Saturday

After the ride-on mower lessons on Thursday (and the stress of learning how to work it)  I needed an ordinary day on Friday.  (I discovered that googling questions about ride-on mowers is a bit like consulting Dr Google on personal health problems - you get told the worst case scenarios if you describe even a low case scenario.    Fortunately my brother has been ringing me to check I am getting on ok and this morning I concluded it is much better to ask him and forget about googling, (I didn't admit to him I had been googling as I was feeling a bit like a wimp about the whole thing anyway and didn't want to tell him!))  Being a farmer he tends to think in terms of the 100 acre field and the proper way to turn, do the headlands etc. etc. and I am thinking about nothing more than how to get the machine out of the shed in reverse gear.

There have been a few other things going on this week which were a bit concerning but I decided to engage some positive thinking to see me through.  My brother R (brother referred to above) who was with me at the time was a bit sceptical about me engaging only positive thinking to solve a property problem but I know from my experience that it can work.  And it did.   I also have the concern about the holiday going ahead but in the grander scale of things it is nothing.  Of course it would be disappointing if it is called off but lots of other things come first in life before holidays, but see penultimate paragraph. 

So back to my ordinary day on Friday.  It was, naturally,  a trip to the cinema to see Mother's Pride which is a heart-warming story of good folk over-coming adversity and the rich guy and the good folk winning in the end.   Mother's Pride makes me think of a loaf of bread because it is a brand  here although I haven't seen it in the supermarket for a long time.  However, in the film Mother's Pride is the name given to a beer brewed by the struggling pub in its own micro-brewery run by Martin Clunes and his sons, a granddaughter and eventually many village friends.  I had to have the handkerchief out a few times.    It made for a nice afternoon out, it is a bit limp but it was not toxic or violent or anything,  on a  disappointingly grey, very chilly day.

While I was out I received an email from the travel company giving reassurance that Azerbaijan is safe at the moment for travellers and they are keeping an eye on it and will notifiy if anything changes.  In the meantime they said to get on with obtaining my visa.   It takes the pressure off me always checking and I will leave it to them. 

This morning it is again very cold and grey here.  I have been out for the newspaper and some eggs which I forgot when I shopped during the week.  I noticed that they were queuing for petrol at the Shell garage.  I don't know if it was my imagination or what but people seemed to be shopping in a bit of a manic way.  I grabbed a meat pie for midweek as my token gesture to having some supplies in hand.  I also bought a tin of sardines and as an after thought, a loaf of bread.  That was my manic panic.