Down time

It’s got to the stage of laziness now.  I still haven’t started the paperwork.  It’s just been so nice to relax and read for pleasure in the evening.  I’ve even watched a spot of television, which has become a rarity, though I have to read at the same time.  I can’t concentrate on it, never have, not even as a child.  Watching DVDs on the computer has been a great help because I’m far more likely to focus on the small screen than a tv in the corner.

This morning was spent interviewing for two temporary posts at a very senior level and it was really interesting and stimulating.  Tough though, very clever people with a lot of good ideas and we had to choose two of them out of five.

Miriam has left and is probably getting on her plane about now.  It’s a long journey, she left Norwich at 1 o’clock this afternoon, she is flying to Delhi, has several hours wait and then flies on to Melbourne, where her boyfriend will pick her up.  They met in Florida, he’s Australian and was over there, like her, for a year of university.  She showed us a picture of the two of them together and they really look alike – different shaped face but similar colouring and features.

An odd thing this morning, I was driving to school as I hadn’t left enough time to go by bike, I wanted to go shopping later and I thought it might rain because it was spitting at the time, and when I was a few hundred yards from the school, I noticed the battery warning light was on.  I don’t know if it had been all the time (it’s two miles), I’d have thought I’d have seen it before but maybe not.  Anyway, I was quite dismayed and parked in front of the school where there was plenty of room, in case I needed the jump leads later on another car.  There’s plenty of room because of all the school buses, 17 of them in two batches, so cars can only park once school has started, about 9 am until about 3 o’clock.  I phoned Russell to tell him in case I needed rescuing, but actually I’d have grabbed a helpful teacher.  Anyway, fortunately it was a non-event (this is a very dull story, you’ll discover if you haven’t already) because when I came out again, a bit late and the first few buses were already parked, the car started first time and the light hasn’t come on again.  I’ll keep an eye on it and make sure my next journey is long enough to charge the battery.  Which it normally is, I don’t use the car for short trips if I can help it.

Gosh.  That was dull.

I have picked nearly all the remaining tomatoes – no green tomato chutney this year, they’ve almost all ripened and I expect the last few will.  We’ve had a new fence put up round the annexe garden which looks very good.  We may have friends to stay for a few weeks while an extension is built to their house and they have two children, the younger being a toddler, so a fully enclosed garden will help them – I’d taken down part of the old fence, it had become so scruffy.  We have also extended the fence to the corner of our house so Ben can be let straight out of the back door for a run.  It won’t be as much fun for him as going on the marshes, but since Chester fell into the river once through the ice, I’ve been very nervous of taking a dog there in icy weather.  We’ll still take him for now, of course.

We hardly ever use our back door and had lost the key.  We thought we’d have to get a locksmith.  Fortunately, Russell found a box of keys upstairs and one of them fitted – whether it was the original or not, we don’t know.  I’ll have to get a doormat to put there – not that I mind a bit of mud on the floor, but at present he has the length of the carpeted passageway to wipe it off his feet.  It’s a horrid carpet, muddy brown carpet tiles and my mother used to ask why on earth we didn’t get anything nicer (and she died ten years ago), but it shows no dirt at all.  I always wanted proper Norfolk pamments, but we’ll never get around to that, so I think we’ll have a wooden floor instead, I really can’t put up with what’s there much longer.  We’ve got lots of lovely oak planks.  The floorboards are deal and not very good, or I’d take the carpet up and sand and seal what’s there.

2 comments on “Down time

Leave a Reply to Mike Horner Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

 

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.