The mother-in-law

I have changed my mind on this article so many times, should I, shouldn't I, but I have decided to go ahead because Gwen deserves a mention.

Sadly in the early hours of Sunday 23rd January 2011, Lynette's Mum passed away, the very day that Lynette was flying back to the UK to look after her after her stay in hospital.

Earlier in the week, it was said that she could possibly be coming out of hospital at the weekend and therefore Lynette arranged the flight to be there to look after her at home.

However, during the week things took a turn for the worse and on Saturday we were told that it was unlikely that she would get through the weekend. Try as we might, we were unable to get out of Portugal back to the UK as flights are not available everyday during the winter months.

Elsie Gwendoline Middleton(Gwen) was 78 and I can honestly say that over the 40 years that I have known her, we never had a cross word. Well, thats a slight fib, there was one, when Lynette and I had locked all the doors in the house because we were doing something that we shouldn't have been doing before we were married and the cleaner couldn’t get in.
The cleaner then telephoned Gwen and bubbled us, spiteful little cleaning lady. Gwen knew exactly what was happening and was not best pleased. I've certainly had more cross words with my wife than I have had with the mother-in-law.

God Bless Mum
Love from Mr Whittaker (that's what she always called me).

Sunny days are here again

This is more like it, the weather has been fantastic for the past week by reaching to low 20's with more sunshine on the way.

It was nice to be outside in the garden in shorts and tee-shirt for the past few days in glorious sunshine doing loads of digging, moving plants and general gardening stuff. We even had time for a round of golf last week, again in glorious sunshine, nicely togged out out in my best Nike polo shirt and shorts that Santa brought for me, bostin'.

Buttons the missing kitten showed up this weekend, she was skulking very gingerly around the edge of the garden, moving from hedge bottom to hedge bottom. She wouldn't come anywhere near us, or the other cats, I think that the rest of her family have sent her to Lisbon.

One of our kittens has gone missing

Buttons, the good looking she cat has not been around for food for the past 4 days and it looks like she could have found a boy friend. Unfortunately, Buttons was the only cat that we never managed to catch and to have neutered. As she is now about 9 months old, she could have been seen to by another method, if you get my drift. She'll probably be back with another brude some time in the next few months.

Happy New Year

Well that's it for another year, as usual I have eaten to much turkey and drunk too much of everything.
I do wish Asda & Tesco's and all the rest of the supermarkets wouldn't put tins of Quality Street on special offer at this time of year, still we are down to the last 3 tins.
I hope you all had as good a New Year as we did here in Portugal, even though all the local councils here have been ordered to cut back there expenditure and therefore the New Years fireworks. Lagos still managed to put on a good show, the night was super clear and we were able to see across the bay and enjoy Alvor's fireworks also.
Mrs Lynette managed to lose her camera at the very restaurant that she lost a bracelet at a few years ago, only this time the camera has turned up and we have to collect it later this week.
I personally managed to break a tooth just before Christmas and then another one between Christmas and New Year, it was those bloody chocolate caramels in the Quality Street. That means they weren’t so cheap after all, now that I'll be getting a 100 Euro dentist bill to fix them, priceless.