A Happy Bunny

Our wee rabbit, Spot, has been living inside for the past few months. He's been very poorly, but my brother has diligently nursed him back to health. However, he has been getting a bit stir-crazy at having to stay inside. Rabbits can be forgiven for failing to comprehend weather forecasts given in human, I submit. Anyway, today it has been rather sunny, if still a bit chilly. So twice I took him outside. We have a small run in the garden, and I sat with him for c.20 minutes before I had to go to work, and, after I returned from work, c.45 minutes. He had a lovely time, digging for roots, eating some dandelion leaves, and standing on bits of me in an effort to find out why his path was obstructed. The answer to that last part is that I'm fat, and my brother, who usually takes him out there, is thin. :D Here he is - the bunny, not the brother:

Brown Teaser Explained!

So what was I playing at by posting a picture of a brown car on a brown board? I was making a model railway for my Dad's birthday. I'm too technologically inept to have worked out how on Earth to wire it up properly, though I spent several hours in failed attempts, reading online tutorials and watching a few Youtube videos. It all seemed perfectly simple. It wasn't. The construction was much easier. I made an initial error by applying green grass onto bare brown-painted board, and expecting it to look like grass, but after that everything went swimmingly. The board is deliberately a hodgepodge of different elements. There are some plastic buildings from Granddad's old layout in Stockport, a few buildings I've assembled and painted just for this, several card structures that I ransacked Dad's old layout for, and figures I've painted recently with acrylics, and ones painted in the 1960s with Humbrol. In short, a mixture of wargaming and model railway terrain, miniatures, kits and paints was employed.

He used to have a huge layout that took up most of the attic. Several years ago he removed it to transfer a large quantity of books onto shelves up there, and subsequently I carved out a little wargaming empire, too. I deliberately set up the tunnel to hide the disappearance of the track, that way, if he chooses, we can expand the board with another 4' by 4' section. Anyway, that is what I was up to. He seems pleased with it, and we're all happy I managed to keep it under my hat! Enjoy the pictures. A couple show the construction process in the attic, and then its current location downstairs.

My folks' anniversary

This was just the other day. We had a load of relatives, two girlfriends and a friend round. You might correctly surmise from the sheer number of people that we're Catholic. This is not the whole family by any means! This is mainly Mum's side of the family. Dad's side (being Anglican) is far less numerous. It was rather a nice day. Mum had laid on lashings of food, and the weather behaved itself until about 7pm, letting us all sit and chat on the lawn. We had almost enough chairs for everyone, which surprised me, for one! Everyone had a nice time, and there was a game of hide-and-seek played by some of the younger folk, which they all enjoyed immensely. I participated in that just so far as to mislead hunters into heading in the wrong direction, "She went thataway!"