I am surrounded by scaffolding and vehicles carrying ladders. The house is midway through its transformation, with nearly a half of the new bargeboards and fascia boards in place and the street nicely disrupted. The district manager of the company came round yesterday, and suddenly it became necessary to erect proper scaffolding at the top end of the house. This is also in progress as I write, with the scaffolding lorry at first blocking exit from the Wildlife Trust but now tight in behind the company van. Two cups of tea, two of coffee just delivered. Wife in south Norfolk, visiting a school and about to return for lunch if she can find somewhere to park. Autumn still in the air but in more benevolent mood, with rain threatening but holding off and the temperature up a bit. Hoping the wall doesn’t fall down as the scaffolders clamber over it.

The roof guys were here yesterday too, and completed quite a bit before dashing off to Watton to deliver a water butt. Dot was at Yarmouth for lunch with Anne and the perennial challenge of finding her way out of the town afterwards. For some reason this takes much longer than it should. We have consulted maps and plan a new approach next time, but I have to agree that the signs in Yarmouth are considerably less than helpful. # I put that # in because I just discovered how to do it on a Mac keyboard, which strangely doesn’t have it as a dedicated key. It’s alt+3, in case you were wondering.

Vicar Nicholas came round for tea. He is pretending not to be in the city, because he is still on sabbatical, but he made an exception for the tea and for going to see Quadrophenia with me at the Theatre Royal. He has just written the first draft of his book on Developing Consciousness, and has left it for me to look at. Quadrophenia was very impressive both musically and as theatre, with four actors/singers playing the lead role and some extremely clever direction. Always liked The Who, and the music was easily identifiable as theirs. The drummer was not Keith Moon, said Nicholas. He was correct. Keith Moon is dead. I did have this slight feeling while watching it that one attitude fostered by it – that a job serving other people is for some reason degrading – might be symptomatic of one of the faults in our society. Everyone wants to be served, but no-one wants to serve. Can’t work, can it? Service is a noble calling.

Tuesday was asbestos day, with a company from London coming up and identifying the guilty substance in its various guises, and then removing it. Much sucking of teeth at first, but it didn’t take them too long to get rid of it and head off back to Epping. Barbara V was also here, and she and Dot (with a little help from me) looked at how they were going to approach the publishing project centering on assemblies using Philosophy4Children. It was decided I would attempt to supply a series of stories based on six diverse characters. So I will attempt that. Inspiration, you may strike here.

I’ve been feeling a little tired since Monday evening, when I had a mammoth 71-move chess game against a guy from Thetford. I was at a disadvantage for most of it, but hung in until I had three or four minutes left and he had about one, when he made a slight miscalculation and I scraped a draw with an intermezzo check from my knight enabling me to get back and cover a pawn which had been about to queen. He was a bit upset, and so would I have been. As it was, I was delighted but so strung out that I found it very hard to sleep, especially as I was feeling a bit sick, for some reason. Still, I guess it was worth it. How can you tell?