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  1. Sounds like you had a wonderful time – most of the time…Ouch! That sunburn is painful just to look at! And that depression-dip when you finally could relax reminds me of how I always get sick on weekends and holidays, never in the middle of a working week. The mind is carrying the body, apparently.

    The shed! It frankly looks like a bad DIY outdoor loo that you’d find by some old abandoned farm – one that you’d avoid and rather use the bush behind it for all of your needs. No wonder you wanted rid of it! I hope that’s the end of your garden frustrations.

    Wonderful blog, as always, Niall. I’m glad the two of you got some time to relax (even if it wasn’t long enough), after all of the hard work keeping everything together and running!

  2. Dear Christ – that shed! I hope the rest of their work is significantly better.

    Watch out for high UV levels in the weather forecast – I know I don’t have to tell you this now, but you don’t have to be in direct sunlight. 10 years ago my left arm blistered after a hour’s drive in Portugal – in a car with aircon. UVB is blocked by glass, but 50-75% of UVA passes through.

    A couple of years ago, I got my legs burned simply by paddling in the sea on an overcast day. No visible signs of pinkness but the skin felt like they were being thrashed with stinging nettles for 48 hours, as my immune system went nuts.

    I recognise the “can’t” frustration – I found talking to someone helped. Essentially, there are still plenty of things I *can* do, so I keep myself busy doing those instead. Turns out I’m really good at buying records, and not bad at playing them on the radio.

    Take care of yourself. I prescribe another holiday.

  3. When I was at school, I played quite a lot of tennis. I wasn’t too bad at it either, and my enthusiasm was boosted each summer with the arrival of Wimbledon. Sadly, to be honest, these days I’ve almost completely lost interest in it, almost entirely because it has become – as you put it – the battle of the serves.

    BAM. 15-love. BAM. 30-love. BAM. 40-love. BAM. Game. Repeat. Dullsville.

    That shed is a bloody disgrace to the morons who assembled it. I wish you lived a lot closer to Foxy Towers, as I’d love to build you a proper one – I built ours about 5 years ago, and I’m mightily proud of it. There used to be some photos of it on here, but they will have fallen foul of the imgur pram/toy interface crisis by now. Please be sure to give us the skinny on whatever vituperative exchanges you have with the idiot that supplied it and its cretinous assemblers in due course!

    • Yeah, in the years Before Children, Mrs F had a works jolly to Wimbledon as her employer sponsored a marquee. Free lunch, strawbs & bubbly, the works. There were tickets to all of the courts in a bowl on a table inside the door (flap?). As employees, we had last pickings as the customers of the firm had first dibs.

      We finally got to Centre Court late afternoon to see two top-seeded men serve aces at each other. Wallop. Point. Wallop. Point. Wallop. Point. Wallop. Point. Wallop. Point. Christ, it was boring.

      We went back to the marquee and swapped the tickets to another court, where we got to see two women actually play tennis. That was great.

    • Actually I think the rallies are generally longer than in the days of Sampras or Ivanisevic these days, because they have slowed the courts down, the balls are different and serve and volley has gone out of fashion. However, Sunday’s final was indeed simply a battle of big serves for the most part.

      Audible ouch when I saw your crimson face, glad that otherwise you generally had a good time in Wales.

    • @Vulpes-Vulpes thank you 🙏. Ref Shedgate, (now there’s a good accidental joke,) we are a slight impasse. He has been told to remove it but he’s gone very quiet. I am withholding the last ÂŁ500 of his payments until such time, blah, blah.

  4. Another great chapter @Niall reflecting on the ups and downs of how life is going for you at the moment.

    That holiday looked wonderful, those pictures beautiful.

    But that shed! What a load of b@ll@cks, I just had to laugh. How those idiots could assemble something so wrong…but they managed it very easily.

    I had my op on the motning of July 6 and the consultant reckons they got all the malignant shyte out. They lasered the left side of my voice box which left me very sore which faded away by the evening. After seeing another consultant the morning after I was told the same thing the first consultant told me. I’ll know in a couple of weeks at a follow-up appointment. I’ll probably need a speech therapist because my voice is very hoarse and low after the procedure. However I’m optimistic as I’ve been throughout this. And if anyone is wondering, I am a none smoker.

  5. Well apart from the shed and a few hiccups, it all sounds very positive and you are on the road to recovery. Well done.

    From my wife’s experience after chemo, it does take a while to get back to “normal” (whatever that is). She went with swimming for exercise to build back up (it’s as gently as you want it to be and non impact etc etc). Within a year, she was back to a full 20 lengths and swim most days (that said it helps that we have 30deg all years round weather and a pool just up the road !)

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