Jubilations

Shame about the weather, & the poor standard of coverage by the BBC (it's hard to believe that their OBs used to be considered the best in the World), but we had a good day regardless.
This town really seems to do things properly, & the historic buildings provide a perfect backdrop for the festivities (luckily the funfair was tucked away in a car park); we went to the garden festival in town, saw the Morris Dancers, the stilt walkers, the mayor, the town crier, & I indulged in some garden retail therapy - in fact, I bought so many plants that I had them in the footwell of my scooter, in the basket, hanging off the handlebars, & even one on my lap! Oh, & hubby had his arms lengthened by the bags he carried home for me; still, I think it was very considerate of me to ensure that he was evenly balanced by having a large plant in either hand ;-)

Last week we finally sold my old scooter, which I replaced a year or more ago with one with a far more comfortable seat; initially we were going to scrap the old scooter, then we thought we may as well keep it for spares, & then when we moved here we decided that it would be my 'garden scooter'. However, when we had our Grand Shed Turn-out, we realised that it was taking up valuable storage space - hubby also realised that it was in far better condition than we'd remembered, & so we decided to sell it; looking at others being advertised, it seemed to be worth far more than we'd originally thought, & after a few time-wasters & non-showers, a lady contacted me last week & said it was exactly what she wanted. When they came along, she didn't quibble over the price, didn't even want to try it, but just handed over the money. Of course this was too good to be true .... the scooter was in our conservatory, & so hubby offered to drive it out, down the ramp, & round to the front of the bungalow for them; but, he only got as far as the bottom of the ramp before - in a real Victor Meldrew "I don't believe it" moment - it conked out! I feel that it's a real failing on mobility scooters that you literally get no warning when the batteries are about to die; they just do. And, even though hubby had regularly charged them & put them through their paces, this was the day that they decided they'd had enough.
Actually, frustrating as it was at the time (we had Plans for that money), I'm glad they failed then rather than the following day, as I'd have hated to be thought of as having tried to cheat the (very nice) lady who wanted to buy it. I'm not sure which of us was more disappointed, but in the end she decided to buy it regardless, & we deducted the cost of new batteries from the price; scooter batteries are a scandalous price, meaning that we ended up with very little money at the end of the day (but at least without the bother of scrapping it, which is what we'd have had to do otherwise), & certainly not enough money to make a real difference; so instead we decided to just have some fun with it; I certainly had great fun frittering my half today on plants! And I've heard from the scooter's new owner: she has now bought new batteries, & is thoroughly enjoying her new-found freedom. So that's two of us happy; not so sure about hubby though, as he doesn't seem to be relishing the prospect of the holes he's going to have to dig for all those new plants: he didn't sound at all sorry this evening when he commented on the weather, & remarked that it would probably be too wet to do any gardening for the rest of this week!