Strawberries in December

The strawberries in the garden have been determined to produce fruit again since June when the last lot finished, I trimmed them off earlier in the year but now they are trying to grow again.... dont they know its December???

With the mild weather I could manage with the boiler staggering on but the time came to bite the bullet and get the boiler and system replaced, men arrived, house looked like a car boot sale, men left boiler working is the upshot (that and being £3600 poorer) but I know I wont need to worry about it again in the future,the heating has always been dodgy but now its good as new which, quite frankly, is a great relief.

  I've been hiding something from Al, the bathroom, Dunc started on it way back in about 2010 took up the floor, bought the tiles, and basically lost interest in it for a few years. He started on it again when he was getting ill in 2013 without making a lot of progress. Finally I managed to convince him to get someone in to do it but the day the plumber came Dunc put all the floor down and wouldnt let the guy take them up so that came to nothing!! Later on, another plumber had a look and gave an astronomical quote, finally I had a local firm come in to quote and phoned them a month later but never heard anything else from them even though I see the van drive past the house a couple of times a week

Soo, with plumbers thin on the ground I decided to do it myself, You Tube videos watched and the lovely chaps from Screwfix in town translating my requests into actual products I set to determined to make Al proud of me that I could dig deep and get something done.
As you can see fitting a bathroom from scratch is not a simple job, its been a bit of a nightmare and its still not finished but with each new task I can see the bathroom taking shape .... I hope he likes it, I am going to have a TA DA moment when he gets back from uni

With all that hard work and a nightmare of an endoscopy for my heartburn I definitely need a holiday!
..........go on you knew that was coming didnt you ???

Al and I are off to Honolulu for Christmas, more of a party island than the big island last year but I dont think we will be lacking in things to do...AND I have bought the Paxo this year so we dont have to eat what our American cousins consider to be stuffing!