A Balmy Six Degrees

As Spring creeps ever nearer...we hope, it has been pretty cold this week. The temperatures have been above zero but the wind has been biting. As I am sitting here typing this though it is supposedly 6 degrees outside and the sun is shining...I can also hear my two feuding squirrels squeaking at each other relentlessly...Yes two. I thought I only had one visiting but it turns out there are two of them and they really don't like each other. They are continuing to collect food from the garden and annoy Shakespeare in the process. They are far to stealth-like for me to capture them with my camera as yet but who knows if they stick around and get more friendly then just maybe I might be able to snap them.

Rob and I actually attended camera club this week for the first time in a very long time. Sadly the content of the meeting wasn't enough to hold my attention past coffee break and we sloped off early. It was nice to catch up with a few folk that I haven't seen in a long time.

Friday night Anne and Smiffy came over with a Chinese. It's the first time I have seen Anne since before our holiday and my illness, so she also had a wad of birthday presents with her, all of which I loved and were so me!

We did some marathon TV watching, including Derek (which was a big hit even though we had to get the tissues out, and in my opinion is one of the best programmes to be shown on TV in a very long time). To lighten the mood afterwards we introduced her to Peter Kay live. Definitely another winner!!

One thing became apparent on Friday night, Shakespeare cannot handle visitors. Of late he has been so calm and pretty good around the house, but as soon as Smiffy and Anne arrived he was all over the place and he continued to mis-behave all night. He seems to get over excited and goes into jumping, climbing, destroying mode.

Health wise it's been a mixed bag for me this week. My energy levels are still pretty low and I keep getting this weird shortness of breath, like a panic attack and I feel like I am suffocating. I think I may have to go back to the doctor about this as it is somewhat disconcerting. It's been 24 days since my last proper cigarette. At the club on Wednesday night I went outside with Rachel as she was going to have a cigarette. I told her I wasn't smoking but I would come out so I could smell hers. I thought this would be a really good test for me and I also thought that her cigarette was going smell really good....It didn't, it smelled terrible. I had a packet of cigarettes in my bag and handed them to her as I knew I wasn't going to smoke them.

It's still early days and I still think I am in recovery from my illness, but it may just have turned me off the cigs for life.

Here are some more images from our trip away:

Palm Trees, Jamaica

Colours of the Caribbean

Mahogany Bay, Roatan Island

Dunns River Falls, Jamaica