24 February: Plays, plants, plumbing and pleasant company

Nice day yesterday: we had friends from London here for lunch and supper and a good natter during and between. Unfortunately, the weather was dull and sleety, so their train ride (on the leafy, largely single-track route to a nearby country halt) won’t have been as pretty as it can be in fine weather. Anyway, it was lovely to catch up with a chap we’ve known for some years, and to meet his delightful new partner. They live in East London, just across the High Road from where my mother was born and brought up.

Seedlings are emerging on the window ledges, but those I’ve sown in the much cooler conservatory are wisely keeping their heads down. Surprisingly, the gerbera, penstemon and achillea were among the first to show.

I’ve spent a bit of time today updating the Historia web site: Kate has written a play set in 1938 Berlin, and as we get dates, I’ll be putting them on the performance schedule page on the web. Bookmark the Historia home page, and I’ll put a note in the blog when there are engagements to report. It took a moment to remember how to get from MS FrontPage via the ftp uploader to the web host, since I no longer use that route for the blog, but we got there in the end. I think.

Today’s other modest achievement was to change the float valve in the downstairs lavatory, which had been refilling very slowly. I have an instinctive fear of plumbing, and was reminded at intervals why this is so. When I hooked it all up the first time, it leaked like mad. Somehow, the rubber washer between the supply pipe and the ball valve had gone AWOL, so I had to dig around in my tool box to find another. Fortunately there was one in there, and it’s proving to keep the relevant element confined. Moral: Never Throw Anything Away. Next, the damn’ cistern kept overflowing into the pan, so it took repeated trial and error visits to the (fortunately adjustable) float arrangement before it worked properly, filling to the right level and stopping. OK, it only cost me £8.99 for the parts, plus a few miles’ worth of diesel, and a number of hours' unpaid work for the benefit of the community, so I guess I’m ahead of the game by the thick end of £100. Just as well, since it cost almost that much on Monday to get a blocked kitchen sink gully rodded. I remain convinced that I am not of such stuff as plumbers are made on.