Extra Long Weekend

Debbie's not been feeling well over the last few days but she's struggled on through the long weekend and Lollypop had 'the' operation on Friday morning, we were amazed that after dropping him off at 8.30am, we were able to pick him up again at 2pm. He was very pleased to see us but still heavily sedated and he hardly moved at all until late evening when he managed to wander around a little.

While Lolly was at the vets, we went out and bought some fish for the new aquarium, first half a dozen as planned, tiny little high fin platys, then we went on to another place for a look round and ended up with a couple more to keep them company.

On Saturday, Lolly was back to normal, bounding about like an idiot at 7am wanting to go outside lol. We stayed in all morning to make sure he was OK and Yorkshire Water were supposed to be coming out to sort out our pressure problem. They never turned up and a quick phone call revealed that they had mistakenly put us down for tomorrow. Not very chuffed and in need of a lift so we headed over to a bigger aquatic centre about 15 miles away. They had a huge selection of all the favourites and a few more we'd never heard off, including bumble bee gobies which we think look fantastic. We came back from there with a few more fish to add to our growing aquarium population.

On Sunday, the guy turned up to sort out the water as promised and just turning the mains stop tap on and off flushed out the problem, what ever it was. We now have running rather than trickling water once again.

We took Dad out for dinner on later on at a new place that's just been built along side the 'yet to be built' by-pass near Dodworth, Barnsley. It was lovely and the carvary was great, as was the minty ice-cream for afters! We just chilled for the rest of the afternoon and evening with Debbie really not feeling too good.

Yesterday we went garden tool shopping and purchased, more tree trimming tools, a stretchy hosepipe, a rake and a spade with a view to getting to work on the garden again during the afternoon. But before that, we called in at a local aquarium centre that Dad has mentioned, it was only advertised on yell.com as a koi carp dealer so we hadn't considered this place but it turns out they've got a decent selection of tropical fish and the couple running the place appeared to be committed to the welfare of the fish. Obviously we couldn't leave without buying anything and supporting our local dealer so more fish headed some with us.

The number off fish in the aquarium now is shall we say, more than there should be at this stage according to the textbooks but we are monitoring everything closely and changing a little water frequently to make sure they all get through the next few weeks.

Still not feeling very well, Debbie slept for most of the afternoon while I got to working on cutting down the branches in to smaller pieces for taking to the tip. After tea, Debbie, determined not to be left out, joined me outside to rip out more of the ivy from the flower beds, just spending half an hour on it before calling it a day. Unfortunately, Debbie felt even worse later and was up all night being sick, it must be some king of stomach bug. Anyway I've insisted she stays at home today, curled up on the sofa trying to count how many fish there are now in the aquarium!

Paul