I’m the only person awake. Zerlina needed a nap but the bedroom where her cot is is a bit cold, so Weeza is cuddling her down here. A slumbering baby sent Weeza to sleep. The Sage is napping in the armchair. Tilly is snoring gently in another armchair.

Dave, you should come and join them. Sleep is almost impossible to resist.

It was a lovely sunny morning, but colder than it looked. The wind cut right through my wool jacket as I cycled into town, and on the way home my skirt blew up to my thighs. Not the best look for an old woman. Nor even for one wallowing deep in middle age.

I did a flower arrangement for the church yesterday for today’s service (there was a particular reason for this, as we don’t usually have flowers in Lent) and brought it home again afterwards., It’s pink, purple and white and looks very fresh and pretty. It’s giving me a good deal of pleasure.

I don’t plan to do anything much this afternoon. I’m going to lounge on the sofa and cuddle my dog, and read the papers and listen to music, unless Ro puts the television on. I’ve got loads of washing to do, but I don’t care. It can wait. The Sage has just told me it’s starting to rain, so I’ve got a valid reason to wait until tomorrow because washing can’t go on the line and if it can’t tomorrow either it would have to go in the drier, as I have nowhere indoors to hang washing to dry. Socks on the Aga, that is, but not a lot more.

The Sage approached me, bearing a tilted bottle of wine and raising his eyebrows. I said I’d had enough to drink.

Remarkable. Yes, I know.

Actually, I had a particularly stubborn migraine this morning. When it started, with the jagged sparkling circle at the side of my vision, I took pills at once, which usually deal with it almost in time to stop the headache. They did, but the aura recurred for several more hours, which was a vast nuisance. As a result, Weeza did all the photography for the catalogue and website. Later, she and the Sage did the condition report, a responsibility I found it harder to relinquish. It’s good for me to do so though. Let go, that is.

I took £200 out of the bank, but I’ve only bought food, wine and stuff for the church. I somehow think my saved money is destined not to be spent on me. Actually, quite a lot of it is to be spent on the flat. Unheralded, a new regulation was brought in at the end of last year that rented accommodation has to have a check on its energy rating. This is no use at all, but has to be done, at a cost of £115+VAT. I’m all in favour of checks on electricity and gas, because too many tenants have died because of unsafe electrical wiring or fume leakage, but this is pointless nonsense. However, it has to be done.

The reason for the migraine is probably a phone call I had this morning. I was relaxing in bed, having worked out my plan of action for the day, and having decided I could stay there and read until 9 o’clock. My 91-year-old friend phoned to thank me for having done some typing for her, and wanting me to check some details on the computer. “You’re not too busy?” she enquired politely. ‘No, I was just having a lie-in because it’s Saturday and therefore the only day of the week I can, and it’s only 8.45’ I thought, but could hardly say. It’s not good for me though, dashing around first thing. I’m better getting up slowly and pottering for a bit.

Ro was talking to Phil about televisions – he’s been to a couple of showrooms to have a look. I’m so glad he’s doing it for me. It would bore me stiff.

I have bought my car insurance, a whole two days and two hours before the current insurance runs out.

I have paid almost exactly half (35p less would be exactly half, to be exact) the quote I was sent in the post by my present insurance company.

This means I have saved £200 and I see no reason not to spend it. I probably won’t of course (I don’t often go shopping), but I can if I want to, because I had £400 in reserve for car insurance and I’ve only spent £200.

My tenant has paid last month’s rent (he may have paid this month’s too, but I haven’t been notified of that yet). This means that I have told Ro that he may select a new television for my approval. He asked how much I was willing to spend and I hazarded a sum, having little idea what to say, and he said that was quite a lot. I said he didn’t have to spend it all.

Anyway (do you ever notice how often I write ‘anyway’? Frequently, I’m well aware, which doesn’t stop me) thank you for reminding me about the insurance. I feel all calm and cheerful now.

I’ll explain why I’m stubbornly reluctant to go to the doctor again at present, just so you’ll know I’m not simply being silly.

What do you go for?

1 Diagnosis
2 Advice
3 Treatment/drugs
4 Cure

1 I know what the problem is. Arthritis. The sciatica is a by-effect of it.

2 To slow down the onset of arthritis, lose weight, take exercise. I’ve taken and am taking this advice.

3 Take painkillers as required. Don’t try to be too brave about this, they have an anti-inflammatory effect so will help relieve the symptoms as well as alleviate the pain. This I am doing. I don’t care to take them all the time, but I am at present (just swigged one down with a gulp of wine).
Go to the physiotherapist for specific advice and exercises. I have been for the last few weeks and have another appointment next week.
Use a walking pole for rough terrain or walking any distance. Thanks to Badgerdaddy, I do.

4 It can’t be cured, but the affected joint can, in due course, be replaced. It’s better not to have that done yet if possible as it will wear out in a decade or two and the second operation will be more complicated. The operations are continuing to improve and it could well be that in a few years time a considerable advance will have been made in techniques, giving a better result and long-term prognosis.

He can say nothing more, so there’s no point in going. What I can go for is to say it’s more than I feel able to bear and I’d like to be referred to a consultant. But I’m not ready to say that, because it wouldn’t be true. I know that the consultant would not operate yet, and I don’t want an operation at this time. Like a filled, capped or veneered tooth, a replacement isn’t as strong or good as the original used to be. It’s not something to enter into lightly.

If I keep getting recurrent attacks of sciatica, and especially if they come on so painfully as it did the other evening, I’ll go to the doctor. But there’s no point right now (actually, there won’t be anyway unless it’s to ask to talk to a specialist). He can’t help and he’d think I was making a fuss. I’m willing to make a fuss if I’m right, but I know I would be asking for something he’s not able to do and I couldn’t look him in the eye and deny I know that. Right now, I’m better asking the physiotherapist for advice, because he’ll be better placed to give it to me.

A long training session today – safer recruitment, it’s the post-Bichard enquiry school training for teachers and governors*. Since I take part in staff interviews and the governors are responsible anyway for ensuring that the school does everything correctly, I thought I should do it, but it was 6 hours, all afternoon and half the evening. There was a test at the end and I’ll get a graded accreditation – sustificate and all!!(!) A = 100%, D = 75% and I think I’ll be somewhere in between, no lower. Anyway, it was quite demanding of attention. Fortunately, the chairs were the right height and comfortable, so I didn’t suffer in that respect.

Tomorrow, Squiffany and Pugsley in the morning and then to Bury for a meeting, then the children again for an hour, and that’s another week gone.

The insurance company didn’t ring back, so evidently they can’t come up with a better quote and reckoned they wouldn’t bother to tell me. Okay, I’ll go elsewhere. I must do it by the weekend though, as my insurance runs out on Sunday night. Remind me darlings, won’t you?

It’s Thursday, so it must be Dexter. Jolly good. Time to finish my wine and read the paper first.

See you tomorrow. Well, if you’re not too busy.

*You’ll remember the young girls who were murdered by the school caretaker who, it transpired, had been suspected of dodgy behaviour which hadn’t been proved so didn’t show up on police files, it’s the enquiry which followed that which has given rise to extra safeguards in staff recruitment. Of course, there is always a first time for any abusive person, but it’s not only about careful recruitment but also ongoing good practice.

I looked after the children for a bit this evening, while Dilly was out maths tutoring. They were adorable and all went fine. They were both cuddled on my lap watching Nanny McPhee when their mother came home, and she said that she had seen Al’s van parked outside the Chinese takeaway, so dinner would be served as soon as he came home. The Sage was cooking our dinner.

Al arrived and Squiffany went to help lay the table. I’m not sure what happened after that, but I reached for something, Pugsley still on my right knee, and suddenly I had the most excruciating pain just where the thigh bone’s connected to the … hip bone. At the front, not at the side where the hip actually is. I waited for a second for it to ease but it didn’t and it was unbearable. I lurched to the right, and Pugsley and I fell sideways on to the sofa, and I said “sorry darling, I had to roll over”. Pugsley wasn’t at all hurt and laughed – “Granny fell over, we both fell over!” He got off the sofa and I lay there, the pain diminishing but I didn’t quite feel able to move.

I really rather wanted to cry with the pain, although the time for that was past. Dilly asked if I needed a hand up, but I just wanted to rest for a minute. I didn’t want to make a *thing* of it, and I didn’t know what I would be making a thing of anyway. Eventually, I cautiously got up, and then I went home. My leg still hurts; at the front top of my thigh, my knee and my shin all the way down to my foot, but I’m used to that. The specific pain has diminished although its effect is still there. I don’t know what I did to cause it and so I don’t know how not to have it happen again. I’m sorry to go on about it, but darlings, you are the ones who get to hear what I have to tell someone but don’t want to make a fuss here – I have described it to the Sage, as far as I can … how do you describe something that has never happened before, that once the experience is over it’s hard to explain? It hurt immensely, but not as a sharp pain, a dull pain or an ache. It was acute, agonising, but not exactly sharp, more overwhelming. Anyway, he was very sympathetic and immediately opened a bottle of wine, but he can’t feel it, so can’t know, which made him get all worried and he wanted to help but didn’t quite know how.

Half a bottle didn’t do a thing, by the way, and painkillers have been taken.

It hailed surprisingly hard this afternoon. I took a brolly against the hail when I went through to the children, but a few minutes later it hammered down. I took a dish to the door and held it out and it was half an inch deep in seconds. The children were fascinated and held the little balls of ice. “Frozen rain!” they said. When it was going to melt, I tipped it into a pot of hyacinths.

I have blithely stolen this idea from the lovely Earthenwitch. They come in no particular order, and I’ve referred to some of them before.

1 Wet earth when it’s been raining after a long dry spell. Indeed, after a long dry spell everything smells lovely, including tarmac. And new-mown grass of course.

2 The inside of a Morris Minor. Any leather-seated car smells good, but an old Morris is the best.

3 The toasty smell of a maltings. I know I’ve said this before – there was a maltings a couple of roads away when I was a child and it’s one of those childhood smells. Other ones are of flowering currant – people say it smells of cat pee, but not to me. Norwich used to smell of chocolate before the chocolate factory was closed (the Chapelfield shopping mall was built on the site).

4 Smoky things – Laphroaig whisky, Lapsang Souchong tea, kippers, wood fires.

5 Dog’s feet. It has to be a dog I love though or it’s too personal to do and doesn’t smell right. It’s only been since I had a blog that I’ve admitted to the outside world that I cuddle up with my dog and sniff her feet. Mind you, if you really love a dog then it smells good generally. Ears and … um, actually … armpits. Sorry. And then there’s puppy-breath, which is wonderful.

6 The smell of a ripe melon when you go into the greenhouse, and you have to sniff your way round until you find the one that has ripened overnight. The roots of a young cucumber plant smell of cucumber and when you tip it out of its pot to put it in a bigger one, the smell is an anticipation of what’s to come. However, the roots of Mimosa pudica, the Sensitive Plant smell weird and unpleasant, in a way that makes you want to keep checking it to see if it’s still as odd as you thought it was.

7 Horses. You know the Barbara Woodhouse thing, when they breathe at each other? Horses and I do that to each other. I love the smell of stables. Cowsheds are also good.

8 Broad bean flowers. Many flower scents of course (I’ve got a pot of hyacinths in here right now, which is wonderful), but that sudden and elusive scent in the spring has me winding the car windows down, sniffing the air to find the field of beans. My daughter thinks I’m annoying when I do this.

9 A baby, of course. I know I’m not the only woman who surreptitiously sniffs babies when given one to hold. They don’t always smell good of course. Sometimes they pong mightily. But the smell of the clean baby is wonderful.

I may add a tenth. Of course, I’ve cheated and put a lot more than nine down already.

So, today I’m hanging around waiting for the phone to ring. I had my car insurance renewal come through a few weeks ago. I can’t remember if I mentioned it here, but it seemed a bit high. As you’ll remember (though come to that, why should you?) I changed my car last autumn and bought an older, cheaper one, though it was much the same size. I was a bit hmm about being asked to pay over £400 for insurance on a 10-year-old car that is only worth £2,000 – though of course there’s more to it than that, after all I may crash into something rather more valuable. Mind you, I never have. I’ve claimed on breakdown insurance, but never for an accident.

Anyway, I spent an extremely boring time looking through price comparisons and the lowest quote I came up with was just over £200. However, that had a big excess and finally the two best all-round offers were in the £260 mark, including NCB protection and all that sort of thing. I also looked at my own company, and got £360 offered there. So I rang and told them. After some discussion, it was suggested I start again, buying it online at £360. I told them again about the other company’s cheaper price. “So, you’re really wanting us to look at another £100 less?” he said. Well yes, that’s about the sum of it.

So their customer retention department is going to phone back. I wonder what I’ll be offered. In fact, I’ll pay more than the lower price to stay with them, I know they’re good and prompt if you have a claim and I’ve had good service in the past. But I don’t think much of having to bargain, frankly. I would prefer to be offered their best price, as a customer of long standing, from the start. I’d been very satisfied with my premiums until I got a bigger car 4 years ago, when they took a sudden hike.

The Sage has also changed his car. He now has a small red van, rather like Postman Pat’s although, unlike Al’s, it isn’t ex-Post Office. When I was looking for insurance for myself, I looked for him too. I found that insurance for a van is much higher than a comparable car. “Why do you want it?” I asked. “You don’t need a van, you could just get another small car.” After a while tacking around the subject, the reason became apparent. Our good friend Mike had bought it for his wife, as she takes the dogs around in it. He’d done a lot of work on it and then she hated it. So he wanted to get rid of it in a hurry, and the Sage took pity! I think that’s sweet.

Oh gosh, it’s probably not a good idea to put this down because it’s about someone else, and it’ll look as if I’m making fun which I’m not and assuredly you’ll make fun of me, but there we go. These things happen. I may remove it once you’ve had your opportunity to laugh at me. Or possibly tell me I’m a hussy. Or something.

I generally go on our *society I’m chairman of* visits, because they’re well organised, they get me to places and exhibitions I wouldn’t get around to visiting, I do something sociable as well as informative and interesting, often for less money than I could do it by myself, I meet members and make new friends, I see old friends. The Sage rarely comes but usually someone sits beside me on the coach and that’s good. I realise that I’m fairly high-profile and so I’ve made the effort to get to know people which doesn’t come naturally (you may find that not likely, but I assure you, I’m not as outgoing in person as in print. Even when I meet bloggers, I’m in my Z persona so it’s easier to be relaxed), especially if they come by themselves.

A year or so ago, a nice chap sat with me and we chatted, and that was fine. Since then, he’s made a point of sitting with me, and at last month’s lecture he booked his place there, as it were. Which was still fine. When we arrived in London, I went off with other friends for coffee and then we met again in the foyer and he asked me what I was doing for lunch and I said, deliberately casually, that I hadn’t thought about it and I’d see what I felt like doing. Silly, I should have said I was going with another couple. Anyway, later on while we were going round the first exhibition he suggested we have lunch together. I felt a bit twitchy by this point – I’m a loner really. I like being sociable, but I don’t like being obliged. However, okay, I agreed.

When I came out of the exhibition I pottered around the RA shop for a bit and then went down to the entrance hall, where he was waiting for me. We went over the road to the *Queen’s Grocer* as he put it and had lunch. He insisted on paying, to my embarrassment, and as I didn’t have a lot of cash on me and had meant to pay by card, I couldn’t insist on him taking the money so all I could do was thank him and say lunch would be on me next time *sigh*.

We went back, met my friends and had coffee together and then went to the second exhibition. Fortunately, for I like doing things like this alone, I’d booked an audio guide so we didn’t stay together. However, and I stayed a longer time in the exhibition than he did, he was waiting for me again and wanted to take me for tea. Fortunately, we met other friends and all sat together, but I found at the end he’d paid for my tea too. No really, I don’t care for this. I don’t like being under obligations and I like to pay my way. I was so edgy during tea that I chatted to my (female) friend and left her husband to talk to him, and then another couple turned up so the conversation became general. I slept part of the way home, so chatted only intermittently.

As you can imagine, at today’s committee meeting I was ribbed considerably. I was completely rueful and good-humoured about it, and admitted that I obviously have a not-at-all secret admirer – this is okay, I want to have friends of course and appreciate the fact that I’ve reached the age that no one is going to look sidelong at me if some of them are men, because it all gets easier as you get older. I’m not suggesting for one moment that he’s going to make any inappropriate move nor even that there’s a sexual thing to it (in fact it’s that I’m ‘safe’ that is a lot of my appeal, I recognise). It’s just that he is being possessive. I’m embarrassed for his sake more than mine. He’s a nice chap and his wife doesn’t want to go on day visits, so if he’s alone and doesn’t know anyone else very well, I’m perfectly happy to have him sit with me. I don’t think anyone except committee members would have noticed he was being too attentive.

But I’ve had to say we’ll have lunch together next time, and I don’t mind – indeed, I have to buy him lunch. Fortunately, since my friends, for all their teasing, are sympathetic, I know they’ll back me up if I ask them to join us for lunch. But it did mar the day somewhat.

No really, it’s not always easy being completely adorable.

P.S. – Oh lord, I’m up to 168 unread posts again. I’m sorry if some of them are yours. I’ll catch up. I do read you all, as long as I know who you are (that is, all commenters and followers, a lot of others, if I’ve ever commented the odds are I still read everything you write).