I had a lovely visit with Ms L on this beautifully autumnal and sunny Friday.

It was an honour to be the first to share WORDLE with her and I suspect she will be hooked in no time!

She gave me a tour of her garden including some gorgeous water features, flowers, shrubs and trees. I caught sight of a lazy dragonfly sunbathing. Her pride and joy is a budding olive tree although I also thought the monkey puzzle tree was a pretty incredible sight to behold!

Looking forward to another visit with her soon.

This was my first visit to Ms. L and we had lots of shared interests to talk about.

She told me all about her martial arts training in Kung Fu and Tai Chi, including studying with two local teachers in Portsmouth and spending time in China.

We talked about some of our other favourite wellbeing rituals including: - a daily stroll (which may include hunting for a cup of coffee and gathering a morning paper) - cold water swimming and its many health benefits - healthy cooking - tea drinking - gardening - short story writing

It wasn't long before I asked what she was having for dinner (my fave topic!) and soon we were swapping recipes for slow cooked stews, and talking about some of the delicious meals she has made in her new air fryer.

Before I departed, she shared a quote from Hippocrates: “Let food be thy medicine, and let medicine be thy food.”

What's that saying, a slice of cake a day keeps the doctor away...? :-D

We smashed our goal of collecting 21 recycled garments for our ChangeX Green Plan challenge. Thanks to 11 Goodgym heroes, we had 60 lovely clothes items to deliver to our local RSPCA in Fratton, plus another 26 items are incoming this week!

Catherine even went out of her way despite a headache to hand deliver some lovely socks and stockings!

Always happy to support our animal friends and the RSPCA was very grateful for the contribution.

Mrs. J and I were competing with the rollicking sounds of Victorious festival coming in through the window for our sing along today but we cranked up the Tony Bennett and won the day. I brought her an orange ice lolly to celebrate the last bank holiday of the summer and some purple lilies to brighten up the bedside.

These were a little harder to paint than last week's poppies but I will keep practising my watercolour skills to add to her collection of pictures...

This was my first visit to Mrs J in a few weeks as I was away on holiday but I was pleased to see that my postcard from Canada had arrived safely.

I brought her a couple of souvenirs including a red rock from the gulf of St Lawrence and a wonderfully soft teddy bear. She enjoyed hearing about my adventures visiting family, driving a convertible, wearing pink lipstick to the Barbie movie, and swimming with wild seals.

We listened to some of Mrs. J’s favourite songs by Elvis, Englebert, and the late, great Tony while I painted her a bouquet of her favourite flowers. She has a beautiful decorative poppies plate that I used for inspiration. Hopefully my watercolour will last even longer than the real thing!