Arrived in Chester and was doing brilliantly on a tenner till ten minutes before the coach home arrived at the stop. I thought that I would just have a walk round Habitat. Bad move. Came out with a new kitchen bin as the swing lid on the cheap that I was using kept falling off. So £25 later I have a baby galvanised dustbin with a lid that you lift up and a study metal ring to hold the bag in place. Takes the same sized bags so that is good.  Meet dusty bin - a very nice taste dusty bin I say.

The bus to Chester leaves at 7.10am and I need to be out of the house before 6.50am to catch it. Now why did I want to go to Chester? Oh for a day out in a nice place. Won't see too much of the scenery there and back though in the darkness will we?

At least the clocks go back overnight so there is time to catch up with the sleep tomorrow.   Could do with it today - the wild weed killing on the allotment is real sweat shop labour.  But with the delivery yesterday it was a case of  going down and doing some work anyway.

Note to self: get some more wild bird food. There's a whole family of sparrows, two big fat thrushes, the robin and the blackbird hoovering up the offerings - and a mouse living in the wood pile.  Surprising who you see when they get used to you being there.

I'm a traffic island in shape and could do with some weight off. No I don't think I want to pay to go to a slimming club at the moment. So here are the first suggestions for myself.

Less butter on the bread. Fewer cheese sandwiches. Perhaps I could get out of the habit of sandwiches altogether? That would cut down the bread consumption. But it should not be replaced by savoury biscuits instead!!

I'm afraid that the chocolate biscuits will have to go - when I have eaten the last five. Oh these are not the chocolate digestive type biscuits - more the chocolate covered sandwich bars with cream in the middle. Also the weekly cream tea at lunch time on college Thursdays can go and be replaced by something sensible like a bowl of soup.

Then there is the small matter of not sitting down all day when I am not going down to the allotment. That means regular daily exercise even if it is raining, snowing or blowing a gale. The trouble is that in a downstairs flat you can't run up and down stairs five times a day

Finally I shall have to take up sensible cooking.  Nothing fried - not that can remember when I last did a fry up of anything. I feel a consultation of the cook book coming - have plenty of menus for one and lots which can be cut down to fit one only.  Not having a freeze box in the fridge gets me away from keeping ice cream and I've no plans for any Christmas meals out and about.  Oooh but the odd pizzas I have when I am out - now should they go?

Right having admitted to the world that I am going to see if I can slim - you had all better watch this space

Met up with a school friend in Newcastle today and as often happens we dropped into the Laing Gallery. The BP Portrait Award collection is showing there and the actual winner stands out even amongst the selection of brilliant paintings.  I'm glad that I didn't have to pick second and third places though. Tough calls. No matter what your taste in art, this show is definitely worth a visit. I'll file the winner amongst the pleasures that I have seen like the Constables on show in Edinburgh. Yes I'm traditional. Yes friend and myself have been to see modern art installations at the Baltic. No I didn't have time to get into the Andy Warhol exhibition during the Edinburgh Festival much as I would like to have done. I admit that a lot of the art that I admire is now done by camera and touched up on the computer. But to me that still ranks as art.

At college I have to create a website for one course to get the certificate. Well you have to put a website somewhere. Luckily I had kept an old domain name from the days when I worked and used a site to advertise myself. The company holding the domain is offering a cheap hosting package so I have stumped up some money. But hey ho - blogs are free and easy at the moment.  But if I want the certificate I suppose I have to do what the course requires.

Anyway - you can watch developments at www.christinehewitt.co.uk
This is just the first attempt and no doubt the tutor will have ideas and there are things that to do I haven't learnt that can improve things.

It's a "council flat" with kitchen/sitting room, bedroom, bathroom and a tiny connection hall. Strictly we are managed by the housing association that bought all the local social housing from the council in 1997. But people seem to be stuck in the rut of it's a "council flat" and don't understand the modern polite term "social housing". Whatever - you know what we mean now.

The housing officer is new but that is irrelevent as I would have said the same to the previous one. The association has been good about repairs so far as the budget allows but there are far too many for any acceptable property over three years. I suppose I should have known coming in to no carpets at all and being given the maximum allowance for decorating.

You walk in through the front door straight into the kitchen area. The joists under this area rotted due to a pile of soil left in the void underneath the floor being left piled against them over many years. When the kitchen units dropped a couple of inches last summer the repair was done. A new front door went in at the same time as it was no more expensive in the long run than repairing the old one which was dire. The cement doorstep had been cracked since I moved in and also filled around the edges with polystyrene where it hadn't fitted for years. That got replaced with a batch of cement when the joists were mended.

One of the carpenters found some offcuts from old kitchen units elsewhere and patched up the corner cupboard around the old gas pipe and other pipes to stop the slugs coming up from the cellar and rioting round the kitchen/sitting area overnight recently. Now that's better - no getting up to clean up after the little little horrors every morning.

When I moved in there were no skirting boards around the back door or safety railings round the steps (no idea why I have a back door as the small garden which grows nothing no matter how you try belongs to the upstairs flat).  The bathroom skirting board had been chewed by someone's dog long ago. All of those are association repairs.  The pipes under the sink were dripping and the combi boiler was dropping pressure like no-one's business.

One bedroom wall had been attacked with a hammer all over and the resulting dents repaired with polyfiller. It looked like lots of those biscuits with heaps of curly icing on top. Now that for some reason was a tenant's repair. Good thing the son-in-law helped by the daughter could do the repair as I was broke at the time. The filler that connected the bathroom window to the wall at the top had to be replaced as the wind was whistling in. We did that.

There have been two major leaks through the ceiling from the flat upstairs since I have been here which have required major redecoration. And those are stories in themselves. The bathroom outer wall had obviously been repaired at some point and where the new plastering had been done the paint kept peeling off.  This required the attendance of a painter with specialist paint.

We have an ongoing problem with two damp patches in the bedroom - the cause is not known. They have appeared soon after I arrived, dried out and have been painted over just to reappear damp again. At the moment there is a space in the trunking where it was thought that old pipes were leaking through the wall to cause the damp. No as the pipes were closed and redundant.

I can't have a new kitchen as it is only 19 years old and it has to be 20 (no it isn't on the list for replacement next year either).  Despite the fact that it is in somewhat of a state (but not quite falling apart as we have glued it up time and again).  And the side door which is single glazed is not due for replacement either. It's the weather facing door and suffers badly from condensation and mould. Ho hum.

As I said to the housing officer - after three years I'm tempted to ask for a transfer but it would be to another town or village to one of their hard to let studio apartments for older people and I'd loose the allotment if I leave Prudhoe. But I'm pissed off with things for ever needing repair.

Do I know what I have taken on saying that I want to make some paths ready to plant clover on in spring on the allotment?  Well it is just become obvious. There are two quite large bin bags of dandelion roots and creeping buttercups that have been cleared so far. And that is just one small corner. You can't put these blighters on the compost heap as they won't rot down. Ho hum.  Landfill they will have to be. Still it is only mid October and March 1st seems miles away.

The trouble is that there is also a fair amount of course work for the graphic design course that I am doing and not being very good it takes me extra time but I WILL have that certificate at the end. The interactive web design is not too bad so far as I have some experience and am actually just wanting the certificate. I have an outline for my project for this already drawn up so I can get along with this ahead of time. It's just providing the paperwork for the portfolio in the right form that is the time consuming bit here as just producing the end result doesn't get past the assessors. Publisher so far has not produced homework but I expect that it will come Christmas.  I wonder - will it be digging up dandelions or fighting the computer on Christmas day?

Last year I was working from home and did about an hour's work just to annoy the paying boss - who took it all in good humour and just laughed at me. I was well paid for the work I did so the boss needed a laugh at my expense sometimes. in the course of nearly six months.

I've been secretary of an Over 50's Forum for the past year. Had to resign at the Annual General Meeting this month as the meetings clash with the college course that I am taking.  Apparently someone put their hand up and volunteered for the job.  You should never volunteer for anything. She has no idea what she has taken on .  She will be dramatically overworked as a volunteer. I must admit I didn't realise how much was involved till I stopped doing it.

I had a photo done in early 2003 for a British Rail travel card - you are allowed to sort of smile for these.  I had another done recently for next year's new pensioner's bus pass where you can't smile. The first one was done just round the corner from home and the chap took some time to make the camera lie. the second was done end of September this year in a major chain that will do passport pictures digitally on the spot with no lies.

Perhaps I should not have had the fearsomely short hair cut? But it saves time and money to have it done very short and then let it grow. My hair grows faster than grass in a warm damp summer.

I was asked for some comments on the pre-budget report as part of a case study for a national broadsheet which also wanted a photo to go with the item.  Ho hum - I take a terrible photo anyway and have recently had a very short haircut.  So the result was a very well padded mountain sitting down in one picture and a head/shoulders troll in the other.  I'll just have to accept that I ain't no beauty. 



Still I should have known what to expect from the passport picture and the bus pass picture.

The manure is moved and dug in. There wasn't as much as I would have liked. However it was better than none. The garlic is planted. There's a new bed for rhubarb which I hope to plant up this month - just need the rhubarb. The fruit and herb beds have all had soil improvements so that the plants can get good roots down during the winter. Bulbs are planted. Green manure is planted - one side is a bit late so I'm hoping for another muggy warm week to get what was planted yesterday growing.

However there is still a bonfire to organise with a lot of waste rubbish. It would be nice to get leaves in bags in a corner to start rotting for the end of next year. There are two sides of the shed still to paint. Also there are some areas around the fruit beds that I want to work over during the winter so that I can plant up clover in March and make proper paths. I'm going to study over wintering onions from sets later today and see if it is possible to organise this. The daughter wants to plant fruit trees but am not sure if this is going to be possible. Another thing to investigate. At the end of the month we are going to follow up the possibility of getting in a large quantity of humus as the compost heap may well not be big enough come spring (or ready enough). When is winter for a gardener?

I went into college on Monday morning for the graphic design course and the lecturer had a stomach bug that had laid him low in bed for five days.  I went into college today for courses on interactive web design and MS Publisher both done by the same lecturer. He had the same bug and really did look awful.  Apparently the bug is going round the Hexham campus of Newcastle college. Next week can only be better.