Rainy and miserable today, with Dot off into North-East Norfolk for a meeting with a friend. Yesterday Allan H was round all day, mostly in the loft, installing lighting so that Dot can spend even longer up there than she does now. Unsurprisingly, it proved a longer job than expected, but it seems to have worked. While clearing up afterwards, Dot produced a suitcase of old paperwork which proved to be mainly her letters to me before we married, plus some rather bad short stories and poems I wrote in the same era, and a few photographs. Also my mother’s handbag and some letters she’d written to me. No doubt I will be leafing through it all some time in the near future.

While this was going on I walked up to the Rosary on the way to the supermarket (trying to get some exercise) and became rather melancholy for no apparent reason. Envisaged David and Oliver coming to see my grave and Amy asking Dot: “Why did Grandad die?” I do tend to be a bit morbid nowadays. Snapped out of it fairly quickly on reaching the supermarket, which was overrun by half-term families. Dearth of rice, for some reason, but managed to get some for Tuesday Group meal, which featured Matt on curry. Dot had to run the gauntlet of football traffic to fetch him, but I devised a cunning route for her that worked a treat. Didn’t work quite so well when I took him home afterwards, but you can’t have everything. Even Norwich City managed to thrown away a win, and Spurs went one worse by losing 3-1 to Blackpool. Meanwhile in New Zealand a huge earthquake devastated Christchurch: Louise Robinson came round in the afternoon (when I was out, annoyingly) to reassure us that her parents were not involved, but in fact Anne had texted us in the night with just that message. Christchurch is part of their itinerary, but at the moment they are in Auckland. Very thoughtful of Louise to realise we might be worried.

Last Saturday was probably my most energetic day  for years. We spent most of it painting a couple of walls in the living room – a process that also included going to the shop for extra paint; touching up two coats all round the room where the skirting heating had been; glossing the skirting board; moving three bookcases to different levels; hoovering the entire house; and, mysteriously, sorting out my tools drawer and stumbling across 28 screwdrivers. Quite enough for one day, you might think. But in the evening we had the Greenacres round for a meal: Sheila is a teacher I’ve worked with a number of times over the years and her husband David, who we’d never met, is an ex-police officer.  Dot and Sheila had never met either. As Dot had done most of the painting, I cooked the main meal and purchased most of the starter from the supermarket. Something must have gone right, because we had a really good time.

Other things going right: I managed to draw a difficult chess game against Yarmouth on Monday. I played a German dentist who had no local grade but seemed pretty strong to me. Was pleased to hold a tricky bishop-and-pawns ending. Sadly, our captain lost a won game and we are now probably heading for the dreaded drop. Felt for him, as he is very keen and an excellent captain, as well as being a nice bloke. And on Sunday at close to 11am we were staring at a congregation of about five for Communion, but we ended up with around 20. Don’t know why that happens. Scarily, David Coomes is threatening to come to our service on April 10 when they are visiting and I’m leading.