Good and not so good news

Well friends here I am for the second time. My last attempt this morning, after I had checked it etc., decided to fly away into thin air...so I am now hoping that this will go in the right direction.
We have been having such wonderful weather these last three weeks here in Box, it is amazing to think we have actually had summer time this year.......

Well at the end of my last posting I was saying that Mary had a birthday coming up the following week, and as usual birthdays won't wait...So on Monday June 28th my friend Pam came over from Bath and took us out for lunch. we went to a new place in Chippenham a very nice pub where we had good attention and an excellent meal. Tuesday her Official 64th.birthday we went out for another lunch to the Chinese, again we went to a new place to us, it was very good although we didn't think it had as much atmosphere as the one we usually go to. Wednesday we didn't actually go out, Mary brought down a lovely piece of quiche for us. We have a new shop in the village that is serving sandwiches, tea coffee etc. one can either eat in or take away. by the taste of the quiche she should do very well. Thursday once again she was out for a lunch this time with some friends that she meets at a coffee morning....well come Friday it just didn't seem right for me to start cooking !! so out we went once more...So you can imagine we have had a good week and probably put on a few pounds to boot !!!

After that great week I am afraid things went rather downhill. You will have remembered that in my last posting I said that my dear Brother in Law John had jaundice and it was suspected that he might have Hepatitis, well, he was taken into hospital on Tuesday after it was decided he did not have hepatitis and they needed to do further tests...Unfortunately on Thursday we were told that he had cancer of the pancreas it is one of the cancers that is very difficult to detect and equally difficult to treat. At the moment he is waiting to have an external drain put in that would relieve the itch and the jaundice and once that has remained in for a couple of days they may be able to replace it with one internally, then we would expect he can come home. Meanwhile I drive Sarah to hospital twice a day, it is funny that neither of my sisters have ever learnt to drive. I love driving so it is a pleasure for me to be able to go into Bath.....just stop me I say ....when she feels I should be getting tired !
So there we are friends a letter of good and bad news. It would be nice if those of you believe in prayer could keep us in mind...
Always remember to Love one Another..

4th July

With love to you all for a happy peaceful perfect

lazy June days

Good Morning Friends, Sorry for delay in writing howev June has been a very quiet month.I hope that you like the new lay out. I was not happy with the Edinburgh picture that I had as my topper so thought that the June rose was much better....... On the 31st. May my friend Pam and of course Mary and I went to a wonderful craft fair. It was held in a beautiful old mansion house in a village which is actually quite near where I live but one that I had never heard of let alone visited...What a delight it was. When we drove in I found parking right in front of the house..good point...get out of car chair and all....STEPS..to entrance..oh oh..fear not a very nice young lass by the door, said no trouble, I will get someone to bring a ramp, and within a few mins a ramp was produced and it was with that welcome we entered and what a great craft show it was..very small..but such delightful things. Mary spent some money buying a few pieces of jewlery and I bought a magnificent Cockerel/hen that is a door stop actually and that will be a Christmas present for a friend who loves hens...as I do...it is a bit of a sacrifice to give it away !! We had a lovely cuppa and home made cake before starting back home. As it is an old mansion house there were steps in other areas and without us even asking a ramp magically appeared.. Such kindness without any fuss was greatly apprecated.. if you type in Cleeve House I think you may be able to view the house. ...
Otherwise the month as I say has been very quiet. Since we came home from Edinburgh by dear BIL John has been quite poorly. He has developed Jaundice that the hospital think is a form of Hepatitis ut as yet after about 6 different sets of blood tests nothing positve has turned up. It has bee a great worry as John is never ill and we all have come to depend on him so much. we just pray that the jaundice will go down soon and that he will be back to his usual bouncy self..
It is Mary's birthday this coming Tuesday so I expect we will go out for a meal a chinese I expect. We were in Bath yesterday and I got her a new purse that she admired, whilst we were looking at the purses I picked on up and opened it and found it full of notes ....yes about £35 I think...I said to the assistant about it and she was at first quite puzzled, then remembered someone had brought a purse back saying could she exchange it for a bigger one..and had...she thinks it must have been the lady so I hope she discovered her loss !!!
we have been blessed with the most wonderful weather this last week or so. I am just listning to the weather forecast and she tells me that today will be the hottest day of the year with temps up to 30+deg think that is around mid 80f which for us is hot !! I will have the fan on all day for sure. how blessed we all are. This afternoon I think there will be lots of BBQs burning and lots of parties and TV watching as England play Germany in South Africa... I am not much of a football fan but even I, I expect. will have the TV on in the background and will be shouting for England...but secretly wishing it could have been Scotland !!!
Remember during these lovely summer days to LOVE ONE ANOTHER

Edinurgh weekend...BP....

Hi Friends, How are you all this lovely sunny and dare I say it even warm day! over here in Wiltshire. I am glad to say that our trip up north to Edinburgh went well. We all had such a wonderful weekend. I met cousins that I had not seen for many years so it was lovely to catch up on their news. My sister Sarah and John had booked us all into a wonderful restaurant for lunch. It is called "the Kitchin" and has a wonderful young chef called Tom Kitchin. He has been on some of the BBC Food Programmes and in fact it was there that Sarah first saw him and decided it was a place that would serve interesting and exciting food. He did..it did... The area in Edinburgh where we stayed has been redeveloped out of all recognition to us. The area called Leith was always at the heart of the docks and you might guess as to what it was like, also it had long long streets full of Whisky Bonds. The Whisky has long been gone and these same buildings transformed into smart very up market shops, restaurants etc. They have built a lovely new building called Oceanterminal. It is from there one can now go on cruise ships and docked there permanently is the Royal Yacht Brittania where one can tour all the ship (that is the one that the Queen used before it was moth balled) We did not have time to do that but maybe another time we go north we can. we didn't get many photographs taken other than family ones but I will look some out sometime to share.
Now I might be going to be a bit political ! I don't usually say much on internation matters but I have become more and more disturbed about the what has been reported ...on both sides of the atlantic...about BP and the oil situation. So here goes !!.


BP was indeed called British Petroleum but this was when it was
a British company. Some 10 years or so it joined with an
American company called AMOCO and changed its name to BP. This
was because around 40% of the ownership was American. Of the
remaining shares, 40% are British and the remainder from other
countries including Russia. This means that BP is equally as
much American as it is British.

I would also ask you to think on this. The oil rig was owned by
an American company who moved to Switzerland to avoid taxes.
The company who ran the rig was a wholly owned American
company. BP only owns the site, so why is it their fault?

If you consider that the American companies involved in Torrey
Canyon, Amoco Cadiz, Piper Alpha and Exxon Valdez did all they
could to avoid their responsibilities, is it fair to berate a
company that did not actually cause the problem yet is still
committed to clearing up at whatever expense that which was
caused in their name?

I am not even going to think in detail about how the American
bosses behaved when thousands died at the American-owned
facility in Bhopal! You might like to note that the American
company Transocean has been in the Texan courts trying to limit
their liability. However, the Judge refused. BP has not tried to
limit their liability in any way.

I am not a fan of oil companies in general; but as a Christian,
false witness is just not right, and the way people have behaved
in your country is no less than that. Your president seems bent
on trying to destroy BP. Just what would that do?

If BP was to take Chapter 11 then it would be the people of
America who pay for the cleanup. Are the dividends that
important? They are to the hundreds of thousands of pensioners
whose income comes from these shares held by their pension
companies.

There is no doubt this is a disaster but muck slinging is not
the way to solve it. Working together is.

Love Sybil x


Always remember to Love one another.

Good Morning Friends,
well for sure I have never ever been sitting at my computer writing to you all at this time it is only 4.30am over here in the UK. I have just phoned over to Mary to wake her up as we are leaving for a short trip to Scotland around 6am... The reason being that it is my sister and brother in laws Golden Wedding tomorrow when they will have been married 50 years. At that time of course we lived in a small village near Edinburgh and although Sarah had left home long before that (she was a Nannie and traveled all over Europe) she had ended up in Bath where she met John and so of course came home to get married. It was a great day I remember as I was one of the two bridesmaids actually it turned out to be the hottest day of the year...and for Scotland that was a big thing especially as a lot of the guests were not exactly dressed for summer heat !! And so we all return home for the weekend. Tomorrow we are having a special lunch with friends and a few cousins. We are all looking forward to It very much. It will be interesting I think for Beth's (my niece) husband Max as he has yet to go up to Scotland so Beth is going to be showing him our old home and the haunts she and her sister went to on their visit up to Grannie and Papa's. Our visit will also be touched with sadness as we visit Arthurs Seat (you may remember I told you that my God daughter asked that her ashes be taken there) We will be visiting Arthurs seet on Saturday and it will be exactly 2 years since that awful day of her death...
The last time I wrote we were just back from our cruise and expecting our great friends from NZ. They duly arrived and we had a wonderful few days with them much to short a visit but we managed to pack quite a lot into these few days. Including a visit to a beautiful garden quite near here that is gardened is that a word!!..by a coulee well know as the Naked Gardeners!! yes they garden mainly in the nude !! my friend said "what even in the rose bushes" LOL fortunately/unfortunately we did not see them at work the day we went...well I did see Mr. but he had a T shirt on and a thong !!... We were also able to take them so see other friends they had made some years ago in a place called Blanford Forum which is quite near Salisbury. Salisbury is famous for having the Cathedral with the highest steeple in Britian.
After Bob and Mary left it gave Mary and I time to come down to earth for a week or so and now we are away again...Till we get back look after one another and always remember to say I LOVE YOU to all your loved ones and friends.. Take Care xx

Photographs of our cruise..

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Cruise ships, holidays

Hello Friends, At last I am getting down to writing after our travels on the cruise ship Enchantment of the Seas..to the Caribbean. We left the UK on a cold frosty morning and after a very good flight to New York and onward to Norfolk Virginia we were basking in +70 deg. We had such a great time on the cruise..the sea was such a beautiful colour..ice blue through to the dark indigo and every shade in between...and on the various Islands the sands were so white ..almost too white as we had to keep our eyes half closed !! we had such a wonderful holiday. The ship was beautiful much bigger than I could have imagined, we were thankful to have met a very kind couple whilst waiting to have our passports examined (the wife had a British passport although she has lived in Virginia for 31 years with Skip her husband) we were in a separate queue...They had been cruising before so showed us the way and kept looking after us. we were amazed with our stateroom...as the cabins are called!!...it was very large and had every convenience for the wheelchair the shower room was best I have EVER had and I have stayed in an awful lot of hotels etc... There was so much to do on board that there was never a dull moment. As for the food....well out of this world would be the description...everything one could ever wish for and more was to be had and we chose to use the restaurant where we were served at every meal and the waiters were just XXXXXXXXXXXXX I could have run away with one or two of them !!! The Captain was to die for...such a young man to be in charge of such a large ship. We had an official photo taken with him at the Captains champagne reception...no less !! but I will enclose one now that was taken a bit later when he was around on the ship deck a new friend Karen just went up and asked him to come and be photographed with us !! What I mean to say was that once I am organised I will do a smilebox and you will see our handsome captain !! I still have not discovered how to put photographs in between the paragraphs. anyway as you can guess I didn't have much time to miss you all, although I did mention one or two of you to my new found friends. The family and friends here all had asked that we bring some warm sunshine home with us and I am glad to say that we have been sucessful in doing just that, we have had a very good week since we got home on Sunday just a few hours ahead of Heathrow Airport being closed due to the volcanic ash !!



Well think I will go now, it has been a mad mad week since we got back Sunday afternoon. Our friends Bob and Mary arrived Monday at 10.20am from New Zealand they leave us again on Saturday but it has been great having them but still trying to gather my wits as they say !! so till next time don't forget to
LOVE ONE ANOTHER. xx