Oh dear, oh dear. I’ve had a bit of a tricky exchange of emails. I bought an item on *well known online auction company* and, too late, realised that the description was inaccurate – that is, it was a piece in two parts (might have been a cup and saucer but it wasn’t) and that they didn’t match. If that’s so, the correct description is ‘cup and a saucer’ – the “a” separating them from being a pair.

Thing is, he’d bought it from a reputable – indeed, prestigious – auction house and had used their description. Since my bid was considerably less than he paid, my surmise was that he realised they didn’t match and decided to sell on. Anyway, the toing and froing went on for some time and I wanted to discuss it reasonably – I felt a lot of sympathy for him in the matter and, as I pointed out, if he’d gone to the auctioneers at the time and said there was a mistake, his money would have been refunded. I told him who I was and that auctioneering is my business. Finally, he just said pay up and shut up, so I’ve spent 20 minutes on the phone to *well known online auction company’s* helpline. On their advice, I’ve written to him cancelling the transaction and recommended that he contacts the helpline himself to confirm what’s been said.

But I hate this sort of thing. I had an almost sleepless night – I got up after 2 wakeful hours, read until 4am, and was still awake half an hour after that. If only he’d accepted that I had a point – he hasn’t denied it in so many words but avoids agreeing with it – I’d have done my best to reach a compromise, but he was quite forceful in his manner. Actually, the helpline chap recommended I phone the vendor, but I said I’d try emailing first. I hate conflict, more so as I get older, and I don’t want an argument.

So, let the buyer beware that he’s not buying a pig in a poke, but let the seller beware that he’s described what he’s selling accurately.

Anyway, the book I was reading in the night, as it happened to be on the cloakroom bookshelf, was Arthur Ransome’s Peter Duck. It must be well over 40 years since I read it. Most enjoyable, for all that the plot’s entirely fanciful. A ripping yarn you might say, and none the worse for that.

Gorgeous I’ve been, all day since applying The Face, although I didn’t manage much gardening afterwards. There was too much else to do – it turned out that 8 people had earned top scores in the Photo Trail, so the prizes had to be redistributed, first in intention and then in practice. I offered to sort out all the pictures so that they could be returned to their owners, which took a surprisingly long time, and cycling round the village takes ages – ages, honestly – as one keeps stopping to speak to people. All good and no chore at all, and something I should do more of.

When I delivered the prizes, one was to a girl I last saw when she was a pupil at the village school. A girl answered the door – “Are you Beth or Hannah?” I had to ask – but she took it in good part. What lovely teenagers they are, too. Although I (rather belatedly) heard the sounds of cutlery in the distance, so I’d evidently interrupted their tea, Beth was happy to have a chat and I put in a few *good governor* interested questions too, so that means I multi-tasked. Splendid.

Next resolution – be the community-minded person I meant to be. I often used to visit the pub – not so much for the drinking *cough* as for the company. I must start doing it again. And join in other things – there’s not a lot going on in this village, but everyone’s so lovely, it’d be really good to try to join in what there is.

At present, I’m not so much a pillar of the community as a flying buttress. And I pinched that (he was referring to the Church) from, I think, Winston Churchill.

Excellent as the weekend was, I wish I’d been free to watch the Test Match. It sounded quite thrilling, in a nail-biting way. The articles in today’s paper are hilarious – the description of Monty Panesar, for example, as too poor a batsman to be called a rabbit but rather a ferret – because “ferrets go in after rabbits” and poor old Ponting huffing about gamesmanship – sure, dear heart, they were time-wasting, but all the same, your team still couldn’t bowl out two tail-enders. I’m not partisan (well, hardly at all) and generally speaking have the softest spot for the underdog while applauding fine players, but this was sheer nerve-wracking entertainment. Especially if you’re not Australian, of course.

I forgot to write. I’m so sorry darlings, I didn’t neglect you intentionally. But is it worse to have forgotten you entirely?

Anyway. It all went off well yesterday – the festival continued with the photo exhibition/competition, plus cream teas in the church, plus a photo trail round the village. There was a service at 8 am and another at 5 pm. Yes, some of us were there for everything. I made the Sage come round the village with me – he was quite keen to start with but rather lost interest and, as I had to get to the church to serve teas for a couple of hours, I finished it later on my own. Dilly, who with a friend took the photos and organised the competition, marked it last night and there are 8 winners. I don’t know if the Sage and I are one of them, but fortunately the prizes donated were very generous (eg, one is a £20 voucher at my favourite café in Yagnub) and there will be enough to go round.

After the service, I went to the pub to pick up the entry forms that had been dropped in there. I stopped for a glass of wine and a chat, which was only polite. When I came out – literally as I opened the door – there were Dilly and Squiffany, come to join me. So we all had a drink and some crisps in the pub garden. It was a lovely evening, very warm. “It’ll have to be pizza tonight” I admitted. “We had spaghetti bolognese and there’s plenty of sauce left, you can have that” said Dilly. I like living next door to her. Squiffany and I had a long discussion about spiders. She was on splendid form and enjoyed her evening out with the girls. We agreed we’d like to do it more often.

Now – let’s see, nearly quarter to ten and I haven’t brushed my hair yet. It’ll take an hour or two to make myself gorgeous, and then I’ll go and do some gardening.

By 7 o’clock, we’d fed 12 people dinner and they had left – Weeza and co. had to get back for Zerlina’s bedtime. Al and Dilly took their two home for baths and bedtime too. The Sage and I looked at each other, went and cleared the table and settled down to read the papers. And that’s what we’ve done with our evening. Well, I read a book as well. I need little encouragement to lounge around doing absolutely nothing.

Yesterday and this morning had been busy, but after I’d done my stint in the church kitchen, I was free from 2 o’clock and, although I’d offered to be ready to man a stall if necessary, there were plenty of helpers. So I chatted to friends, was bought beer, bought a round of beer – John puts his prices up to allow for the rigid plastic ‘glasses’ he uses for the beer festival, but only to £2.50 per pint, so I spent the afternoon merrily quaffing, in between eating burgers (lamb and mint) and icecream (a 99). I bought books and plants, and listened to the bands. It’s a splendid wheeze, making the beer festival part of the village fete, because it means that people are happy to stay on the green rather than go home. The weather was pleasant, warm enough, though the sun only came out occasionally and we were happy to stand there. I tried sitting on the grass, but it was a bit lumpy and, unusually, I was more comfortable on my feet.

Did I mention that Ro came with them? He received a warm hug from his mummy, who hadn’t realised she misses him. Actually, his father misses him more. The Sage keeps asking wistfully if I’ve heard from the boy. However, we’ll meet again next Friday, because he’s coming to do the paperwork at the auction.

Too different a subject, so you’ve got three posts today. This is more of a pouring out, so I suggest you go to the first of the day and appreciate Jaywalker instead.

I was just leafing through the day’s papers when I came upon a report that a woman, a mother of two small children, had died because the wiring in the rented home her family had just moved in to was incorrectly wired. She was having a bath, turned the tap for more hot water and was electrocuted. Her husband, at the inquest, said that steps should be taken to ensure that standards are met.

But steps are – or they should be. I’ve a few charges, such as the energy efficiency survey, that I resent paying for at my two London flats, but the ones I don’t mind at all relate to the annual check on the electricity and gas. It’s worth a few hundred pounds a year to know that I’m not going to be responsible for someone’s death. Five or six years ago, two young men died over Christmas in Yagnub at an over-shop flat they were living in because the gas wasn’t properly ventilated and they were overcome with fumes and died in their sleep. I was terribly upset, though I didn’t know them, because it just shouldn’t have happened. There are rules that are not made to be broken.

But that’s only part of the reason I was upset by today’s report. When I was a child, we had a car accident. We were on the way to my mother’s godson’s christening – it must have been 1962, so I was 8 or 9, depending on when at the end of the summer it was. We were hardly out of Lowestoft, driving along the A12 towards Kessingland, when my father pulled out to overtake a Morris Minor pootling along. We were in plenty of time, so we weren’t going that fast ourselves and, for some unknown reason, the driver behind us tried to overtake us too. There wasn’t room – he hit us, we hit the M M, spun round and went on the verge. If that had been clear, we might have got away with it, but there was a telegraph pole and we hit that and ended up in the ditch.

I remember sitting there, wondering if I was hurt, deciding I wasn’t, looking at my parents, deciding they were still alive and moving, feeling relieved and then looking across to my sister and seeing all the blood. It wasn’t as bad as it looked at that moment – is it lucky or unlucky to get cut by glass at the side and above your eye, when you could have been blinded? My father also had been cut in a minor way and my mother had whiplash, but I was unscathed. I always was. It’s not just marrying the Sage that has brought me luck; I’ve always had it.

We were just outside a little pre-fab house and the family came out to help. My sister had to go to hospital, so when the people offered to take me and look after me until they got back, the offer was gratefully received. I don’t remember much. The mother asked if I was all right, I said yes. She was looking at my hands and I looked down and they were trembling and shaking. When I knew they were, I could stop it, but I hadn’t known. We had lunch, boiled salt beef and carrots. It was delicious, but I doubt I ate much. Afterwards, we played a board game. The girl nearest my age (there were several children) was particularly kind and friendly. I don’t remember her name now, but I remembered it when I saw it in the paper a year or so later.

Her father and a friend had rewired the house. Something wasn’t quite right. One evening, the girl went upstairs for a bath. While she was in the bath, a kitchen appliance was turned on. She reached for the tap for more water. Wires touched and she was electrocuted.

I’m still awfully scared of electricity. I take no chances. If I’m doing more than changing a light bulb, I turn off at the mains. How that poor kind father must have felt still haunts me, when I think about it.

It was something of a wasted visit to the school as the music teacher wasn’t there and the supervisor sent couldn’t cope with a few of the pupils. I got them doing something constructive while she was out of the room, but I know my limitations and that I get more with patience and good humoured acceptance of what I can’t control than by getting annoyed. When it was decided that all the class would watch a film instead of doing any work, I politely said that I wasn’t going to be much more use and left. My ears are still mildly deafened from the drumming – one lad, who’s actually a very good drummer, uses knocking nine bells out of them as a ploy “but I’m making music, miss” to avoid listening to a teacher – I know that I just have to wait until he stops as, if I shouted or tried to take the drumsticks away, I’d only look pathetic; but the supervisor didn’t.

I arrived home to find an email reminding me of a meeting at 2 o’clock that I didn’t know was happening. Oh joy. I’d better go. You miss something, you never catch up.

I’d better get on. I may add to this later, if anything interesting happens.

Jaywalker always writes wonderfully. This, today, hit me right in the chest.

The Sage was very sorry to see in the paper that an old school friend of his had died suddenly. They had only seen each other occasionally, but had know each other for nearly 65 years. Today was the funeral and off he pootled in his elderly red van. Several hours later, he came back saying how many old friends he had seen – there’s something about the Norwich area, people tend to stay here or else, if they’ve moved away, gravitate back as retirement beckons. Anyway, he seems to have quite enjoyed the post-funeral get-together, at any rate.

It made me think. If I met a whole lot of people I was at school with from the age of 8 to 13, I wonder how many of them I’d recognise. Not many, and of those, I’d remember fewer names. I am still friends with a couple of them – once, whom I remained in touch with throughout, now lives in Kent and the other moved to Yagnub from London a few years ago. One, I saw in the Times, died about 6 years ago at the age of 50. I can’t remember her married surname, but I recognised her maiden name, as well as her brother’s name which, being Errol, was a bit unusual in Suffolk in the 1950s. Another friend died about 3 years ago – it’s disconcerting when someone of your own age dies of natural causes.

I think I drifted through much of my schooldays in something of a daze, however. If I didn’t see someone for a bit, I hardly recognised them. I’m not all that good with faces anyway – I’m much better now, which makes me appreciate that it’s not something I couldn’t help at all, but that I didn’t concentrate enough. In fact now, I sometimes disconcert people by remembering more about them than they remember about me. I try hard, by associating facts with a name and face – it’s not that it’s easy.

My sister, on the other hand, is brilliant at it. A couple of years ago, we were at a wedding together. We had been on holiday to Cornwall, and she’d been invited to the wedding of the daughter of a schoolfriend, in Devon, so I was, kindly, included. We drifted apart, doing the social round, and after a while, on my own for a few minutes, she waved me over to where she was chatting with two couples. She introduced me to each person by name and mentioned an interesting fact about each of them. There was a stunned silence. “Gosh,” said one of the women. “You are my new best friend, I realise.”

It’s never occurred to me to want to get in touch with people I knew at school. After all, if we’d been that bothered, we’d have stayed in contact all along. Some schools have reunions of course – mine wouldn’t have. Frankly, no one would have gone along. We were very laid back and didn’t take the place seriously at all. It closed down a year after I left, actually. I’d propped the place up for 13 years and they couldn’t manage without me. It was a convent school – the convent itself was next door to the school. Funnily enough before it became a convent, it was the childhood home of my grandmother.

I spent half an hour printing out photos for the snapshot competition at the festival this weekend. I should have had them properly printed of course, because they’d have looked better professionally done rather than by my bog-standard printer – but there it is, they’re done and I’ve expended a fiver to support the display.

At 8.30 this morning, it was raining a bit, so I texted Dave to say we’d best call off bricklaying today. Rain threatened all morning and there were a couple of showers – not as heavy as we’ve had in the past days, but enough to have made it a tedious stop-start affair. And Dave has a sore throat, which the Sage does not wish to catch (if it’s catchable), as his auction is on Friday week and he shouldn’t strain his voice. This afternoon, when it was supposed to rain, it became sunny, which was rather a pleasure. Weeza and Zerlina came over to babysit, so we all relaxed together and went to the playground when Dilly came home in the afternoon.

I also had a message to say my hairdresser was unwell, so my appointment was cancelled. I am rather shaggily hirsute by the time my 5-weekly appointments come round, so I’ll be trailing round with hair almost down to my ankles within a couple of days.

Yesterday, I went with the high school headteacher to be told all about the latest Ofsted guidelines for school inspections. During a break, he was discussing with me the emphasis on the monitoring role of governors, and how they should have high expectations and make sure they’re met rather than simply being supportive – “not brown-nosed, but hard-nosed” I agreed helpfully. “*The chairman of governors* wouldn’t have quite put it like that” he said, suppressing a chortle (unless it was a shocked intake of breath that I misinterpreted). I assured him that if he wants an interjection of vulgarity, I’m the woman to provide it.

Again, heavy rain showers with sunshine in between them. We keep checking the online weather forecast, trying to decide whether it’s worth bricklaying tomorrow – it can go from one to the other in a few minutes so looking at the sky in the morning, unless it’s pouring then, is no indication of the day.

The farmers came to fetch 3 of the 5 cows on the fields yesterday. Big Pinkie and one other are left behind, but the others are expecting their calves in about a month and they’ll be given extra feed in the meantime. They were all fetched onto the Ups and Downs (descriptive of the field which is mentioned on maps as ‘Anglo Saxon earthworks’ and has probably, apart from some gravel extraction in a few places, not been dug up since), some railings were put in place to guide them, and then Johnny noticed that the wire was low at one place. “I’ll stand there” I offered. “Would you mind?” he accepted and I stood, slightly nervous of a couple of tons-worth of cows jostled for position around me. They were all emptying bladders and bowels in preparation for their journey -you can see that they are all seasoned mothers, isn’t that what we all told our children to do before a car trip?

The grass, which had been close cropped and browning last week, had already started to grow again, especially in the dips in the fields. Pinkie and the other cow, whose number I didn’t notice and who hasn’t been named, wandered over and accepted some apples. They will be pampered in the next few weeks.

Some good news tonight – Wink rang to say she’d had a message to say that our friends in India have had their first baby today. Her name is Aisha. It was to attend their wedding that I first visited India. They’ve been hoping for a baby for several years, so this is an especially joyful occasion.