It’s alarming, when you wash a carpet, quite how much dirt comes out, innit. There were a few marks on it but it looked okay overall before I started, but evidently it was filthier than I realised. There was some soapy water left in the tank at the end, so I gave a quick going-over to the small landing carpet – and that looks rather a different colour, I have to confess.

Last night, we went to Gardening Club where the talk was on garden beasties – insects and so on – which was interesting and the chap, a specialist entomologist, was excellent. He told us about a Spanish slug that is rather alarming – we don’t have them here in this garden, but they’re encroaching on Norwich, at any rate, and they are quite a nuisance. Basically, if you just have the odd big slug, you probably don’t have the Spanish ones but if they swarm all over anything they can treat as food, then they are and you need to put them in a bucket of soapy water to kill them. They can eat an awful lot of slug pellets before there’s any ill effects.

We went to a lecture on Gustav Klimt today, which was excellent. I’ve heard that speaker before a few times, so was pretty confident it would be. We were only just in time as there were roadworks on the way, which held us up for ten minutes – that particular village has roadworks for months on end, and has done for years. They must have renewed all the utilities by now, yet it keeps on going. Heaven knows what it is this time.

I found a place for two bookcases and a desk. Just another few hundred books to go…