After neglecting the garden and letting it grow wild since before the divorce, I finally got gardeners in to cut back the garden yesterday. The garden had become virtually a jungle, with tree-like weeds taller than the boys growing out from under the paved stones, and thick thorny branches barring the way to the garden arch. After a few hours work by a couple of guys with power tools, the garden was transformed.

It was a somewhat stressful day, with the gardeners not appearing until after their slot, and knock on logistical issues (no gym, late lunch, swim class, lost and recovered Fitbit, packing etc.), but in the end, it was worth it I guess.

”Before” pictures…

”After” pictures of the garden…

It’s nice to finally reclaim the garden. I’ve barely dared to venture out for ages. I’m rebuilding my life, step by step. I wanted to do another round of declutterring before I left on holiday, but I didn’t have time and energy.

I’ve started using / browsing Insta more this year, and came across this random post, which I totally agree with, for both men and women.

Today, the boys and I boarded our P&O cruise to Norway at Ocean Terminal in Southampton. I had a couple of hours of stress and panic, when I tried to log into my account to check logistics, and saw the error message “The cruise has sailed”, and was like, “But aren’t we sailing on 5th? Today is the 5th right??” I was hoping it was just an IT issue (and it was! Although apparently by design), but couldn’t confirm as I couldn’t get hold of customer services to speak with them.

I did a quick tour of the entire cruise ship, which is HUGE and can accommodate 5,000+ people, before we even left the port (we boarded early – around 14:00, and we only left port around 18:00), and I’ve concluded that I’ve never see a bigger group of unattractive people congregated in a single location, lol. My plan was to swim every day to practice my swimming drills, because I had heard there were swimming pools on the ship. But all the pools are tiny, so I am not sure how well that will work. The gym is decent, but the jogging track which I was excited about, is dismal. With 7 laps = 1 mile, I would need to do 70 laps to complete my 16K run! I don’t know how much I will the cruise experience, with so many people in a rather artificial environment. I will suspend judgement for now – let’s how the next week unfolds. Regardless, at least this is certainly a new life experience for me – my first ever cruise!