I'm envying the northern hemisphere folk. There you are revelling in summer and I am looking out the window to a grey sky and yes, it is raining again. Not the drought-breaking rain everyone wants, this is just a thin line of cloud clinging to the coastal fringe. The main water catchment for this area is about 30kms inland and the rain is just not happening there. Luckily today it is just the tiny drops on roof tops, not torrential rain and gale force winds, that is predicted again for Sunday.

I spent part of yesterday shovelling gravel for my driveway. During a heavy storm my driveway gravel rolls away and settles on the far corner where our road bends. My job on the next dry day is to take bucket and shovel and go down and bring it back home. I do it with some reluctance each time. I would love to just ring and order a truckload of the stuff and a roller to pound it down flat, but with my luck the storm the following day would just wash it back down again. Thankfully I am a roadmender's daughter, still keeping up the family traditions.

The other half of Thursday was another visit to the neurologist, this time to okay Ray's Reminyl. It is on the Public Health Benefit Scheme now which means I can access it for a low price but the referral has to come from a neurologist not our regular doctor. He is going to start the process for me and gave Ray two more weeks samples to tide him over. Ray seems much more alert since he began taking it.

Since my birthday my email has gone quiet. I have a regular group of friends I correspond with this way but I guess like me they are just keeping the routine going and not doing anything new and exciting so there is nothing to write about, just a few bits and pieces to forward . So checking the mail takes just a few minutes. Today's mail for me included an email from an older couple telling me of their coughs and colds and another from a male friend telling me he had just been in day surgery for an ingrown toenail. Trivial, you think? Not really, just light relief as he has recently had a brush with prostate cancer. And the husband of the older couple is on kidney dialysis three days a week so a cold has to be treated as serious. Life is full of hazards for the unwary.

Ray has just come home from Scallywags, week 2. He seems okay with going there, had "just a talk with the blokes there" today. I went off to do the week's shopping as that hadn't happened this week. With the torrential rain on Wednesday and driveway repairs yesterday I feel as if I missed out on a day somewhere. So shopping had to be done in my "time off". And as a lot of caregivers will tell you, shopping alone is a lot faster! Trev came too which meant he took the groceries back to the car, he got rewarded with some Chinese takeout.

This is the Queen's Birthday long weekend. Of course it is not really her birthday as she was 80 in April. But this is when we celebrate her birthday. As a winter holiday it is very low key. Some lucky people go to the snow fields, which this year do have some natural snow, and some man-made snow on the groomed areas. When the kids were young we would sometimes do a winter camp-out or go visit friends, usually come back to the coast when we lived inland. So it was a time for catching up with the parents, some friends, just talking, drinking hot drinks in front of someone else's fireplace. This year Ray and I will stay in, read, watch videos, just pass the time if it is all as wet and cold as it is today.

Next week is shaping up as equally exciting. A visit from the community nurse on Tuesday to discuss "continence issues".. Who said life lacks excitement?