Another bright and crisp day; the window cleaner is feeling the cold, and so is Dot, who has just been to the UEA medical school, who are checking her for pre-diabetic symptoms (none, really). Apparently they are very nice. The staff, not the symptoms.

We had a lovely evening with Howard and Anna on Sunday, during which we discussed the  church situation, which is having a stressful effect on Howard as churchwarden. Sadly Anna is away in Tenerife from today with her daughter; so I am keeping an eye on Howard.

I have obtained a new Airport Express and set it up with David’s help. So everything is running smoothly in the wi-fi area. Meanwhile Dot dropped her iPhone in the loo. We buried it in rice overnight, and it seems to be recovering.

On Tuesday we dropped in to see how Paul is doing following his hip operation: the answer is very well. Since our visit he has had the staples and dressing removed; so as long as he doesn’t trip over the dog or Maryta, he should be OK. Dot left me with Paul while she went to Park Farm and then returned to pick name up. Maryta was horse-riding, but returned shortly before we left.

Yesterday we were stirred into activity following messages from our bank about our ISAs, but when we called in they weren’t able to be very helpful, largely because it was pretty obvious that they knew we could get a better deal elsewhere, but obviously couldn’t tell us where, or deny it. So back to square one.

I now have to sort out the ISA situation, ring the holiday company about our Swiss rail plans in September and try to find somewhere in Norfolk to stay in August with David and the children. David had a dream that Adrian was coming to Norfolk when we were planning to go to Wales, and as it turns out that he is, we have had to rethink.

Happily I finished the collection of short stories in time for the Paston exhibition yesterday, and it was well received – in fact so well received that I have to almost double my print run and produce another half dozen. The exhibition itself went reasonably well, given that short-story supremo and workshop leader Anna Metcalfe had a stomach upset and couldn’t come. The church, as expected, was just as cold inside as it was outside, but we survived. Dot came along at 2pm, just in time to hear me read from my short story, and afterwards I joined her at Aunt Jessie’s after assisting with the clearing up.

I have two more writing commissions – both of them unpaid (though I can probably claim something for the Paston stuff). The first is a narrative for Peter’s one-hour wide-ranging Paston video, and the second is the main feature article for The (diocesan) Magazine next month. I have to interview people and everything. Just like being a journalist, whatever that is.

But the outstanding part of the week was Wednesday to Friday, when David, Chrissy, Oliver and Amy came up to see us. They arrived in time for evening meal (we had had our hair cut earlier in the day), and stayed until after lunch on Friday. In the meantime we did a bit of shopping, Oliver did a bit of an essay, and I accompanied Amy up to the Book Hive to see the others (she had already been to Morrison’s with Dot). After that we all went to Prezzo’s together for an evening meal.

David did a fix on our wi-fi, using the Airport Express device he’d given us for Christmas, and I’ve sent away for a second one to do the job the first one was doing. The system as a whole seems to be working well, and my computer is much faster too. Always very pleasing. Sadly, Chrissy is now back in Canada.

After church this morning we had a long discussion concerning the vicar situation  that went on and on, interspersed by comments from a rather drunk citizen who had wandered in (someone we knew). In the end I got quite angry with him, and he left. I know how to increase our congregation… Meanwhile, e-mails go backwards and forwards.

This evening Howard and Anna are coming round for a meal and mutual consolation. I am keeping up with my Lent poems so far…

It’s getting dangerously close to the big Paston exhibition on Saturday, and I still haven’t finished the collections of short stories that I’m supposed to be printing off. So why am I writing this? Obviously because I have to finish the things I can do fairly quickly before getting down to the thing that’s more difficult. This is broadly why I have never got the things done that I really want to do, like writing books. Sad, isn’t it? I think this syndrome should get the medical attention it deserves, like dyslexia, seasonal affective disorder, OCD and mononucleosis.

Meanwhile, it’s Lent, and instead of giving anything up, I have been writing a poem a day. I did this once before, and it came out quite well. So far I’ve written five, because I’m counting Sundays as part of Lent, although officially they aren’t.

I have finished most of the short story collection, and most of the next edition of the Paston mag. I’ve also installed our new phones – a process which would have been easy if the wiring hadn’t been so complicated. The wire from the main phone was trapped behind our wooden case, which is fastened to the wall, and the rest of it then went through a hole into the study, where it appeared behind a filing cabinet and under the main work shelf, together with two other wires. In the end I managed to work out which wire was which, but had to cut the phone wire out – not before hitting my head four times, twice under the stairs and twice on the study shelf. I am barely surviving.

As it is the new phones are installed and working, though I haven’t got round to installing any of the useful features yet.

Friday was quite eventful. In the morning I followed Dot to Kirby Bedon, where a short but sweet lunch was being held to celebrate the gathering in of many pounds of sugar from schools to aid the homeless and hungry. It’s part of a much bigger project, and Dot and I had a minimal part in it, but the organiser, Helen, is a former head teacher and former NAFHT colleague of Dot’s. Dot had to leave early to go on to Forncett (which is why we took two cars), and I lingered, chatting to a few people I knew vaguely or not at all.

In the afternoon I had to go to the dentist to get one of my teeth cemented back in: it had broken off the day before, at breakfast. A very simple though quite expensive process, and entirely without pain, unlike cleaning. The same evening we went with Judy to Claire’s for our monthly cake and compline, which in this case was pancakes and compline – and very nice too. All the usual people were there apart from Vicky, who couldn’t get a baby-sitter.

Amid all this Paul Henderson had gone into hospital for his hip replacement operation, and so we invited Maryta for lunch at Presto’s, which was very pleasant, despite a bitter wind on the way up there. She came back to the look at the new furniture, and then I drove her home while Dot listened to the football. Norwich City just failed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, drawing 2-2 with West Ham after leading 2-0. Paul, incidentally, is already out of hospital and moving well.

After communion on Sunday the congregation met the Archdeacon to discuss our difficulty with the new vicar. She was very nice (everyone likes her) but I’m not sure we felt much better afterwards. However, we are cheerful in this house, because Chrissy has arrived in England, and she and David are coming up to see us on Wednesday, together with the children.

I now have a bit of a pain in my lower back. This is easily explained, however. Last Friday we dismantled our old bed, which demanded a bit of detective work as well as unscrewing and heavy lifting, and took it down to the garage. A certain amount of room cleaning and reorganisation followed.

Yesterday the new bed arrived, together with the new sofa. Happily, Carrie and her friends (Robert, Sophie and Dennis) arrived an hour earlier to take away the old bed and kindly carry down both our old sofas to the garage, where they now sit, waiting for someone to want them. Almost as bulky is the packaging on the new bed and sofa. The garage is full, but at least my box of chess books was collected at last by Stephen Orton over the weekend.

Both the bed and the sofa arrived in a boxed-up state, of course. The sofa emerged reasonably easily and was positioned in the room, leaving space for the mattress to rest on the floor after we extricated it from its vacuum pack (an interesting process: once we’d loosened the packaging, the mattress more or less burst forth on its own like a rather large butterfly). The mattress then mysteriously had to be left overnight until it reached its full potential.

Before this epic event took place we had put the bed together and, as I mentioned on Facebook, there was a lot of screwing involved. Happily all the screws, washers, nuts, bolts, Allen keys and spanners were present and correct, and we followed the instructions carefully. The bed fit the space available, which was nice, and even now it is sitting upstairs (we  transferred the mattress on to it this morning before getting dressed), waiting for sheets, pillows, duvet etc. Dot is at a DSSO meeting; otherwise it would have been made by now.

I have also ordered some new phones, as the old ones were looking very shabby. Oh yes, it’s all happening here. And we have a free mirror, which came with the bed. Quite big.

It’s all happening at church, too. On Saturday we had a meeting of almost all the congregation about the vicar (who wasn’t there), and on Sunday I preached at the usual morning service. In the afternoon Dot and went to see Jessie and had a very good time. She has a painful arm but is otherwise looking very well.

Last night, after pancakes, Dot and I went to the monthly Julian meeting at Howard’s house. We were intending to walk as the weather was quite good (though cold) but in the end weariness from our day’s physical work overcame us  – or overcame me – and we drove. We are both feeling a fair bit better.

Left you teetering on the brink last time: I can now reveal that we did go to theatre (in a taxi) and managed to get through it without any explosive outbursts of coughing, sneezing or screaming. The show was Sunset Boulevard, and the reason we were there was because Linda, the dentist’s wife who we’ve known for thousands of years, had the lead role. She was very good too, as were the male lead and the younger love interest, but the show itself is not brilliant. Some good choreography and chorus work, and probably the one memorable song, which I’ve now forgotten. During the interval we had drinks with the Hendersons, and in the circle we sat behind Ross (the dentist) and his daughter, so were able to make approving noises which should find their way back to Linda.

That was on Monday last week. The next day Dot went on a retreat with Anna to Clare Priory in Suffolk. She was still far from well (with the additional problem of diarrhoea caused by the antibiotics) but really enjoyed her two-day stay. While she was there I took my brother Phil to Bowthorpe hospital (with Joy) for orthopaedic triage – he has problems wth his spine. He is now officially under the surgeon, though this doesn’t necessarily mean he’ll have an operation.

On Friday we felt well enough for our scheduled weekend in Buxton with the Evetts, though I’d warned them that we had few reserves of energy, and seven-mile walks were probably out of the question. In the event we didn’t walk very far. On the Saturday we drove through the Winant’s Pass to Castleton, which brought back memories of one of our youthful haunts, though we couldn’t locate where we used to stay. The sky was blue but there was a bitter wind, and later on it started snowing. We did a tour of the Peak Cavern, which has a very low section that I vaguely remember. We then had a pub lunch and walked round the town in the snow until we found an outdoors shop and I bought a proper cap, which was certainly more appropriate than my baseball cap.

More snow was  promised, but in fact most of it vanished overnight, and on Sunday it just rained incessantly. It was quite a bit warmer, which I believe is known as small compensation, because “warm” is a relative term and wet is wet. However Dave came up trumps with a visit to Hathersage and David Mellor’s design factory, which kept us safely indoors for most of the day. There was an excellent cafe and a kitchen shop that even I found interesting. We also went on a tour of the unique cutlery factory, built on the site of a gas holder.

Returning home on Monday, we stopped at a cafe in Darley Dale with the Evetts (not sure why) and then went our separate ways. Dot and I ended up in Coventry to see Andrew, who seemed a bit bemused as to why we’d come. However he seemed pleased when we took him out for a short walk. It was still very blustery, but not too cold, and he got a look at a building site that interested him. Afterwards Dot and I drove home, stopping at Cambridge Services for a Kentucky Fried Chicken and arriving in Norwich before 7pm.

We could have done with a quiet day after that, but no such luck. At 10.30 yesterday we were at the Archant Coffee Morning, which was quite pleasant, and afterwards Dot had a quite long meeting at Little Plumstead. In the evening she went and watched Norwich lose 3-0 to Spurs, rather as expected. If we go down it will be because we threw away the win over Liverpool.

While she was there I went to the Book Hive for the launch of Keiron Pim’s book on David Litvinoff. The place was packed. I chatted to Steve and Sandra Snelling and a couple of other people, and later to Rowan (Keiron’s wife) and briefly to Pete Kelley. The Hive hadn’t got enough books in to cope with demand, and so I’ve ordered it from Amazon. Keiron was interviewed by a fellow author and came over very well. When I was editorial training manager at Archant I recruited both Keiron and Rowan. They now have three daughters, and Rowan is a teacher.

I’m glad to say that both Dot and I are appreciably better, though by no means 100%. We still cough quite a bit, but our energy levels are up.