Dot is in the garden, filling the brown bin. I’ve been in the city paying in the odd cheque – specifically one to cover payment of our roof work. Barclays inform me this cheque will not be cleared till Tuesday, which seems ridiculous. Still, I’ve discovered that I can pay the entire bill without a horrendous penalty, so by this time next week it should all be done and dusted. I hate having large sums hanging over me – unless they fall into my lap, of course. But you can never rest: I have booked a hotel in Venice for next June, and am about to start looking at flights to and from Toronto for February/March.
One of my former colleagues at Archant – Julia Carter – has just died. She had had cancer for a while, and I’d visited her some time ago in Aylsham hospital. Last saw her at the BUPA hospital in July when I was in for my third operation. She was walking past and seemed in good spirits. Apparently she died in her sleep after her most recent session of chemotherapy and a blood transfusion. The funeral is in a couple of weeks, and I shall be there, barring accidents. I heard about it from Yarmouth reporter Stephen Pullinger on Monday evening: his team was playing our B team at the Gas Club, and I was waiting vainly for another player to play a knockout game. I emailed Martin Throssell, who already knew, and I have since been rung up by both Ivor Harvey and Bernadette. Meanwhile Lucy had a bad reaction to her chemotherapy and had to be rushed back into hospital with a lot of pain from a sinus infection. She is now home, but very weak. On the bright side her white cell count is dramatically down, from 50 to 4. Which is good, I understand.
On another bright note, two of our friends have got engaged – Ed Reed and Jenny Weston. Ed has been coming to our Tuesday Group for a long time and has been going out with Jenny for a while now. Bridget brought a cake and we had a celebration last night.
On Sunday Dot and I went to Cromer because it was such a nice afternoon. We had a stroll on the beach and on the pier: very warm and relaxing couple of hours. In the evening we had an Ambient Wonder social gathering at the Workshop cafe bar on Earlham Road, which turned out to be very pleasant. Had a long chat with Annie and her ex-boyfriend John, as well as with Anna, Paul and Heather. Annie is going to Haiti to do some health work, and we said we’d be interested in giving her some support. Dot already has ideas of going there.
On Monday we drove to Metfield for a P4C meeting with Barbara, and while they discussed various esoteric possibilities I wrote a couple of stories intended for their assemblies folder. Pretty pleased with them. Helped Caroline a little with an arts proposal which Lucy instigated but was too ill to complete. The idea is to extend the Paston project into new areas, mainly outside. Have finished a self-imposed course of antibiotics and am feeling quite a lot better. There’s a robin in the garden which comes up close to Dot when she’s working: lots of birds in the hedge, and I spend a bit of time watching them. Much more valuable than most of the things I spend time doing.