Who'd be female, eh?

As predicted, the second day of Shark Week is fulfilling its promise in every way.  2.45am today saw me staggering, bleary-eyed and cramping, to the kitchen in the dark in order to shovel Paracetamol down my neck so I could try and get some sleep.  It worked, fortunately, until the alarm went off at 5.30am, as it does every weekday morning.  So now I'm bloated, crampy and dang tired.  Plus over the last year or so I seem to have developed hormonal headaches which is a mightily unwelcome development, especially as no amount of painkillers seem to shift them.  And I've got one now.

I'm almost 49, goddamit.  When's this all going to stop, eh?

This means that I made the right decision in going for a run yesterday because I correctly surmised that today I'd be good for nothing.  Which is a pity because it's turned into a gorgeous day out there - warm sunshine but cool air.   I had every intention, though, of not going out there at all - even though the allotment needs attending to and there are seeds to be sown - because of Shark Week (why 'Shark Week'?  Because there's lots of blood and frequently violence, that's why....), and just curling up on the sofa with my book and/or knitting and/or telly.  But this most sensible of plans was thwarted because the bloody car wouldn't start.  I had an errand to run in the village and, being the occasionally lazy sod I am - and due to the cramping and headache - I decided to get it over with quickly by driving the 5 mins to the shop so I could get back to the sofa and painkillers.  But the bloody car wouldn't start.  It's on its last legs, really it is.  There are many little things wrong with it - the windscreen buzzes loudly when you hit 70mph or it's a bit windy, there's a leak somewhere that occasionally drips into the front passenger footwell, the air conditioning is very hit and miss these days, it takes forever for the windscreen to demist in the winter - and quite a big thing that looks like is going wrong again, to do with the hydraulic system that made me feel sea-sick for 3 days the last time it went wrong.  I'm getting very wary of driving it now, to be honest, just waiting for the hydraulics to go again.  So imagine my (non-)surprise when I turned the key in the ignition and got the message 'gearbox fault' instead of the engine turning over.  Bugger.

Hopefully the battery is just flat but I seem to recall we had this problem the last time the hydraulics went - it kept draining the battery so we were having to charge it all the time.  And we're meant to be going to TLH's native homeland to visit his mum this weekend (what with it being Mother's Day 'n' all....) which is a long old drive.  Well, I suppose we've got the little car for that if necessary, but I'd rather drive 300 miles in a day in a Range Rover than a Smart Car, if at all possible.  (And, yes, I'm fully aware that this is an appalling First World Problem but it's Shark Week so argue with me at your peril.....!)

The upshot of this is that I had to walk - yes, walk! - down into the village but, luckily, the errand was a rather lovely one so it wasn't all misery and gloom.

A few years back I wrote a post about the 2010 Royal Academy Summer Exhibition with quite a lot of photos that I, illicitly, took.  TLH and I decided that our favourite picture there that year was a large oil painting of a grumpy looking cat in a stetson called 'Cowboy Joe from Mexico' by Angela Lizon:

About a week ago I got a comment on that post from a company called Coates and Scarry letting me know that they now had signed limited edition prints of Cowboy Joe available, so I ordered one!  How could I not!

It arrived a couple of days ago and today's errand was to trot down to our local framers with it.  It'll take about 2-3 weeks to be done, but when it is and is installed at home, I'll show you all.

Hmm, it's now almost 12.30pm, lunchtime.  Shark Week = carbs in abundance, so it's mashed potatoes with cheese and spring onions for me, followed by an apricot danish (I'll run it off at the weekend!).

Toodle-pip!