All is well again. Van man with fan turned up again and fixed the boiler, which is now running smoothly, and I think whatever was wrong with me has probably gone away. It’s also a beautiful sunny winter’s day, and I intend to go out for a walk this afternoon in an attempt to get some weight off. Did a couple of miles on Sunday and nearly four yesterday. Admittedly, the kettle is broken, but you can’t have everything.
Had a really good lunch at the Ship Inn, Mundesley, on Saturday to celebrate Jo Berry’s birthday. She didn’t say which one, and it would be rude to guess. There were about 40 people there, including Jonathan and Lucy; Rob Knee and his wife Penny; and unexpectedly Richard Batson, chief reporter at Cromer, and his wife Angie. Excellent food, and some good conversation, but the weather was pretty dull: grey and spattering with cold rain, carried on an enthusiastic wind. Turns out Jo is local correspondent for the EDP/North Norfolk News. Her husband John is a steam train enthusiast.
Spent much of the previous day chopping up vegetables: Dot was providing the soup for church lunch on Sunday – it could have been easy, but she likes to choose interesting recipes, and an alternative. I have to say the result was excellent, despite a minor panic on the day, when the soup refused to warm up as quickly as one might have liked. One being Dot, in this case.
Won another chess game last night, making five in a row. This one was particularly lucky, as my opponent, Steve Crane, overlooked a very promising sequence that I had calculated the wrong way round. He then went on to lose on time, as usual. If there were no time limit, his playing strength would soar. Earlier I took some cheques to pay in, in my new role as church treasurer-elect: these included a €55 one from Ireland, which called forth a staggering amount of paperwork and a £5 fee. You might think that in this day and age there might be a smoother system for coping with euros.
Look East last night poured all their immense resources (very little) into covering the English Defence League march in Luton, which managed to shut the town down without doing anything much at all. To be more accurate, the police shut the town down. Newsman Stewart meanwhile did the usual appalling job of interviewing the EDL leader, generating about ten times as much heat as light and refusing to let him answer any questions without interruption. I’m sure this generates more sympathy for extreme groups than exposing them by letting them speak. I ended up wanting to kick Stewart, which poses some interesting questions about what exactly provokes violence.