This really happened and it happened in a small village nearly 40 miles from the centre where the main community facilities were to be found.

A retired midwife had an elderly cat that developed a problem with his eye. She travelled the forty miles distance from her home with her pet cat to see the vet where, upon examination it was decided that the cat required an operation to his eye. She left the cat at the vetinerary practice and travelled the forty miles back home.

A day later the lady went to collect her post-operative pet and was advised by the vet that his stitches would need to be removed in about ten days. The veterinarian advised her not travel all that way, to return to the practice for the removal of the stitches, but suggested she asked her local district nurse to remove the cat's stitches. The lady was taken aback by the suggestion (I would have been too). She said nothing but thought the vet could not be serious.

However, a day or so later she saw the district nurse out and about on her rounds in the village and stopped the nurse to ask if she would or could take out the cat's stitches. "Oh yes, I do it all the time." she replied, "Just tell me when you're ready and I'll come and do it. She did, free of charge!

The moment food is mentioned in its various guises, lunch, dinner, tea, supper, a banquet, jam spread and Marmite (Veggiemite for our antipodean friends), a variety of anti food advertisements wrap themselves around the blog and more advertisers are invited to join.

The main wraps that have attached themselves to my last blog (Light Lunch Surprise) are Weight Watchers online and Fresh Food Diets Direct.

An ordinary, inoffensive discussion about food, even a light lunch, jounces into being, 'your_friendly_eat_better_and_lighter_still.org'

An epicurean delight should provide even more interesting advertisements in the future. All interesting ideas are welcome!

Tuesday the 14th of February is not only Valentines' Day but the birthday of my sister-in-law, and it is the week in which a friend and hubby have birthdays too.

I had not even got to sit down at our table when she gave me a bag saying, "This is a little something for you as a thank you for all the arrangements for special dinners and film outings you have made. I just wanted to give you a little something to show my appreciation." Apart from "thank you," what could I say... It was totally unexpected and such a lovely thought and gesture. I was deeply moved, and said so.

Isn't it amazing and exciting, more finds in the Valley of the Kings in Egypt - mummies 3000 years old. I await with baited breath to hear more about the finds.

When in St Petersburg about 3 years ago, I went to the Hermitage - a fantastic place worth devoting at least a day or more, for a visit- and was shown the sarcophogus of someone who had been found in the Mountains that border China. The mummy and contents were amazingly preserved and so was the demountable wooden carriage that the great personage had for his travels. It had been re-constructed for display, it was like a wooden meccano construct, and really was wonderful to see how it had been manufactured and how it would have been used. Part of a horse skeleton was there as well. All of this was older than the mummies on display in the Egyptian hall.

Where I live, we have well-preserved cairns that have been carbon-dated to be over 5,000 years old (2,000 older than the Pyramids etc) but I guess that fades into insignifance because there haven't been any interesting bodies found with them.

"All these digital image software software applications are very similar" said the lecturer at my new night class, adding "what we do here in class will be easily translatable to the programmes you are using at home."

Having fiddled around with a different layout, pop up menus that interfered with viewing the canvas, that were best kicked off the screen, I began to feel totally confused. Okay, it is my first class, some of the tools in use were not the same as mine with different names, they were just totally different.

I really do not have a paintbrush tube; or was it a tube with a paintbrush? It gave access to some fun goodies that I could resize and stretch out, which apparently, could also be useful for card making and graphic fun.

Red-eye disappeared with the click of a button; zooming in on the pixels gave us an opportunity to use our digital brushes and colour palettes; we were able to decide on the size and angle of brush. Yes,there was some familiarity there though I shall have to explore my software for angled brush heads. I can't for the life me understand their usefulness, if any, angling left or right.

We then played with some images; an uninteresting faded sky would have benefited from a variation in colour. My area of contrast needed to be 'smudged in'; oh dear, no smudge tool nor anything that appeared to be like one. "I'm sure this package has something that does the same job," said my hapless tutor, unable to find anything.

Cloning was good fun and different again to my application. I have yet to find out if that is translatable in any way other than the method I have used at home. My meadow became over-populated with lambs because the ewes were in a corner of the frame, rear ends to the fore and heads missing. There was no point cloning headless, half-bodied rear ends.

I shall continue to wrestle with the differences and hope that at the end of the eight weeks, I shall understand more of the jargon, which should be translatable, and will not bungle manipulating my own digital pictures.

On Sunday we saw our first newborn lambs taking their first tentative steps with their mums out to the fields, at the farm behind where we live. Ah spring is just around the corner! Wrong, it isn't.

Today, Wednesday, the winds became fierce and Arctic, there was sleet that turned into watery snow and then hailstones. By afternoon there were breaks in the grey skies and some fluffy white clouds with backgrounds of blue that became visible. The sun beamed down for a short while. I decided to walk to the post office, about 3/4 mile from the house. As I started out, I got pelted with hailstones and boy, did they hurt. Truthfully, I hesitated, thought about my four wheels parked in the drive. However, "I am made of sterner stuff", I told myself, I set my chin into my scarf and battled onward.

My little burnt orange coloured pom-pom on my knitted peaked hat must have looked quite cute bobbling and bouncing in the wind on top of my head. That is probably all you would have noticed, as my head was down, buried as much as possible into my scarf, in an attempt to protect my face from the fierce elements.

This is a month for birthdays, the youngest being aged 6. I won't embarrass the others at the upper end of the scale.

My sister-in-law is the first one of the month and is a Valentine's baby; we focus on the birthday. I have a large book for her which will take some concentrated reading; that shouldn't be a problem as she is a keen reader. I don't normally buy books for people, but the one chosen is a big hitter and I thought I'd risk it. There are one or two other gift items to join the book.

A good friend has a birthday two days later; She's into arts and craft, gardening and croft farming. I found a lovely large box of threads and universal sewing machine accessories. I had put by some delightful sets of chopsticks in raffia cases as well. However, I am going to look at a couple of pieces of handmade pottery tomorow from a range I know she likes, then decide if the chopsticks set off the pottery.

The youngest one was relatively easy, I found just the thing to annoy her parents when I was on my travels in December 2005 - a bubble blower and all the bubbles come out of a big box that requires a very strong bubbling solution.

Hubby is next: for the first time ever, I have been low on ideas. I have booked for us to go out for a meal with a couple of friends, but that is nearly a week before the birthday so I have to dream up something for the day itself. I have one or two token items and tonight I got some inspiration online and ordered a large road atlas to replace the tiddly little thing that he has in the car. The road atlas he has is one of those with a spiral spine which cuts through the very bit of road you want to travel through, every time, without fail. Even he has some expletive moments with it. It has got to go! Anyway, it is more than three years old. As a last resort, I think I shall have to consider one of the standard standby items - a thermal vest. Now how exciting is that...

Good grief! I actually enjoyed being in a leisure pool yesterday, being inducted into aqua fitness techniques. It was a compact pool, pleasantly warm and well organised by the staff. They are employed by their community who have taken responsibility for the running of the pool. It is the only leisure meeting place for the local children and teenagers. The community action saved it from closure and it is now running at a small profit.

The only drawback is the 72 miles round trip on really twisty, winding roads, many miles of which are single track with passing places, that in the dark are not the easiest to negotiate. In the winter there are the problems of additional difficult road conditions. Public transport is not an option for visiting the leisure pool. The only weekday public transport is a school bus and a postbus that run at specific times, usually once a day in each direction, and they would not link in with the opening and programme times of this delightful leisure pool.

My local pool is council run and because the staff will not be paid the rate for the specialist tasks that they are qualified to offer, just for the time they are actually undertaking them, maybe three or four hours a week, we do not have such things as aquarobics or other aqua health classes anymore. There is one class on offer if you are expecting a baby, but the insurance, they say, does not cover ladies if they are not!

My one and only local travel agent did not show any interest last week in my travel request. On Monday this week he admitted he hadn't done anything about it. I probably now know why...

I spent hours getting boggle-eyed pouring over umpteen internet travel sites to find comfortable, direct travel arrangement from Scotland. It was a nightmare! I gave up. I have decided that my eight day break in May will have to include a flight from London. (For eight days read ten days because I have to add a day either end to travel to various hopping off points.)

Through-flight arrangements with BA were awful. You might be able to get to the wrong airport and bus yourself (time permitting) to the right one. The flight going to the right airport was at the wrong time, and so on. There was no choice for the return leg, wrong airport or nothing! Delays are an endemic problem and I have not so fond memories of circling in stormy skies over Heathrow in 2005,(big dipper stuff), to end up 6 hours late landing on terra firma.

Eventually, I found a direct flight from London to my destination, which takes about 6 hours outward and ditto return bound, instead of the 10-14 hours that some of the others advertised with nightowl departures and panda-eyed morning arrivals. My flight has sociable arrival and departure times. I like a bit of comfort at my stage of life. And you know what, in addition, not only do I have a decent journey itinerary, made up by yours truly, I have two nights accommodation included in London (for my outward and return journeys) all at a substantially lower cost than the purchase of just an inconvenient so-called through flight.

Isn't it pleasant to have a story with a happy ending... so far.D