With all due diligence

Another weekend seems to have flown by and I'm sat here trying to remember what exactly I got up to. The answer is quite a lot, in that I was busy throughout the weekend although in truth not much progress seems to have been made.

Saturday morning, we headed into Coventry to try out the swimming baths and I at least was pleasantly surprised. I haven't been in a pool since my mid teens after a childhood full of bad swimming experiences which have pretty much turned me into a non-swimmer. Despite being worried about how I'd get on, I actually quite enjoyed myself.

As I'd expected, I appear to have forgotten how to swim but after ten minutes or so of acclimatising, I was managing to swim back and forth with a float... something I did repeatedly for an hour, which is why yesterday and today I ache a lot. But as I said, it was fun. Dave was very patient and we both spent a lot longer in the pool than we'd intended as a result of losing all track of time.

We popped into town briefly, where I resisted buying yarn but found and bought a crochet book (Vintage Crochet) as my willpower momentarily deserted me. I have a list of books I'm keeping my eye on but not buying on Amazon while I try to save some pennies, so really I shouldn't have bought this but perhaps the exercise got to me. Anyhow, I now have another crochet book in my collection.

At home that afternoon, household chores were the main theme which kept us occupied for the rest of the day. I did take a brief break to finish the toe on the first of Dave's socks, something which took me longer than I liked as I had issues with dropped stitches while I was trying to graft the toe shut. Not to worry though, I finally got there and Dave tried on the sock which appeared to fit well.

Dave also took two loads of stuff to the local charity shops, fallout from the ongoing de-cluttering exercise. Of course no sooner had we cleared the pile of items to go out, than we started again and so a new pile of stuff to go to charity has already started to grow.

We did have one tiny and annoying glitch in that one of our neighbours, who was obviously having a clearout of his own, decided the ideal place to dispose of his rubbish was in our garden. This is a bit of an ongoing issue for us and a few years back, we spent a whole summer clearing as much of the rubbish that others had dumped over the fence as we could easily get at. We put a great big shed in front of the junk we couldn't easily move but haven't fenced it off as I worry that will just encourage our neighbours to think it doesn't belong to anyone. Over the past couple of years, random bits of rubbish appear and we do our best to remove them.

This weekend, we came came back from swimming to discover a discarded patio set, some fence panels and a huge plastic tub or tank thrown behind our shed. Dave had words with the neighbour in question. Admission of ownership and platitudes were offered, but the rubbish remained and so Dave has stacked the stuff back in its original owner's garden. We shall see how things develop. One thing is certain, we have enough of our own junk without neighbours adding to it!

Talking about our own junk, yesterday I diligently spent a couple of hours going through the contents of a cupboard, sorting through old paperwork and arguing with the shredder which kept jamming. I didn't get as far as I wanted to, but at this stage I'm taking the attitude that if I keep chipping away at the clutter I will eventually win.

Yesterday afternoon, I dug out my various lucets and reminded myself of the basics in readiness for the workshop at the knitting group on Wednesday, successfully whiling away a couple of hours.

And other than casting on a second sock, that was about it for the weekend.