Swings and Roundabouts.

It is a cold bright and sunny day today the first cheerful day for a long time here.

The last traces of snow are also gone now, soon be February and the first signs of spring.

We do not get to see or feel the first signs of spring so strongly here in the city, not in quite the same way as in the country.

Living in Reading I noticed the change of the seasons more clearly than here in Amsterdam.

Then again there were no Turkish or Moroccan shops in Reading but there was an excellent Polish delicatessen.

It is all swings and roundabouts, here there are grachts and bridges and narrow houses and many house boats.

Feeling confident about life right now, talking as much as we do really does help us both to cope with our lives now.

Richie recently had a look at several kitchen appliances; he bought a bread making machine and an excellent juicer.

Fresh juice is so good, have been enjoying delicious apple juice and other mixtures such as carrots, dates and orange.

We had our new fridge freezer delivered this morning, Richie is pleased with it, it is half freezer and half fridge.

So now Richie can take advantage of bargains and cook and fill the freezer, he thinks it will be extremely useful.

Like the sound of cauliflower cheese and lasagne and stew and curry or ravioli all being on the menu.

Anything that makes Richie's life easier is very ok with me; our old fridge was 10 years old so it was good timing to get rid of it before we had a crisis.

Remember getting the old fridge, we had got a small fridge from the same shop but it ceased working while the guarantee was valid.

When we went back to the shop, the shopkeeper joked how his calculations had gone wrong this time, he preferred a fridge that broke after the guarantee had expired.

Then he roared with laughter, at our shocked faces, before showing us a fridge with a freezer compartment and letting us have it at a large discount.

We were happy at the time as having any freezer space was brilliant now we needed to move on and update our appliances and wse have.

What I am also happy about today is getting connected without any problems, not after Richie found and ran a diagnostic tool yesterday and when it asked if he wanted the fault repaired he pressed yes.

Seems there had been a low signal, which had been causing the connection problems, this has now been happily resolved

So hope never again to have to do without the internet and my blog like I did for several hours recently where I could only play free cell and long to visit blogs.