The joys of home ownership

The EV charger was installed on Monday - sort of.  The kit came with a missing part, so we have a further visit next week.  We have still not been able to register it, since the necessary app demands the plate number of the car, which we haven’t got yet.  Much frustration, hypertension and bad language on my part as I poked clumsily - and fruitlessly - at my mobile phone.  And it didn’t help that, while routing the cable through the garage loft, the boy put his foot through the ceiling.

Still, it’s an ill wind and all that, save that this one identified a roof leak, so we’re waiting to hear from roof fettlers.  Talking of wind, the fence between us and Annie next door has been flapping round in the breeze of late, thanks to rotten posts in the metal shoes they sit in, fastened to a short brick wall.  Repairs tomorrow, we hope, and une facture plutôt salée to follow.

Having had to do a mighty clear-out in the garage, we’ve shipped a lot of junk to the tip, and demolished the rickety shelving we inherited from the previous administration.  A new set of (we hope) robust shelves is on order, and we’re hoping to install some better means of hanging the various bits and pieces that currently threaten to fall on the car when it’s in the garage.

Today has been mild and sunny - for a welcome change - so we have gardened.  We had a delivery of fuchsias and lobelias this week, so have been populating hanging baskets and potting up the plants left over.  Since the fence repairs are at the back of the nursery bed, we’ve been digging up and planting out rosemary cuttings to replace the devastated box hedge round the front garden.  Some of the little plants are flowering, so we’re hoping to have a pretty hedge ere long.

A useful local resource

Some time ago, the pin that fastens the hands of our ex-Aunty Jessie clock went missing.  The local monthly repair café offers clock repairs, so I gently put a sock in the mechanism and took it along.  All sorts of interesting things going on: a bike fettler (who was also mending a chair when I arrived), someone overhauling and sharpening gardening tools, someone doing textile repairs and a chap doing electrical and mechanical works.  It turned out that this last also loves fiddling with clocks.  When my turn came round, he told me he usually cut down and filed a paper clip to fit, but my clock called for something finer.  So he went and scrounged a couple of pins from the textiles lady, and cut and filed one to fit.  No charge, but a request for donations, gift aided, so that’ll help marginally with my tax bill.

There was also someone there to test electrical stuff before any work was done on it, and it turned out to be the husband of one of my former bench colleagues.  We’d last seen the two of them when we did our last Macmillan coffee morning pre-Covid, so had a nice catch-up.

The EV charger is due to be installed on Monday, so we’ve done a bit of clearing out in the garage.  Two black bags full in the bin, and we have a booking at the tip next week.  Egg2 is full of junk: odd offcuts of timber, a fluorescent light fitting that I’d hung on to for no good reason, and much else.  Years ago I bought a wall-hung bicycle rack, with a view to hanging it on the back wall of the smaller garage.  Never got round to it, and of course the smaller garage is no more.  So the bike rack ought to depart tomorrow, Freecycled to someone who can make use of it.  The bike, meanwhile, reposes in the summerhouse, and it’s moot whether either of us will ever ride it again.  Still, I’ll take it along to the repair café next month and see if the chap can get the gears working, just in case!

Curiosity satisfied - partly

Good old Fortnums do theme weeks for much of the year, and a couple of weeks ago it was the Alpenfest again.  We’re always pleased when it comes round, since it gives us the chance to get some Rösti into stock for days when we feel really decadent.  This time they also did frozen Bretzels, which are very good if you like that sort of thing.  Martyn does not, having tried one in Riquewihr just when he was starting a pretty vicious gut bug.  One the way south we’d had supper at the home of my former secretary, whose baby son had just come home from hospital with said bug.  He is for evermore known to us as Typhoid Mario.  But I digress.

Well, I’m enjoying the Bretzels, at least.  Another of Fortnums’ offerings was Currywurst, which I fancied trying, having failed to persuade Martyn to try the same when we were in Berlin.  It is the street food par excellence, they say, and the curry powder given by GIs to starving Germans in the forties brought them some welcome spice for a starvation diet.  I bought a packet from Fortnums, and used Martyn's absence at lunchtime today to try it out.  Hyper-processed Frankfurter style bangers, sliced and packed in a tomato sauce, and supplied with a sachet of curry powder to sprinkle over, all in a plastic container that went in the microwave.  Tasty in a guilt-inducing kind of way, but not sufficiently so to encourage me to try it again: or not that brand, at least.  I’ll give it another try if I get to Berlin again, but I suspect that may conclude the experiment.

The best laid plans…

I went out after lunch to prune one of our new roses, and eventually came back in, having moved the bamboo canes from the garage to the shed, and put up brackets to carry the step ladder on the opposite side of the garage from its current space, which from Monday, we hope, will be occupied by an EV charger ready for the new car.  The rose remains unpruned.  Mañana - talvez.

The garden is perking up: we have hacked down the cornus, which has provided us with fine winter colours.  The magnolia stellata and camellias are starting to come into flower, and we have lots of colour from crocuses and narcissi.  Tulips are budding well: we planted a lot of new ones last back end, so are looking forward to seeing what we get.

The bank I sacked a couple of months ago wrote to me the other day, full of apology for over-charging me for a foreign currency transaction.  The over-charge came to £0.87, which for regulatory reasons they rounded up to a whole pound, and they enclosed a cheque in said sum.  It would cost more to drive to the village Post Office to pay in the cheque.  I’m not in need of a bookmark, but am greatly in need of exercise, so, as the sun was shining, I legged it down to the village and, with apologies for putting them to the trouble, paid it in.  Sad, eh?  But after all, if you saw a quid coin on the pavement, you’d pick it up, wouldn’t you?  And it got me a scrap of exercise after all, plus a chance to take a look at other people’s gardens.

A propos Post Office, our excellent village PO is closing, having occupied a corner of one of the village’s two grotty One-Stop convenience stores ever since we moved here.  It is to be replaced, they say, with a full Post Office service from the ordinary One-Stop shop counters.  Meanwhile our lovely Post Office clerks are getting the sack.  Modern times.