A particularly unpleasant meeting at Hobby Club HQ last week has left me somewhat lethargic and disinclined to scribble. Suffice it to say that I have left said club, membership of which is not necessary for one to participate in the hobby. The saving in subscriptions will buy ten bottles of Fortnums' excellent Navarra rosé per annum, which seems to me to be somewhat better value for money.
I've spent half an hour in the garden today cutting back roses, fuchsias, escallonias and the cherry tree, and hauling out a few miles of brambles and couch grass. Nice to get out in the fresh air and sunshine, though the forecast is not encouraging. Snowdrops are starting to show a bit of white, and quite a few polyanthus are in flower, together with some primroses, though not yet those that I promoted to the front row for spring colour visible from behind the protection of double glazing. Oh and on that subject, Jokers 'Я' Us Home Improvements did at least call early on Monday (by which time, of course, we'd cleared the diary for the day) to say that the replacement units had failed inspection, and to enquire whether we could be in on Friday. Watch this space.
Before that, our next visitor is the plumber. His eye-watering estimate to replace the dining room radiator was as good as it gets, so if we've to have the system drained down, it occurred to us yesterday, we should have something similar done in the kitchen, to gain a bit of wall space. Meanwhile, we wonder where things stand with tradesmen's work in Another Place: might it be a builder-free zone by the time we get there in the spring?
One wonders what 7 May will bring. The concept of a Lab-Green-SNP coalition is not without its attractions, though the white-socked Essex barrow boys, aka the City of London Institutions, may perhaps not agree. I'm glad I'm old.
But I don't plan to peg out before I get my pension this summer, and for a few more summers to come. Funded by Vic's, of course. His coffin, when he left us at 63, carried a poster saying 'Some other bugger's got my pension!'.
Oh, and the vaults of the sitooterie resounded to the voices bzw. trumpet of Ella and Louis again on Monday: our local fettler has returned the hi-fi to working order for £60. Not bad, eh, considering we were on the point of sending the whole bloody issue over the wall. And à propos music, it occurred to me in the insomniac small hours, to download that superb organ piece, Max Reger's Variations and Fugue on an original theme, Op 73, from iTunes. Strange, how the wakeful hours move one. Anyway, I did so, and - damn me! - only got the fugue. Referee! But it only cost £0.79, so I may refrain from rattling cages, for once. And I wonder how many iTune downloaders have selected that piece for their first essay in the medium?
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