Blackberry's journal

Today was the first day of the new Diltiazem dosage, although I did actually take the smaller pill when I got home yesterday afternoon.

I've felt fine all day till just a little while ago, when I started getting breathless coming up the stairs. Yesterday when I took the extra pill later, I noticed that I wasn't getting breathless coming upstairs in the evening. My Lovely Lady Doctor told me to take it all at once in the morning unless it made me feel woozy, in which case I should take the smaller dose later in the day. I think I shall have to experiment. I will take both pills in the morning for a week and keep a diary about how it affects me and then I shall take the smaller dose about 5-ish for a week and again keep notes about how it affects me........ If I remember!

Having said all that, this evening's breathlessness was nowhere near as debilitating as it has been recently.

It was a nice afternoon, after rain in the morning, so after John and Charles had cleared all the rubbish out of the yard and taken it to the tip, Charles and I spent some time pottering in the yard. We broached our 2-year-old compost bin and I was so thrilled to see that the magic has worked and we have lovely friable compost. There are a few things which haven't composted completely; most we can't recognise, but, strangely, the avocado pear skins are completely untouched apart from having become black and slimy. I wonder why that should be?

Considering how long it's taken to produce that compost, it's a bit disappointing to think that I've already used about a quarter of it on three large pots. One is to grow my mint plant much bigger. The original pot it was in just didn't let it grow profusely enough, so I've put it in a huge pot which I hope will encourage it to get really big. The other two smaller ones were for planting out my new sage bushes, one purple and one green/gold.  I had to do a fair bit of deadheading as well.  The verbena has only half the number of flowers now that it started with.

The beans are growing really fast, but I see that the slugs have been at one plant and done their best to destroy it. I've moved the tub further away from the wall, because I think they must climb the wall and make a bridge of their bodies to the succulent leaves. Charles put grit round each plant as well. We put grit on the pots of mint and sage, too. It does make them look very nice.

Where the rubbish had been moved, we found an absolutely enormous yellow slug........ugh! and a tiny grey one.  I salted them and just managed to stop Charles disposing of them in the compost bin.  I don't want their eggs in my compost, thank you very much.  I also found a couple of massive snails, which went over the back wall, and John managed to tread on a very large one. Eeek!

Yesterday, when the window cleaner came, we found some keys by the back gate, which appeared to be for a Daihatsu; Adrian-next-door drives one, so I assumed they were his and I left a message on his voice-mail about them. He hadn't phoned back, so when John told me he was at home I went round and they were indeed his keys. He was very glad to get them back, because not only was there his spare car key on the ring, but his only key to the luggage box which lives on the car roof.

Poor Caramel his lovely tortoiseshell cat has had to be put down. She was only 10, but she developed a cancer on her chin which was inoperable and which made life too difficult for her.

Still, he did have some good news as well. He and Sandra have got engaged, the sweet old-fashioned things, and are planning to marry next year. I was so afraid that when this happened he would move away, but apparently she's coming to live next-door. Hurrah!  I must make them a really nice engagement card.  I'm sooo thrilled!

This morning the hat I bought from the eBay shop on Tuesday arrived by post.  It came in a huge box which weighed hardly anything at all, and the postman asked if it was a balloon!

It's not quite as dark a pink as I hoped, but it's still a very pretty shade, what I would call shell-pink, it fits me and it suits me, so I'm delighted with it.  I just wish everything else would come now!

Oh Good Grief!  I see it's Friday again tomorrow, so I shall have to go shopping again if I don't want to go at the week-end.  I get so fed up with shopping.

Maybe I shall go to the garden centre again on Saturday as a reward for the other boring shopping.  The only shopping I like is shopping for books, for CDs and DVDs and shopping in garden centres, which are the only places I ever do any of that browsing "window" shopping.

My mail-order shoes came from The Shoe Tailor today. The colour is absolutely perfect, the little heel is perfect, the only thing wrong is that they are size 4 instead of size 8. I expect it was my fault, as I ordered them at the end of a long day of Internet shopping and I daresay I made a mistake, although how I could have got it so wrong, I can't imagine.

When we got back from the Metrocentre this afternoon, I phoned the help line and ordered another pair, this time the right size. I was worried that they wouldn't be available in the correct size, but it seems they are. Phew!

We went to the Metrocentre to get a new white shirt and a tie for John for The Wedding. When we went a fortnight or so ago, to buy his suit he refused point-blank to get a shirt and tie, saying that he had perfectly good white shirts and ties at home. He got so narky I didn't insist.

When challenged to produce these white shirts and ties, he came in wearing a shirt which gaped across the belly between the buttons and which made him look like Homer Simpson with a beard. The ties were all ancient and very well-used regimental ties which were so well-washed and pressed that you could see the back seam-line through the front of the tie. Well, maybe badly washed and pressed!

As we were going there anyway, I thought I'd have a look for a hat. The ones in M&S were fairly ordinary and rather expensive and the ones in Accessorize were beautiful but far too expensive. There was a raspberry pink straw at £25 which would do, and there were a couple of perfect pale-green straws with twiddly bits and one in raspberry pink too, but the cheapest of those was £50 and the one I really liked was £60, so I decided against it. I think I shall get one from the nice shop I found on eBay. I realised when I tried them on that I shall need to take the hat with me when I get my hair cut, too.

I found a little green pleated-satin clutch bag, exactly the right colour on one of those stalls in the mall, but it was adorned with lots of extra little bits, like the pretty bit from a peacock's tail, and ribbons and shell things. It was altogether too far over the top for me, so I shall definitely make do with the black embroidered fabric bag I bought for less than a fiver in the Green Market a couple of years ago. Oooh! And I've just remembered that somewhere I have a dinky little black patent bucket bag I bought years ago! If the worst came to the worst I could use my other 20-year-old black patent bag with the concealed brass handles, I don't suppose any of the guests would remember it.  It's still in excellent condition.

I need a new handbag anyway, for every-day use and so far I haven't been able to find one I like. I always used to buy "organiser" bags, but there aren't many around nowadays and those there are are far too expensive.  I love the "teardrop" bag I've used for the last several years, but it hasn't worn very well and I leave a little trail of black bits behind me wherever I go, where the shiny surface keeps peeling off the leather.

Tomorrow I have to take the cats to the vet for their boosters and their MOTs.  I had made an appointment to take them last Friday, but I felt so exhausted after the two traumatic days we'd had driving to and from Stoke on Trent that I rearranged the appointment.

On Wednesday I have an appointment to see my lovely lady doctor and I hope she will be able to modify my medication so that I can get soon back to what passes for normal with me.  We're all dying to make holiday arrangements, but I didn't want to do anything until I know how well I'm going to be.  Judging by today's shopping trip where I had to keep stopping for a sit down, not too well, unless the revised medication does the trick.

I do hope the weather stays like this tomorrow so that I can get things done outside.