Random Friday five, what a week!

Here's Theo in the morning. I've been feeling under the weather this week and I'm sure the mega doses on vitamin C have held what ever this is at bay, but T isn't helping by coming in yowling at 12am with a mouse in his mouth and depositing it by my bed. I threw him and mouse outside and closed my door and so he stashed the mouse behind the living room sofa and brought me another at 4am which he deposited in front of the bedroom door. I need my sleep! Then in the morning he's like, "Oh man, you can't mean me, I had the night shift!"Yeah, laugh it up fuzzball!This money I've got in my hot little hand is £150. One hundred and fifty Great Britain Pounds Sterling. I've made a decision! Our lovely friend Brian is willing to sell me his mini shell for us to build me a new mini. After the loss of my beautiful old mini I didn't think I could ever move on, and I know I've talked about it ad infinitum et ultra, but this is it. This is the end of grief. I have. It's a good thing. :) (In other words: Illiegitimi non carborundum!)This morning I drove out of the driveway and waited for these girlies to walk by and I got to thinking. You know, it's wonderfully fantastic to live in rural England where girls ride their horses in the mornings and lanes are so bucolic with hedgerows and bower trees, but really, our lane is a single track lane with passing places and cars, trucks and public buses zoom by at 50 miles/hour. Also people park where ever and which ever way they want to (unless there's a double line at the side, which is just never the case in the country), and there is very little wiggle room to get past horses and pushbikes and avoid oncoming traffic. God one has to be brave to drive here, (on the wrong side of the road on the wrong side of the car) No wonder everyone drives little Fiat, Seat, Kia pod cars.Oh, and don't even talk to me of villages like Marcham, below, where one time someone said, "oh, lets just build a road between these two houses and never mind that it narrows to 10 ft in places, and never mind that it's a bit of a blind corner and never mind that we'll let trucks and buses drive this way, I'm sure everyone will fit just fine."I've been having an easy couple of days yesterday and today because of this something I've got. Isn't it funny? You just go around minding your own business and then you touch something someone else touched and inadvertently rub an itch near your eye and you've got germs...ugh. So I've spent a lot of time sat at my art table drawing. I really wanted to do some more linocuts but it's too difficult to think right now, so doing something without too much thinking is the best way to be and drawing is usually the auto-function my brain is set to. I started this map, (as well as a long forgotten promised sketch for a friend).I love drawing on old papers. I also love late summer meadows with all the seed heads. I also love goldfinches. There are a couple goldfinches here at West Cottage and they sing beautifully right the way thru spring into late summer. I love how they hang upside down on the teasel and thistle to pick out the seeds.Linking with Nancy at A Rural Journal for Friday randomness. :)