Hoping that calamities come in threes…

I was feeling quite pleased with myself for unblocking the kitchen drain, so all was well for our quiet Darby & Darby Christmas Day.  The chicken was excellent, and the stuffing balls I’d knocked together were a tasty accompaniment.  I woke on Boxing Day morning to the welcome sound of our temperamental boiler firing up.  When I began to feel chilly a bit later, there was the familiar fault signal on the boiler.  We’ve usually managed to re-ignite it, but not this time, so we are now in our fifth day without central heating.  The gas company, to which we pay a service charge of the wrong side of £20/mth, cannot come before the already scheduled 4 Jan visit, though we’ve asked to be put on the list for a visit if a cancellation crops up.  Martyn, meanwhile, has blown his winter fuel payment, appropriately enough, on a couple of convector heaters.  We already had a couple: one ex-Lagrasse and one, at least sixty years old, that we got from ‘Auntie’ Phyllis when she had night storage heaters installed back in the fifties or sixties.  And we have a powerful immersion heater.  And it’s exceptionally mild.

I’d to call the gas people from my mobile phone because - yes - the land line has also gone on the fritz.  The voice channel has been very crackly for months, and every time it rains, the broadband service quality takes a nose dive.  Fortunately, we still have intermittent broadband service, and we’re due a visit from BT in the next hour (I was up and dressed in the middle of the night since they’d said they’d come between 08:00 and 13:00.  Snarl.) 

[Later: having had no word from BT, we eventually rattled their cage - the first call dropped out.  The helpful Indian chap who answered the next one told me that the fault is at the cabinet down the road, and they’ve given themselves until midnight on 5 Jan to fix it.  Meanwhile they have at least diverted incoming calls to my mobile.  And sent a triumphant message saying that our complaint has been closed….]

Expect an explosion in infection rates in early January: government has taken no action to limit New Year festivities, unlike the devolved administrations elsewhere in the UK.  Johnson is utterly paralysed by his lunatic right wing.  He has relaxed isolation rules such that people who have been in contact with someone infected can come out of isolation provided they provide six days’ worth of negative tests.  And has government arranged a sufficient supply of test kits?  Has it heck as like!

We were out to lunch with friends yesterday: just five of us, and we’d all tested negative beforehand.  And a very pleasant lunch too, with old friends and their son.  A delicious vegetable soup, followed by a spectacular  platter of home-made tapas.  We were due to see the new year in with friends in Gillingham, but various (other) health reasons have led to that being called off.  So, it’s back to Darby & Darby again for new year.

Losing it…

 for the annual ramblings, please scroll down to the 1 December entry

When I logged on yesterday to amend the order for today’s grocery delivery, I noticed - fortunately - that I’d booked it for next Thursday rather than today.  Far too late by then to bring the delivery forward, so there was nothing for it but ordeal by Sainsbury’s in person: a delightful prospect two days before Christmas.  Having awoken around 05:00, I hauled on some clothes and consciousness and was at the shop door - along with scores of others - when it opened at 06:00.  It has been a while since I pushed a trolley round the shop, and in the meantime they have moved stuff around, so this added to the fun of the occasion.  My phone tells me I have hobbled 0.64 of a km.  Learning?  I hate the chore of navigating Sainsbury’s ponderous on-line shopping site, but must take more care when booking slots, since I hate shopping in person even more.

So what achievements this week?  I’ve succeeded in unblocking the sink drain gully - a lovely job involving rubber gloves and a bin bag up to the shoulder.  Anyone else done anything quite so joyful and romantic this Christmas week?  

On a more positive note, we have improved the view from the dining room door a little by planting some pansies and cyclamens in the pots on the steps, supplementing the stalwart but slightly tired polyanthus.  Feeding the robin adds interest to the outlook as well.  Just as well, given the amount of time I sit by the window reading, surfing, word-gaming and otherwise prodding the iPad.  

The garden has had a bit of attention this week: the last of the rudbeckias are chopped down, and the bolted leeks are in the bin.  There are still more to come, and we have started sharing them with selected neighbours.  The herbs in the raised bed need a bit of tidying up, notably the dead tarragon.  

Trip to the butcher’s yesterday: a nice plump chicken for Christmas dinner, some lamb neck fillet to which  to add lots of spices, apricots and chick peas for a tagine that will do three meals.  While that was chuntering away to itself in the top oven, Martyn’s Christmas cake was cooking in the lower one, and I was fiddling around with sausage meat, breadcrumbs and some sage from the garden to make stuffing balls to go with the bird.  Quite the hive of industry sometimes, our kitchen.

Grey days

for the annual ramblings, please scroll down to the 1 December entry

Dreich, for sure, but when it has been mild I’ve got out and done a spot of gardening and garden-related labour.  We still have no garden waste collection because of the shortage of lorry drivers, so I have been filling black bags and booking the occasional slot at the tip.  Killing two birds with one stone, I filled four bags last week and dumped them in the steaming municipal compost heap.  The other half of the journey was to collect Martyn from where he had left the Egg for a service and MoT, conveniently close to the tip.

Said Egg (a glance at the shape of the Seat Altea explains the sobriquet) sailed through its eleventh MoT with flying colours yet again.  It had perhaps burned a tank and a quarter of diesel since its last visit.

Back in the garden, I’ve got most of the dead-heading and hacking down of annuals finished.  I’ll need to get up on the new bed across the back to haul out more grass and buttercups: the muck Ben organised last January when he built the bed was nothing like well-enough rotted, and the horses responsible for it had certainly not fully digested the grass seeds!  A side effect of the richness of the soil is that a lot of our leeks have bolted, so are candidates for the next set of black bags.  But we have plenty of good leeks left, and shall work our way through them over the winter.

It’s that nice time of year when the Christmas cards start coming in.  Since we’ve hardly seen any of our friends for the best part of two years, it’s a comfort to know they’re around and thinking of us.  Martyn has set up and decorated the Christmas tree, so the place is looking quite cheerful.  Since we now have another downstairs window, both the electric candlesticks are in place.  

We got our cards printed, written and on their way last week.  One of the problems of age is that one can remember the brown tuppeny stamp that used to go on the Christmas cards. Today’s 66p stamp is eighty times that sum.  Granted, my pensions today are about fifty times my Dad's salary back then.  So this observation is about as useful as the endless discussion of house prices!

Annual ramblings, 2021

Still alive (at the time of writing...)

Another awful year.  We keep pretty well, though our bodies keep reminding us that we're respectively in our seventh and eighth decades.  We have each had our three doses of vaccine, but are still being very careful, and doing lateral flow tests before we have guests or go to others' homes.  We aren't doing much shopping, but rather place a weekly order and have it delivered to the kitchen door.

We've said farewell to far too many friends and neighbours this year, but this comes with age: I think I've quoted the late Isla in the past: 'It's a bugger, gettin' auld'.  The art group has not met this year.  Since I need a bit of peer pressure to produce anything, my output this year has been damn' all.  So, for those of you upon whom we inflict a homespun Christmas card, I'm afraid this year's will be a case of 'here's one we prepared earlier', using pieces that, though we haven't used them before, are not from this year's output.

The world of politics has always been a a pretty ugly place, and this year has plumbed the depths.  Of the events of 6 January, all I need say is that I'm astonished that the rabble-rouser-in-chief is still at liberty.  This side of the pond, HMG is an object lesson in incompetence, vacillation, corruption and moral bankruptcy, with quite a few other adjectives competing for the prize.  

We decided early in the year to dispense with one of the garages, and have had the inner one converted into a study for us both.  We got quotes from a couple of local builders, and selected one of them.  He asked for a 50% deposit, which we declined to pay until we had planning consent.  He evidently understood and accepted this, then the day, previouly announced, before the consent came in, contacted Martyn to say he'd given our slot to someone else, and couldn't do the job until next year.  Company name on request.  So, it was back to mybuilder.com, and we had a prompt response from a chap from Eastbourne.  He came in with an estimate half those of the local firms (cartel, anyone?), and sensible requests for stage payments.   Hemen and his Dad, chatting away discreetly in one of the Kurdish dialects, completed the job promptly and well, complying willingly with our wishes on the details, and liaising for us with the Buildings Regs man, who in the course of three visits totalling roughly three nanoseconds, approved the work, and happily relieved us of over £400.  Though not great detail merchants - we'd to do a bit of the snagging and decorating ourselves - Hemen, his dad and their sub-contractors were mostly good workers, and we're very happy with the end result.  H&H Builders.  And it's nice to know that we're still capable of hanging the odd run of wallpaper.

A side issue was where to keep the lawnmower, which had previously occupied the doorway between the two garages.  A quick measure confirmed that we could get a small shed into the space next to the raised bed opposite the back door.  Assembling it almost killed us, but it now accommodates practically all of the garden tools as well as the mower. (We have replaced the petrol job with a battery driven one which works better and takes up less room in the shed.)

Garden

Big changes out the back.  We spent what we'd had refunded by Cunard on some pretty major landscaping.  I mentioned last year that the hideous leylandii hedge had gone from the back of the garden.  In January, Ben and Duncan took out a section of fence at the top of the garden and came in with a digger.  They also sent some chaps to grind out the roots of the leylandii.  Cutting a long story short, we now have two new raised beds; one to the left of the path up to the summerhouse, and another across the back of the garden, and a continuation of the path up to the little quadrant terrace under the goat willow trees.  The chaps did a fine job, fuelled by frequent mugs of tea and a spot of home baking.  We were still pretty much in lockdown, but towards the end of the work, on one of those fine days we so often get in February, we were able to treat them to fish and chips out on the terrace.

Then, of course, came the job of planting it all up.  We moved a few roses and bought more, and have planted a camellia, a Japanese cherry, clematis and much more.  We grew some annuals from seed as usual: the old faithful rudbeckias and tagetes, of course, and also Musselburgh leeks which have cropped magnificently, cheek by jowl with flowering subjects.  The potato crop was modest this year, and although we had a fair crop of tomatoes, the plants succumbed to blight.  We learn that we are incapable of growing carrots, the crop of which amounted to precisely three runts.  French beans were also poor, but the runner beans fed us for a couple of months until the fragility of the wigwams I'd put up brought them down. 

Neighbour Lynn gave us a couple of splits of her acanthus in the spring, so that will quickly take over a lot of the new top bed.  Another neighbour, David, has given us some agapanthus seedlings, which I shall try to bring on in the sitooterie this winter, alongside some penstemon and fuchsia cuttings that we plan to give to neighbours in the spring.  As I’m sure I’ve said before, sharing is one of the joys of gardening.

Arrivals

Our first visitors this year were Celia and Andy, who came round for tea once we were allowed to entertain outdoors.  Afternoon tea out on the terrace one sunny April afternoon.  I froze.  But Martyn's scones and my sponge buns went down well enough.  Topped out with a glass of prosecco.  More recently, we've done a couple of lunches for our neighbours while their kitchen was out of action.  Annie, recently widowed, had signed the contract for the kitchen work shortly before Julian died, so perhaps the need to deal with building work provided some welcome distraction.

Departures

Scarborough 

Very few.  We've taken a few drives down to the coast on fine days, but our only stay away was a few days house-sitting in Cottingham for Annie while she and Chris went off to the Wye valley and Wales.  While there, we got to meet our friends Janet and John from Wakefield for lunch at a suitable half-way point, and had a good catch-up over lunch.  Annie's friend Linda in Beverley invited us to a splendid lunch another day.  We toured a little, visiting Scarborough, Beverley, Hornsea and Filey in unseasonably fine weather (and evidently better than Annie and Chris got further west).  I also got to meet some lovely people at Beverley Urgent Treatment Centre and Hull Royal Infirmary, having attempted to shorten my right thumb with the door of Annie's dishwasher.  Oddly enough, said thumb, now nicely healed and no longer aching much, is rather longer than its sinister counterpart: scar tissue, I guess.

We had a splendid lunch with Christine and Jon in their beautiful garden in the late summer.  I wish I had Jon's grilling skills, and Christine's flair in designing accompaniments. 

Wheels

The only other vehicle I've driven this year is the late Julian's Polo, to move it from their drive to ours while Ben and Duncan were using the drive next door for building materials.  Hardly enough to qualify for a road test report.  My Ateca has had its five-year service, which calls for a new cam belt, water pump, brake fluid and goodness knows what else, leading to a four-figure bill, and rather sweeter running.  Oh well, it's only money, and we're managing to keep the wolf from the door.  The good old Egg2, now 13 years old, drives like a new car, and has just passed, as always, its eleventh MoT.

Food and drink

Since we've been at home so much, we've been resorting to old favourites rather a lot.  A favourite decadent lunch is based on the pizza norvégienne that we used to have at the Grand Café in Limoux.  Ours, on a home-made base made in the bread machine using a handful of wholemeal flour in the mix, is rather more generously topped.  Heat the pizza stone in the oven at max temperature for a quarter of an hour at least.  Wilt and chop a good handful of spinach which, once cooled and chopped, mix with a couple of generous dollops of crème fraîche.  Anoint the base therewith, then lay on smoked salmon, big peeled shrimps and a sliced pavé or fillet of fresh salmon.  Sprinkle on preferred herbs (ideally fresh dill in season), season to taste, cover generously with grated mozzarella, and add a figure 6 of olive oil, then bake for 8 minutes.  A 300gm dough makes two pizza bases, and we tend to freeze the leftover to use later with ham, mushroom and chouriço.

Runner bean soup is not a great way to use up the surplus crop, though it's OK half and half with leek and potato, or broccoli and cauliflower. Better to leave the oversized beans to ripen for next year's seeds.  We usually make stock with the chicken carcass, then use some of the leftover meat together with mushrooms and stellette in a soup.  The recipe calls for spring onions, but chives or some sliced leek greens do the job as well.

Arts

Martyn has dismantled the huge model railway layout in the loft.  It had become a bit of a monster, and he'd got fed up of banging his head on the roof timbers.  This is part of the reason for the garage conversion, which frees his old study to become a model railway room on a manageable and less hazardous scale.  My old study, meanwhile, still houses all my art kit, but also a decent-sized bed.  We’ve neither of us done much painting this year, lacking the peer pressure of the Thursday art group.  Martyn’s brushes have been busy on the new model railway, of course, and I’ve been doing the occasional Brusho piece.  

2022

 

I can scarcely imagine a worse year than the one that’s ending.  But we cautiously hope for better, and send you our most positive thoughts for the new year.

 

Martyn and David 

Birds, beasts and Disgustedville Tories

Earlier this morning, Martyn spotted a pied wagtail outside, feeding (presumably) on silver birch seed.  It was still around when we got home after shopping.  Quite a treat: they are such pretty and entertaining little birds.  The other sighting was a fallow deer in the forest: it sprung out in front of us - fortunately at a safe distance - and disappeared in the woods on the other side.  That’s our first sighting of wild deer for quite some time: the last was when one leapt out immediately in front of us, followed by about five more.  We quite often see farmed deer when we’re on the way to the garden centre.  I’d like to find a supplier of local venison, but Martyn is a bit squeamish about eating the likes of bambis and bunnies!

I wonder if we’re seeing winds of change among that other local fauna, the West of Disgustedville Tory voter.  A couple of elections back, one of our local councillors, who happened also to be the leader of the Tories on the council, got utterly trounced.   The winner was the candidate of a local alliance formed to oppose said leader’s vanity project to build a fixed-seating theatre in place of the highly versatile Assembly Hall.  It would have meant borrowing several millions, intruding on town centre green space and eliminating some hundreds of revenue-generating car parking spaces.  Ironically, as readers may remember, it was in that same Assembly Hall that the count took place!  

Next-door neighbour Julian’s death created a vacancy, and the election was held on Thursday, the alliance having called it even before Julian (who, incidentally, opposed the theatre project) had been laid to rest.  The Tories fielded Julian’s daughter Rowena, expecting that she’d romp home.   She told us that she was meeting a lot of hostility on the doorsteps, and that normally reliable Tory voters were wobbling: to quote her, ‘Boris isn’t helping!’.  Her defeat was a lot closer than that of the former leader, but a defeat it was.  So the Tories, though the biggest group on the council, are now in a minority.  Interesting times, eh?

Modest gardening

I pursued the mower across the back grass the other day, as much to pick up and shred willow and oak leaves as anything else.  It’s the time of year when we get a lot of fungi popping up through the grass up at the top.  They look like pleurotes, but I’m not about to put that identification to the test!  

A lot of the annuals are now down, and the raised bed is now empty of runner beans.  Those on the fence at the other side are still in place, where there are a few big pods that I’ll leave to see if we can get seed from them for next year.  We’ve learned from this year that wigwams on slender poles are a Bad Thing, so will get stouter supports next year and lash them to the fence.  We shall not bother trying to grow carrots again: we got precisely three runty examples this year, and since the commercial growers do a good enough job, and they’re dirt-cheap, we won’t bother.  Might do leeks again, though, but not in quite such numbers!

We’ve had a few sharp frosts lately, so it was time to get some of the cuttings potted up and brought indoors.  I’ve had more success with the fuchsia magellanica alba this time - I lost last year’s batch, largely through neglect, I’m afraid.  The penstemon cuttings were a mixed result: some rooted enthusiastically, others not at all.  I only got two purple ones to root, but have put the rest back in the cold frame, since the foliage looked healthy.  The reds and rose pink did better, but the star performer is the nth generation of a pale pink subject from cuttings I scrounged from a neighbour at Smith Towers before we moved here.  One neighbour wants fuchsias, another wants penstemons.  I’ll try to bring them on (the cuttings, not the neighbours) in the sitooterie through the winter.

The gas man cameth once again today.  The boiler has taken to cutting out, or not starting first thing in the morning, forcing us to reset and relight.  With the weather as it is, a duff boiler is not to be encouraged.  Today’s rather piratical-looking West Countryman suspected the condensation drain was blocked, blew down it and left, asking me to video the behaviour of the warning light should the problem recur.  

The shower door is repaired, thanks to Martyn’s patience and perseverance, but the shower room vent fan is sounding stressed - no doubt because it’s fighting to get the air past disused wasp nests.  And the shower pump is getting temperamental.  The bathroom is now looking really shabby: the DIY job done by a previous administration has not stood the test of time.  We’ll review shower pumping arrangements when we get that job done.  Not cheap, this home ownership business.  But I did a modicum of DIY today, partially dismantling and cleaning the cloakroom vent fan.  Hardly a triumph, since it involved one Philipps screw, a bowl of soapy water and a damp sponge.

As for the political world, I’ll limit myself, in the interests of my blood pressure, to reporting the view that it’s time for a visit from the men in the grey suits.  If the breed still exists.  I’ve read views - not that I could personally express one  - that something needs to be done about the indecisive, incompetent, unprincipled, self-promoting, morally bankrupt occupant of the office of First Lord of the Treasury.  But such a commentator might also repeat the immortal words of Hilaire Belloc: always keep a-hold of Nurse/For fear of finding something worse!

Otorhinolaryngology etc

We’ve had to get used to having things shoved up our noses lately, what with lateral flow tests before having guests to our table, and a PCR test on Sunday.  That was interesting: I’d to drive into a tent down the hospital service road and drop the window, whereupon a nice young woman came and did the necessary.  This was the necessary precursor to today’s follow-up to last May’s ENT appointment (it should have happened in June, but modern times, eh?).  I’d been rather dreading having a camera stuck down my throat, even though I knew we weren’t talking Hasselblad proportions.  As it turned out, the fibre optic was maybe 5mm wide, and not in the least uncomfortable.  Nothing sinister found, thank goodness.  And if, dear reader, you ever need the same procedure, you have nothing to fear from it.  Specially if you have someone loving like Martyn to drive you there and back.

Nice surprise yesterday: neighbour Rowena rang the bell and handed me a bag containing some very exotic chocolates and a bottle of local wine.  Far too generous, given the modest catering we’d done for them: their apparent enjoyment thereof was reward enough.  But it’s so good to have such likeable neighbours.

It has been a fine, mild day here today, but given the afternoon’s agenda, I  couldn’t motivate myself to go gardening.  It is all looking rather bedraggled, but I’ve hauled down most of the runner beans, and will try to get the rest out.  We are drying some hydrangea and sedum heads for winter arrangements, and I might do a few more before the frost finishes them off.  Fortunately, most of next door’s oak leaves have landed in their garden.  This means that we have copped most of the willow leaves,  and no shortage of silver birch ditto from across the road.  The strong winds of a few days ago have pretty much stripped the leaves from the cornus, so we have some fine colours when the sun shines.  Much as I love the autumn colours, they just serve to remind me of what comes next.  

Catering, misc

Since our recently widowed neighbour is having her kitchen refitted, we’ve had her and her daughter in for a couple of lunches.  The lasagne was not brilliant, since it was the first time I’d used non-gluten pasta and flour.  I plainly need practice: the top pasta sheets curled up and went hard, and I found it really hard to get the the béchamel to the right consistency.  Still, it all went.  (Of course, it didn’t help that I’d made a batch of my usual béchamel before I remembered that I’d to use gluten-free flour….  Well, there’s some in the freezer for next time).  Yesterday I played safe with a good old chicken casserole, though thickening the sauce was a bit nerve-wracking.  It seems to have gone down OK.  Martyn’s g-f apple crumble went just fine - and the enormous cooking apples from Fortnums were excellent.

Today we’ve had our booster jabs: the organisation at the TA barracks was a shade less impressive than it was across the road at the Masonic Hall, but the administration of the needle was less uncomfortable than the first two.  We bought rather good fish and chips on the way home from a shop we hadn’t used before, since our local shop has been ‘temporarily closed’ for some weeks now.  Must find out what the story is.  But since the place we used today delivers, and takes cards, we may defect.

Sad times

The last few weeks have called for far too many condolence messages.   First was next-door neighbour Julian; then former colleague Paul’s wife Ann; next Michael, companion for some years to our old friend Joan, next Kerstin’s husband Julian, a fellow trustee at Historia, and today the mother of our friend Tony.  I suppose that, as we get older, such events become more depressingly frequent.

It hasn’t helped today that my physio was repeating his rant about how inappropriate the video regime I’d been given was for someone of my great age.  As if I needed reminding.  But then, one benefit of said great age is that we get to have our booster jabs (jags, for those of the Caledonian persuasion) next Tuesday.  

We worry about how seriously people are taking this pandemic: lots of shoppers not wearing masks, despite rising infection rates hereabouts, and far too many people in masks covering their mouths and not their noses.  Martyn’s sister and brother-in-law caught the lurgy at church a week or so ago, someone knowingly symptomatic having attended.  What is the matter with people?  The Rt Hon First lord of the Treasury seems to think we should rely on people to use their common sense.  But then, he is talking of an electorate that voted for Brexit, so expectations are modest.

Another October nearly over

We’d a splendid day yesterday with old friends Claire and Richard and their daughter Steph (whom we first knew as their elder son Stephen).  Steph had to get back to her computer by 2:00 pm, so had a somewhat rushed lunch, but we enjoyed her company very much.  Martyn had made a broccoli and cauliflower soup, and I’d knocked up some baguettes to have with cheese and charcuterie.  I made the mistake of cooling them across the wire rack, rather than lengthwise, so have invented a new concept: the boomerang baguette.  

The choice of cheeses was not helped by Sainsburys’ substitution policy.  My order of cheddar with truffles was replaced by Wensleydale with apricots and amaretto.  Fine, I guess, if you like a cheese that tastes like Christmas cake, but 90% of it is now in the pig bin.  (Friends report Sainsburys sending doggy chews and treats when they had ordered cat food.)

Fortunately, the Ossau-Iraty, old Gouda and Brie de Meaux passed muster.  The assiette de charcuterie comprised salami, prosciutto crudo, mortadella and baked ham (bought the old-fashioned way from Fortnums) so we’d enough variety.  And there were leftovers for today’s sandwiches.)

It’s sad to see the sun so low in the sky, though it still has enough power to warm the sitooterie on good days, sometimes with a touch of help from the heaters.  We’ve resolved, despite rocketing energy charges, to heat the conservatory on fine winter days: after all, we’re going to be dead a long time.  

On which subject, we got Claire and Richard to witness our signatures on updated wills: making them sing for their supper, as it were.  Having had estimates of upwards of £360 from sundry will writers, we’ve just used the old drafting and updated the details.  Bit of a racket, this, eh?

even worse than Frogtel

Having decided to donate a modest amount to a local charity, I tried to do so by bank transfer, and succeeded in blocking our on-line banking accounts. Fifty minutes later, after forty minutes waiting on line, followed by interrogation as to full name, address, Martyn's date of birth, inside leg measurement etc, the charity ought finally to have the cash.  I'm sure TSB is doing its best to protect its customers, but sometimes it forgets the basics of customer service. I'd love to see evidence why they list the Charities Aid Foundation Bank as 'high risk'  Enfin merde: one tries to do one's best 

Fifteen happy years

We had lunch on Friday with Sandra and Michael, two of our four guests when we dun the legal stuff fifteen years ago, and at the same pub.  The current owners were very welcoming and friendly (if a bit loud), and the menu was wholesome enough, but not special.  The chairs were gravely uncomfortable, hence perhaps the backache.  Times change.

Today, the anniversary, we’ve had a quiet day at home.  With the surge in infections hereabouts, we are not too keen on rubbing shoulders with the locals, few of whom are wearing masks or otherwise behaving responsibly.  Good job we enjoy each other’s company.  And that we have a house and garden that we like.  

The grass is cut, though I doubt if it’s the last time this year.  We chatted on the phone with Annie at lunchtime, and she accepted an offer to send rudbeckia seed.  I went out and did some dead-heading, and have packed roughly enough seed to populate the East Riding - where we were so happy to see plants from last year’s seeds in the Hull University botanic gardens when we were up there last month.

The lasting reminder of our visit to said East Riding is of course the injured thumb.  Five weeks on, it still aches a bit, but appears to be healing well.  We are just so blessed that we have a National Health Service, though it’s alarming to see how many GP practices have been bought by American ‘health providers’.  HMG’s insulting suggestion that GPs should be putting in more hours just shows how little these privileged, public school twats know about or value the service.  True: my forthcoming hospital appointment is about six months overdue, but this is directly traceable back to HMG’s under-funding of a wonderful service, and to the ejection of so many EU-citizen clinical and care staff.  OK: dunrantin.  But as I find myself saying more and more often, I’m glad I’m old and childless.

Sad occasion

Today we went to the memorial service for our next-door neighbour, Julian.  He died just over two weeks after his and Annie’s golden wedding anniversary.  They had a fine day for it, and daughter Rowena asked me to take a photograph, qv juxt.  

The service was pretty well attended, including the local MP (as well he should, given that Julian was the leader of the Tories on the local council and a former mayor).  We couldn’t have been much further apart politically, as he knew when I told him that the Labour Party, of which I was then a member, was scraping the bottom of the barrel to find someone to stand - hopelessly - against him in the local elections: I declined the invitation, despite the attraction of megaphone battles across the fence.  He was unfailingly friendly and polite, and the best of neighbours.  The only hymn I knew at the service was Great is Thy Faithfulness: the only other time I’d heard it, oddly enough, was at the funeral of another next-door neighbour, Vi Newton.

The service was followed by a reception at the Town Hall.  Given (a) the surge in infections hereabouts and (b) the very few mask wearers in the church, we opted out, and came home for sandwiches for lunch.  We’ve promised Annie and Rowena lunch here when their building work begins early next month, so can socialise properly then.

Approaching normal - except for the wallet

The thumb is now open to the elements, thank goodness, though there’s still a way to go before it is painless and fit to be seen in polite society.  I thus no longer have an excuse for the profusion of weeds in the garden.  With the recent clear, dewy nights, the grass was pretty wet when I cut it yesterday.  Still, the new machine copes very well, and with less effort and noise than the old combustion motor job.  The rudbeckias are going over now: the over-wintered ones have died back quite quickly, so perhaps we need some new subjects in the bed by the sitooterie.  This year’s seedlings continue to flower exuberantly in the new bed at the top of the garden.  Jane’s cyclamens are doing well, and I must remember to look out for autumn crocuses.

Ben and Duncan were here yesterday morning to shore up a somewhat fatigued fence post (with the aid of some strong wire and a neighbouring leylandii, now trimmed as well), so we’re no longer afraid of it keeling over and squashing a neighbour and/or his/her sprog/pooch.  So that’s another bill in the offing.  Oh well: it’s only money….  

This is an expensive time of year.  The car, rising five years old, sailed through its health check and MoT yesterday, and drives better and more quietly, I think, with a fresh pan of oil and a new cam belt.  But car ownership is not cheap, is it?  This little episode cost just into four figures.   Since I disposed of the old VW some weeks before taking delivery of the current car, service, insurance, tax and MoT all fall around the same time.  So does house insurance.  So if you’re in need of a sub, better look elsewhere!

On the mend, maybe

The dressings on my thumb are gradually reducing in bulk, and the nurse I saw on Friday thinks this may be the last one I need.  I’ll see her colleague in a few days’ time.  I can now get a gardening glove on, so have been enjoying occasional sunny spells in the garden.  The last of the tomatoes are harvested, and the stems bagged up ready to take to the tip.  The rather exuberant rudbeckias are staked and tied back, so we can use the path up the garden again.  In the mini greenhouse the penstemon cuttings are looking good, and the cuttings from Tony’s fuchsia magellanica alba are putting up some new leaves.  Must take better care of them this time.

After one wasted journey, I finally have my replacement iPad, which the chap in the shop helpfully set up for me.  Hope it lasts longer than its predecessor.  It has needed three trips to town (one of them a waste of time, fuel, money and effort) and three parking fees.  There is no fuel to be had, so with fewer than a hundred miles left in the tank, we’ve put my car away for the moment: Martyn still has a good half tank in his.  We just hope Sainsbury’s have access to supplies for their delivery vans!  There is no fuel shortage, but the combination of panic buying and the driver shortage is really messing things up.  Sure, the pandemic has stopped the flow of new drivers through training and testing, but much of the blame lies with Brexit, the lunacy of which shows in more and more ways.  It’ll be interesting to see how many EU national HGV drivers want to come back for three months.  The Dutch driver interviewed by the BBC seems likely to be representative: ‘if they think I’m going back to dig them out of the shit they made for themselves, they can forget it’.  I’m glad I’m old.

Technology

A few weeks ago, my kindle stopped taking a charge.  Annoying, but not a problem, since I have the kindle application on my iPad.  Or at least not a problem until the iPad also croaked yesterday.  It was well inside its warranty period, but I couldn't find a proof of purchase.  No problem for the kid in the Disgustedville iStore: he just read the serial number off the back of the iPad - a task for which I'd need a magnifying glass - and found the transaction: 8 July last year, it transpires.  He needed to clear the warranty application (and helpfully did the form filling for me, since I can't really write at the moment), and by the time I got home there was a message in my email to tell me to come back tomorrow morning.  Not clear whether this means the new machine will be there.  Meanwhile I have a working iPad in the shape of the one I replaced last year.  The screen has parted company with the case, but it still works 

Getting from the car to the shop was rather painful.  I had a telephone chat with my physio yesterday, and, cutting a long story marginally shorter, he has arranged a face-to-face (or is that knee-to-face?) session with a physio in town tomorrow.  Still, the phone tells me I have hobbled over a km today, so perhaps I'm just making too much of a fuss.

I went to see nursie yesterday to get a new dressing on my dishwasher-attacked thumb.  The wound is  not pretty, but it is starting to heal.  Repeat visit on Friday.  While I was there, she administered a flu jab, which is convenient: we missed the walk-in clinic while we were away.  (Martyn can get his at a top-up clinic this Saturday afternoon.)  So I have been a big consumer of NHS services lately, and am full of admiration for the staff thereof.  I just wish the NHS were in safer hands.

First holiday for years, and a mitigated success

They say calamities come in threes, so I ought to have been a bit more circumspect after the two tyre episodes.  On Monday I managed to cut my thumb on the door of the dishwasher (the strong spring on which reminds me of Arkwright’s till in Open All Hours).  We spent most of Tuesday morning at the minor injuries clinic in Beverley, where they took a look, wrapped it up, gave me a tetanus jab and a prescription for antibiotics, and referred me to Hull Royal next morning.  The doctor there advised me to let it heal on its own, but to have the dressing replaced at intervals.  Off to see our local practice nurse at sparrowfart on Monday.  In the process I got to meet some lovely people, but have to say there are better ways to achieve that result.

Though this has cramped our style somewhat, we’d had a pleasant evening with Annie and Chris before they set off on their holiday (leaving us to house-sit) and a most enjoyable lunch  next day in Beverley as guests of Annie’s friend Linda.  We took a few trips out as well: Hornsea and Withernsea one day, Beverley another and Scarborough, Filey and Bridlington on Friday.

The weather has been remarkably fine much of the time we were away: we sat in the garden under the parasol one day, and have both acquired a bit of colour.  Back here it seems to have been pretty dry, so I can leave the grass for a day or two. 

Our journey home took close to six hours.  We’d decided against going back the way we’d come, planning to do the M1 and then the M25 widdershins instead of getting snarled up at Dartford/Thurrock.  So we got snarled up on the M1 instead, and finished up doing the M69/A46 route down to Warwick, then the M40 - and getting snarled up on it as well.  As usual, we’ve witnessed some appalling driving - and not all of it mine.  No right answer, unless you want to lend me your helicopter.

Oh, come on!

As we joined the M62 on the way to meet Janet and John for lunch, Ping!  Loss of pressure, right front tyre.  (Back right last time.). The steering felt normal so we limped on, and after lunch found the tyre pressure only marginally down.  But since we have another long journey in prospect, I took the car across the road to the tyre place, where they found no punctures, but nevertheless got the tyre off and cleaned the rim, which must have been leaking a bit.  £24, a fraction of Saturday’s bill.  Unlike then, we have a few days to test the repair before we do highish speeds for hours.

Pleasant lunch with Linda in Beverley today: we shall be looking for the Elizabeth David recipe for leek, potato and tomato soup!  It’s getting on for fifteen years since we last saw her, so we’d a lot of catching up to do.  We’d a glass of wine in one of the ‘rooms’ of her lovely garden before lunch, lunch in her goldfish bowl dining room and a cup of tea afterwards in her little summerhouse.  

Beautiful day, good company, splendid food.  Hard to beat that?  Well, of course: what else but a trip to the Cottingham Road Lidl.  Since we’re on our hols, it wasn’t a bad idea to shop in student country: oven chips and scampi, ready-made pizza, microwave prawn linguine and a quiche Lorraine.  Good job we have the gaviscon tablets with us.

On the road once more. Or rather, twice more…

We loaded the car up and pointed ourselves Hullwards yesterday morning, kitted out with the usual travel accoutrements, plus a couple of trays of frozen home-made cannelloni, one for us and one for Annie and Chris to have the first night in their self-catering digs in Herefordshire.  Ten miles from home: ping!  Loss of pressure in offside rear tyre.  I’d had my suspicions when I pumped the tyres up in preparation for the journey, but as it held pressure for a couple of days, I thought we were OK.  Wrong.  We pumped it up again in a lay-by, then limped into Sevenoaks to a well known rubber supplier, which turned out to be fully booked for the day.  Feeling thoroughly miserable, we drove gingerly down to Tonbridge, resolving, should that branch of said supplier not be able to sort us out, we’d abandon the trip (and resign ourselves to several days of eating cannelloni).  Fortunately, they had both stock and capacity, and little over half an hour later (during which we’d sat on a wall eating our sandwiches) we were sure-footed and back on the road, albeit with an alarmingly lighter wallet.  The approach to the Dartford tunnel was as awful as usual, and a glance at the satnav suggested that the Blackwall tunnel route was every bit as bad.  About an hour after leaving Tonbridge we were in Essex and out of second gear.

Traffic on the rest of the journey was pretty busy, but we got to Annie’s in close to the predicted four and a half hours - not having broken the journey for lunch, but stopping only twice to change seats.  It seems that the route via Lincoln and the magnificent Humber Bridge is quicker and shorter than the all-motorway routing - anyway, it spared us quite a lot of the tedious A1.

It’s the longest journey we’ve done in years, and it served to remind us how little we miss the long drive to Lagrasse, much though we loved our time in the Corbières.  We neither of us enjoy driving as we used to, and are conscious of how advancing years affect both stamina and reaction times.  But neither do we fancy the idea of spending hours on public transport now that so many people have lowered their guard against infection.

We found Annie and Chris on good form, and spent an enjoyable and convivial evening together.  We shall wave them off on their holiday later this morning, and mind the house for them for a week.  We also get the chance to meet some old friends and maybe find some new places to visit.

The gas man cometh - UPDATED

Well, he sent a sub-contractor, who cameth and wenteth away again, leaving the job incomplete, because British Gas don't provide sub-contractors with the parts they need to clean the magnetic filter.  True to his word, sub-contractor Charlie ordered a further visit, and they have written offering a date that is inconvenient (incidentally requiring us to be at home on the day from 08:00 to 18:00).  I have spent close on an hour yesterday and today trying to reschedule the appointment.  I shut down the web site enquiry after a half hour of 'Loading'.  After a quarter of an hour on the phone, I got as far as an offer to visit some time in November, and hung up, resorting instead to a major snarl on Facebook, which got results last time.  We shall see.  [Later: I eventually remembered that I’d had a Messenger chat with British Gas in response to my last Facebook rant about them.  So I found the earlier thread and fired off a message.  This got results quickly.  It just emphasises the uselessness of their telephone and website booking machinery.]

On a happier note, we took a ride down to Hastings the other day, and sat having our sandwiches on the shingle beach.  Quite a few intrepid souls were in the water, and of course the herring gulls were interested in anything edible.  The fun really began when a fishmonger dropped a box of fish offal at the waterline!  We spent a week's pension on plaice, haddock and a dressed crab, but they'll make at least four meals between them.

A while ago, I ordered a couple of bedside cabinets from Dunelm, which debited the account promptly, but defaulted by a good week on the delivery date.  In the meantime, when I rattled their cage, they apologised, promising a goodwill gesture once we'd reported the delivery.  Well, yesterday morning Hermes delivered not two but four bedside cabinets.  Assembling the first one was, even for a regular IKEA expat, a sweaty experience, but once we'd got the hang of it, the production line fair whizzed along. We can accommodate all four, so have thanked Dunelm for their generous goodwill gesture, somewhat tongue-in-cheek.  [Later: after various conflicting messages from Dunelm, we get to keep the two extra cabinets.  Good, eh?]

The new mower has had its second outing.  I find that I can amble along fairly comfortably using its second gear (one up from the tortoise symbol, the fourth being a hare!)  It does the job rather better and more quickly than its predecessor, well though celui-ci served us for 11 years.  Cutting our grass demands less than half a charge.  Martyn, meanwhile, is making with the strimmer round the edges. As for other domestic preoccupations, two loaves and a batch of smoked salmon palmiers have just come out of the oven.  We may have fishy-tasting toast this week.

Indian summer

We’re enjoying fine weather here, with quite summery temperatures.  We have had lunch on the terrace today: home-made pizza using up some leftovers and a few of our tomatoes.  It’s a joy at this time of year to watch dozens of honey bees on the sedum.  I have instructed them to bring us a jar, but they’ve yet to acknowledge the order.  The bumble bees seem to prefer the antirrhinums, and it’s fun to watch them climb in, disappear and then back out!

This morning I took the ancient hoover (which suddenly stopped working a few weeks ago) along to a little local outfit, who found a broken neutral in the flex next to the plug, fixed it and sent me home a mere tenner short.  With a new bag in it, it’s working as well as it did new, 30 years ago, though with a slightly shorter flex.  (What I failed to notice was the no entry sign at the end of their street.  Exclusive: we can reveal a shocking contempt for the rule of law today in Disgustedville by a supplemental Presiding Justice.)

Getting it spent…

 …before the nephews, nieces, charities and the Revenue can get their claws on it (there should be something left for all but the last).  Today we’ve treated ourselves to a new mower (made in Austria) for roughly the amount I paid for a used Renault 16 in 1978.  This one doesn’t need petrol, nor a rope starter, and will adapt its speed, they say, to suit my faltering progress.  The battery (made in Poland) is charging (charger made in Vietnam) as I write, and I shall give myself a driving lesson later.  Jane sold us our petrol mower for a snip when she moved about ten years ago, so it doesn't owe us a lot.  The steel deck had started to rot, and it didn’t make much of a job of cutting the grass the other day.  Like me, sound in wind, but not in limb.  

We bought the new one today from a specialist shop in town, rather than on line, so for the same as we would have paid on line, it came registered for warranty, unpacked, assembled and loaded into the car following a driving lesson.  And the shop will get shot of the packaging.  And they will come and collect the old one next week for disposal.  The battery charged quickly, and the mower has done an excellent job, using less than half the charge.

Meanwhile, as for online purchases, the castor cups arrived this morning, so, thanks to Martyn’s help, the new bed is rather less mobile.  The bedside cabinets, however, promised for today, are not yet with the courier.  Celia’s birthday card, posted first class on Tuesday at the village Post Office, got there in a mere three days.  Shit: I could have walked it there faster in a hundredth of the time, even with my rotten knees.  Everyone is blaming the shortage of HGV drivers: and what is to blame for that, pray do tell?