Not the best of days today.

My back pain is terrible today, I think it's because I've been overdoing it a bit (ok, a lot!) in the garden. Even my hydrotherapy session midday wasn't great. My physio could tell without me saying anything, so it must have been bad. My exercises were laboured and a good blast with the water jet on my back didn't really help that much. Boo.

I got home, had a salad for lunch which was very nice then decided to go back out to the garden and make a start painting the mini picket fencing we have to edge the new flower bed. So I planted myself and my paint pot on the patio table and made a start, I managed to get a first coat on everything then my back really had given up the ghost. Maybe tomorrow I'll finish it off.

Today was strike day for lots of public sector workers, and my union was was of those out on strike over pensions. I'm still a paid up union member and for once I actually agree with what they're striking about, but as I'm no longer in employment I couldn't really do anything proactive. Shame really, but I do hope that something gets sorted out as working longer for less pension really is not on.

I did have some good news though, I had a text message from my best mate Emma today, she and her husband are off on holidays and I've said that they can leave their car here while they're away, then I'll pick them up from Bristol airport when they get back. She text me to say they'll be here Sunday afternoon. So a flying visit but something to look forward to!

Here's hoping I have a better day tomorrow....

Getting wet, it's quite addictive.

I am loving my aqua cardio classes, I really am and look forward to them 3 times a week. I try and get there 15-20 minutes early so I can get a bit of a swim in first, bonus! There's a nice group of regulars at the class too so we are all getting to know each other and actually have a giggle whilst working out. It's a nice little social hour 3 times a week, something I miss since leaving employment. I'm a social person you see, I like other peoples company (even though I'm happy in my own company too) and being at home alone all day every day can get boring. Don't get me wrong, I can chat to the 3 cats but they dont really chat back much. So my 3 hours a week in a pool is quite refreshing in more ways than one!

So after my hour in the pool this morning, I toddled off to Aldi on a recommendation from one of my fellow aqua classmates as they have adult water shoes on sale, much better grip with them than bare feet whilst running around a pool. I bought a lovely pair of lilac ones for less than 4 quid, bargain!

Just after that I got a text from my friend I used to work with, well we shared a room and really hit it off, she's just got back from a lovely long 3 weeks holiday in Greece, lucky thing. I can't wait to see her holiday photos. I'm still in limbo about deciding where we should go on holidays, but my husband is still dilly-dallying about when or where. Maybe I should just book something and tell him where and when!

Back home I made the decision that I couldn't do anything else in the back garden, but I could make a start painting the driveway fence. Its 45ft long and I managed to do about 5 ft of it before a huge black raincloud came over so I had to pack up. To be honest, I'm fed up of painting fences, I could do with never seeing a fence again in my life, it has to be done though, but maybe later rather than sooner !

The never ending job....Finished at last!

I had a moment of minor excitement today, the moment I finished my 5th tin of fence paint and my last brushstroke on the last piece of garden fence. The new garden fences have all had their two coats of paint. HURRAH! All 45 square metres of fence. Hurrah indeed. (I still have 40ft of driveway fence to paint yet but thats for another project!). Boredom banished for today at least.

I had a little conversation via email with my friend who is still in work this morning, and we plan to have a laydees wot lunch day together on 21st July, so thats something fab to look forward to! I also had a rather hard aqua cardio class early this evening, a different instructor to Wednesday and Friday classes and totally different exercises to do, I really quite enjoyed it!

So a good positive day all round, lots done and looking forward to aqua cardio class tomorrow morning, then I plan to start preparing the soil in the lower flower bed to plant the lavender in. More garden work, but at least at the end of it I'll have something I can look back at and enjoy.

I shall sleep well tonight.

I can't be bored already...

...surely not?! Due to rain stopping me getting on with garden stuff, I sat down and watched some of the Andy Murray 4th round Wimbledon match today, then I realised I was getting bored, not with the match but generally. I was scrambling my brain for something to do, it scared me a bit I have to be honest. It's only been a flippin' week!

Anyway after pondering what to do, as I felt just sitting down watching the tennis was somehow wasting time, even though in reality I have all the time in the world, then my gravel order arrived from the builders merchants, so that killed about 15 minutes. I finally decided to go and buy more fence paint in readiness for dry weather and of all things, a butter dish. I've always wanted one and now I have a lovely spotty butter dish so my butter won't be rock hard any more. Maybe now my butter will be soft I can crack open my new Kenwood Chef and use it to bake something, I've had it about 6 weeks now and it's still in its box.

I have no idea how people can just sit on their backsides all day doing nothing, its mind numbingly boring and you have nothing to show for it, what a waste of time/a day/your life. Being a laydee of leisure isn't all it's cracked up to be I reckon. There's nothing really needs doing in the house other than big things like the bathroom refit or things I can't do. Maybe I need to go around the house with a notepad and pen and really scrutinise everything, make a list, then make a start on doing teeny tiny jobs. Maybe I need to have a massive clearout and spring clean, although after the massive clearout prior to moving here, there's not much to get rid of. Lists, I love lists and think I need to get something down on paper so I can see what things I can do to fill my time.

There's lots of nice hobby type things I can do like photography or crafting, I do want to make a start on scrapbooking at some point, but if I do things like that I feel I'm wasting my time on frivolity and not making the most of the fact I'm at home. I feel like I should be doing things for the home rather than for me. I know it sounds stupid but it's ingrained in me I think, weekdays was work and weekends was doing stuff for the house. Now the weekdays are free I feel duty bound to do stuff for the house to free up our weekends for nice stuff. Maybe I feel guilty for being home and not in work. I'll think about it some more tomorrow, after all I've got nothing else to do have I?

Started well, didn't really go anywhere.

Hmmm, it's only 11am and I've been stopped in my tracks. I was up at 6.30, trotted off to the doctors at about 7.50 to find myself in a queue stretching up the road, luckily I had a booked appt with the nurse, the majority of people were there for open surgery and I guess would have had quite a wait. Anyway, medical stuff done, I came home for breakfast, a nice bowl of fruit salad whilst sat on the garden swing in the morning sunshine. Perfect for getting my garden planning head on. So after breakfast I decided to pop to B&Q to see what prices their lavenders were, as it happened they were on offer at 3 for £12 which compared to other places at £6 or £7 each was quite a bargain, so I bought 6 to plant in the bottom flower bed that was dug out yesterday.

I also spotted a rather nice hardwood table and chairs for two which would be perfect for the top deck, I was unsure if the box would fit in my Smart car, but I'm going to go back later to buy it. I was on a roll now and decided to pop over to the builders merchants and order a couple of tons of gravel for mulching in the garden. So two 1 ton bags of Solent Gold chippings ordered to be delivered tomorrow, or possibly today if they have time. Whilst in the builders merchants I received a phone call from my husband who told me he had done his back in in work getting out of a chair and was in agony, looks like I'll be the one shovelling chippings from the drive to the garden then. Great timing, but I hope he's ok.

By the time I got back home the sunshine had disappeared under clouds and it looked like rain was on the way :o( I wasn't a happy bunny. I wanted to set to with more fence painting to finish it off, and maybe making a start on digging out the new flower bed in front of the deck. I'm looking out of the window now and it's picking with rain, not good. So after a swift start everything seems to have ground to a halt. Boo.

Hot, sweaty and sunburned.

Phew! It's been a scorcher today, 82 degrees I'll have you know! However, I've spent a day in the garden again and yes, fence painting did happen, but today I got my husband involved doing hard labour digging out the lower flower bed near the patio. It was full of weeds and it spoiled the view of the garden from the kitchen window. This is what it looked like first thing this morning.

Yes full to the brim with stuff and an unloved fence too. This little area of the garden wasn't even in my masterplan, I hadn't got that far in the plan in my head! Husband set to with a pitch fork and dug it all out. It took him quite a while and I couldn't help him really so I went and did girly things like more fence painting in pretty colours! So after all his digging and a trip to the dump with a car full of garden, it looked like this.

I had started to paint the unloved fence by now as you can see, still lots to do though and the sun was getting hotter. The large plank of wood you can see here will eventually be screwed into the bottom of the fence posts to hold back the earth at the top where the lawn ends, I'll probably paint it the same colour as the fence. At the end of what seemed the longest day ever in the sunshine (and I'd lost count how many glasses of water I managed to drink!) we eventually ended up with this.

Transformed! The fence looks half decent now but needs another coat (and I managed to get the feather edge fence painted too, bonus!) So now it's all dug over, it needs some compost dug into it, then I think my plan is to keep it simple and just plant some lavender in there (as the bees love it) and mulch it with gravel. Maybe tomorrow I shall buy some lavender plants...

A good day all in all with lots done and to end our day gardening we had a BBQ and ate al fresco, topped off with some chill out time sat on the garden swing on the top deck, over looking our hard work.

Tomorrow is the start of week 2 of laydee of leisure time and there are things I need to do, doctors appt first thing for a fasting blood test, bp check and check up smear. I have to contact HMRC to sort out claiming a chunk of tax back from my redundancy payment and finally I need to contact the Instructor I've chosen to teach me so we can sort out paperwork and book a driving assessment lesson. It's becoming real!

It's Sunday evening and I'm relaxed and don't have that Sunday night pit of the stomach feeling that can only mean work on Monday morning. It's rather quite nice to feel relaxed for a change, long may this continue I say!

Pondering...

Today has been a day for it, pondering that is. It's been none too good weather wise with on and off drizzle so no real work done in my garden, but lots of thinking and planning and pondering. It's the weekend so my husband has been mulling things over in the garden too, measuring things up and thinking about his next move.

To put things garden-wise into context we started off with this

and after a lot of hard work and a couple of thousand £'s we have so far ended up with this

So far, so good eh? It's my keep me occupied project at the moment and it certainly is keeping me very occupied because if I'm not physically doing something in the garden I'm planning what to do next. Nothing on paper, it's all in my mind, but I'm aiming for a beachy feel with zoned areas.

So far we have had new fencing and two decks erected (the main spend of cash really as there's no way we could have done that ourselves!). After that it was down to me to start painting the fences, and there's a lot of fence, what seems like acres in fact, oh and two coats of paint too, so twice the acreage! So the back fence was to be forget-me-not blue to compliment the sage green of the shed and make it look like an outdoor room. The main tall fence running along the side broke me, it was never ending but the sense of acheivement when I got to the end was immense. Anyway, thats in Heritage stone colour, the garden zone. The small fences in the foreground that are older and weathered will eventually be painted the same green as the shed, as will the new wall topper fence out of sight on the lower right. This will mark out the patio zone where the table and seating is, another outdoor room.

Last week we edged the lower deck with heather screening and laid weed suppressant fabric under the deck. Previously to that we moved the shed sideways by about 6 inches and back by about 18inches to be able to lay paving slabs around it to tidy the area up and provide space for our plastic storage unit. My husband had fitted a new BBQ unit to the brick built BBQ on the top deck and screwed a stainless steel splashback to the fence to prevent us burining it down whilst cooking! He also applied two coats of deck oil to both decks.

So thats the background, here's the pondering.....How to cover up the unsightly brickwork between the two decks and above the steps?! Idea....Frame it up and cover it with more heather screening to make it match the lower deck. So measuring up is in order.

Next is sorting out the flower bed I want to put in, in front of the lower deck. It will be triangular in shape and filled with evergreen plants of different colours so there will be all round colour. Planting will be mulched with gravel and edged with short painted picket fence. Have to mull over what needs doing there really as the soil is clay and will need manure, sand and compost dug in first.

My biggest pondering is the dip that contains the old stepping stone path to the left of the photos, it winds from top centre around to the left and back to bottom centre, it is also in a trench. What the previous owners of the house were thinking of at the time I have no idea, its a total pain to mow due to the incline and serves no purpose. I initially thought it would make a great basis for a rill with lovely trickling water, but then the practicalities sunk in, how would I ever manage to trim the hedge on the left? So that idea went out of the window as soon as it came in. I think, but it's still open to other suggestions, that it will need to be filled in with topsoil and either seeded or the whole lawn comes up and we lay a new one so it all matches. That pondering will go on for a while yet I reckon.

The plan for a new path is already in my mind and it will lead from the bottom right of the lawn along the side of the new flower bed and up to the deck steps. Easy and just where you actually want a path!

So lots of thinking, and even more actual physical work to do. Tomorrow is another day, and I think tomorrow will bring me yet more fence painting!

Blimey! this is new, what am I starting?!

Whilst sat in my garden earlier I thought maybe I'd like to document my 'retirement' and all the fun (read mundane) things I'm going to get up to now I'm jobless. It's been a week since I left the Civil Service for good, taking voluntary exit. So blogging, that's what came into my mind, it's the unknown for me, never tried it before and didn't really know where to start. Anyway after some searching on the intertubes, here I am, all set up and writing my first post. I'm the new girl, the one who has no idea what to do, so please bear with me!

My master plan is to retrain as a driving instructor and set up my own driving school. All well and good you may think, but it's terrifying and totally out of my comfort zone having never been self employed there will be a lot to learn, and not just the instructor training! So thats part one of my laydee of leisure time, doing something that will hopefully turn me from a laydee of leisure to a self employed professional!

Part two is sorting out aspects of my house I want to change, like the garden (ongoing project!) the bathroom, the fireplace in the living room, re-carpetting the stairs and landing, painting the outside of the house, replacing the facias, soffits and guttering..... Yes there's lots to do and I'm going to bore you (and me) silly with it all!

Part 3 is basically everything else, my day to day life, my exercise classes, my physio appts, my thoughts on life in general and hopefully my meeting up with freinds from time to time to share some good social catchup time. Could be boring but could also be devastatingly interesting!

So I've made a start, this is post numero uno, which will be the start of a journey that I have no idea where it will end or take me. Welcome to my life, my thoughts, my ups and downs. Welcome to the life of a laydee of leisure!