8.45 a.m. I have just returned from my morning walk. We have a stiff North-easterly, force 6 this morning. I am told that breakfast, bacon, sausage and eggs will be ready soon. It has been an eventful weekend. On Saturday night, Mother was rushed in to hospital. She has a chest infection which the hospital said could be caused by delayed shock after the death of my father. She has kidney failure due to high blood pressure and diabetes. As things stand this morning, she appears to be OK. She will have a scan on her kidneys tomorrow and hopefully she will be allowed out soon after that.

I have given my assurances (for what they are worth), to she that must be obeyed, that future Friday night gatherings will not be allowed to get out of hand. Friday’s gathering was a sort of one off affair. Andrew Qualtrough comes and trims our hedges and generally tries to keep our front garden tidy. For this he never takes a penny, he just sort of turns up once a week and gets on with it and has done now for a couple of years. So, every now and then he is invited to one of the gatherings and of course when he does attend, the gathering tends to go on a bit longer than normal. Anyway we shall not see much of Andrew now for several weeks, as he is off to Srilanka to study Dragon flies at the end of this month.

Anyone that has passed our house will know that we have many odds and sods, teddy bears, fishermen, penguins and so on, stuck on the top of the garden wall. From time to time, some of these little chaps go missing. Well some folk just can’t resist knocking them off the wall. However, it is not normally kids that do this, it is much more likely to be rugby teams that have drank too much in the pub around the corner, or corporate coach parties, banks and insurance companies that come down for evenings out that do most damage. Usually the ornaments are discovered the next day by someone in the town and returned to us. Yesterday afternoon, a gentleman knocked on my door to return a teddy bear and a penguin he had found high up in a tree in Poulson Park. Whoever had taken the teddy and penguin for an outing to the park had indeed gone to a lot of trouble to climb the tree and place the Teddy and penguin in such a lofty position. However, not as much trouble as the gentleman who got his extending pole from his van and retrieved both the teddy and penguin and returned them to us. We have in the past received postcards from penguins, sailors and so on, who have left our wall to take a vacation in various parts of the island. We also receive Christmas cards on their behalf, most of which are a bit soggy by the time we find them.

Well now, this morning I am off to visit Mother in the hospital, and then it’s on to Peel. I really am going to make a huge effort today though to avoid the chippie. I am now deep in to a diet. I only had bacon, eggs, sausages and fried bread today for breakfast. No beans or tomatoes.

On Friday evening my old friend Alan Christian, better known as Mousey, the former landlord of the Swan hotel in Ramsey, came down to visit me. It was brilliant to see him again, and once the racing is over and I am back from Clatterbridge, I shall look forward to spending a very pleasant day back up north once again.

Well folks that is it for today. I am off to the hospital now, and all being well, I will be back on the old blog tomorrow.

Tom Glassey with News at 10, on the banks of the Silverburn River.