how he paid £ 5.50 for his 'executive' home in Tosser-on-the-Wold and now its worth 600k.

Ah well I won't have to see him again for another year by which time my bitten cheek will be long forgotten.

Daughter number one came home for a visit this weekend. She is a delight to have around especially as she goes away again. She wad duly dispatched with a food parcel this morning and she doesn't bring her washing home.

Saturday night saw me driving around the Biuckinghamshire countryside at one o clock in the morning. Daughter number two had gone, with three friends to see a Greenday concert in Milton Keynes. As sixty five thousand other people had also attended the performance finding them was none to easy, but find them I did and travelled home with a car full of hot, tired and sun-baked teenagers. Not all that pleasant but they were so tired that they were quiet, I didn't have to listen the normal drivel that accompanies teenagers.

On my return I found that daughter number one had returned from partying and was waiting for me with a chilled glass of white wine. As the night was warm we sat under the stars putting the world to rights until the sun came up. Not quite the way that I had planned to spend the night but a pleasant interlude none the less.

As a direct result of Saturday night a large part of Sunday was spent in the pantry, seeking peace, quiet and a comfy chair amongst the baked bean tins.

I knew that Sunday was not going to be the best day of my life when I put coffee grounds into the water container of the coffee maker. How right I was.

Most of yesterday was spent strimming nettles and watching one of the sheep die.

Sheep have an amazing propensity to die at the drop of a hat and often do it out of spite but it is never a bundle of laughs watching it happen. Despite giving her two vitamin k injections she finally gave up the ghost at about four pm.

I don't have a deep and abiding love for my livestock and really don't object to them dying but a rotting sheep carcass is not the sort of thing that you can leave lying around.It's not pretty and it tends to smell somewhat after a few days. The neighbours tend to get a little twitchy about that sort of thing, short of chopping it up into small bits and sending it through the post to people that I don't like, which come to think of it is not such a bad idea,two people who are ideal candidates have already sprung to mind, it has to be buried.

What I do object to is the number of Sunday roasts that have been lost due to this sheep's inconsiderate behavior.

As a result of the above I have spent a great deal of today digging a hole in which to put the damned thing, anybody wishing to send bits of rotting sheep flesh to disliked recipients should place their orders now before it is too late.

On the up side I now have twenty day old chicks drying out on the aga, so all is not lost on the Sunday roast front.

Ah well, I now ache all over and can feel a prolonged pantry moment coming on, now where did I put the corkscrew?

I have just returned from the wilds of Hampshire. The visit was worse than I feared it would be. The only saving grace was that I got to spend an evening with daughter number one who lives in Southampton.

Whilst I was with my mother my thoughts turned time and time again to the fact that despite my best efforts I may well be turning into her. If anyone has the solution to this please send the answers on a stamped addressed envelope to the following address.............

I took mother and as it turned out three of her friends to Chichester and sure enough shoe shops were visited, when the conversation turned to the washable shoes that one of them was wearing.......panic set in as my imagination ran wild, one of them was sloshing around in her own urine and could, at any given moment take her shoes off and wring them out, safe in the knowledge that once home she could simply wash them.

Both my mother and I survived our 'few days together' although it was touch and go at times, she has lived to tell the tale and I did not get to lay a new patio after all.

I have just run this blog through the spell checker, spelling never having been one of my strong points and for the first time ever came back with the words 'no errors found', that calls for a celebration as far as I'm concerned.