Improving.

A progress report on the farmer - he is up and dressed today and has eaten a little at each meal, after yesterday when all he had was dry toast.   I have to report that now he is getting visibly better he is a very bad patient.   He wants to be outside in the fields, doing all the jobs that are crying out to be done.   And because he feels too weak to do them it is making him irritable.

He has decided to get a contractor in with good equipment, much larger than we have on the farm, to spread the manure = this is the next job and needs doing urgently.

Our resprayed car has been returned to us today - the garage kindly returning it for us as the farmer didn't feel up to driving the thirty or so miles to collect it - and he no longer likes me to drive in that sort of traffic.   Friend W very kindly offered to drive me to the garage so that I could pick up the car and drive it back - but there would still be the problem of the courtesy car, which was sitting in our garage.   Any way it is all sorted out now and we are more or less back to normal.

Apparently there is a sickness bug doing the rounds here, so perhaps that was what he had, but as his ears are still hurting he is keeping the doctor's appointment on Thursday just to be sure.

How kind it was of everyone to send good wishes to him - I have passed them on.   As to the ironing - I apologise to all those who tell me to throw the iron away - but I actually love ironing under normal circumstances - and however hard I try I just can't abide wearing a white shirt blouse for example, which has not been ironed into some sort of crispness.

Many years ago we had a neighbour, George, long dead now.   He went into hospital and was told that he only had a short time to live, so he asked to come home in the ambulance so that he could spend the last few weeks/months with his wife Elsa.   My then husband went round when he saw the ambulance arrive, to assist George (in his dressing gown and pyjamas) into the house.   Elsa told him to sit in an armchair and she would make him a cup of tea.   He replied that he would get dressed first (into a suit and shirt with matching tie, a 'uniform' he always wore) - saying ' think of the standards darling.'   It became a joking saying in our household if anything was left undone (e.g. the washing up).   Maybe I should apply that philosophy to ironing.  (I am joking).

I have walked off most of yesterday's stiffness (fourteen times up the stairs for a start) and hopefully should be back to normal by tomorrow.   Hope the farmer is too.   And again so  many thanks for all your good wishes - he really did appreciate them.