A quick post - then goodbye for a while

Well, I've finally had the great news that my Mum is coming out of hospital today. She's doing very well (for an arthritis-riddled 86 year old anyway) but needs the house adapted so that she can live downstairs, so I'm going there to oversee that and look after her while she gets used to being at home again  and to her new living arrangements. She doesn't have any internet connection, and I know from past experience that the phone signal isn't strong enough there for me to get online via my phone, so I'll probably be out of contact for a while. And yes, I have checked in the past...... none of the neighbours has unsecured wi-fi although in the circumstances I'm going to ask her lovely next door neighbours if they could possibly bear to share their password with me. After all, I need to let the rest of the family know how she's getting on!

I would normally have been sending the May issue of Grape Vine out next Tuesday, but it will be a few days late this month. I've got everything ready for a quick turn around when I get back,  including a promise of express service from the printers, so I'll have it with you as soon as possible!

Now I'll leave you with quick news of a competition being run by Chocolate Log Blog who are giving away a beautiful Tree Of Life Towel. To enter, you need to pop over to their blog http://choclogblog.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/linen-tea-towels-and-giveaway.html and tell them, as a comment (on THEIR blog, not mine!) what your ideal tea towel design or colour would be. It closes on May 9th.

Just in case you are not used to entering competitions on blogs, I'll remind you that you need to leave a separate comment for each of the tasks on the list, each of which gets you an extra entry to the draw. BUT first you must leave a comment with your answer to the question, otherwise none of your other entries will count.

And if you choose to comment as "Anonymous" you MUST give them a way to contact you if you win. It isn't safe to use your email address in a blog comment, as there are spam-bots searching the internet for email addresses to deluge with their nasty stuff, so if you have a Twitter name use that instead. But if you don't have one, rewrite your email address in a way that a human could recognise but a computer couldn't, for instance the  Grape Vine address would be janesgrapevineATyahooDOTcoDOTuk

Hope you all have lots of lovely wins while I'm away! I'm looking forward to hearing about them when I get back.