And this was the second week in the year we didn’t go to the cinema. Nothing really calling to us at the moment. But we did watch North by Northwest on television  this evening by way of recovering from Norwich losing 3-0 at Swansea and England being ejected from the 20-20 cricket world cup.

Lovely warm day today. Bought some flowers and took them up to the Rosary while Dot was going through the torment of listening to the Norwich match. It’s Mothers’ Day tomorrow. I slipped a couple of little roses on to my grandparents’ grave as well. It’s looking neglected.

Not a very busy week. I managed to get down to my last blood pressure pills and had to beg some emergency ones from the chemist. Also had some interesting laser work done by Ross on one of my upper teeth to get rid of some minor problem at gum level. Bit uncomfortable, but not too bad. Health continues to be up and down. Today I’ve felt tight round the abdomen and odd altogether. So hard to pin down exactly what’s wrong, but something is definitely not right.

On Wednesday went to the last performance of Whistle, by Martin Figura, at the Arts Centre. The evening started with a 20-minute warm-up by Russell Turner (The Vodka Diaries), which was quite entertaining, though not something one would want one’s grandchildren to witness. This was followed incredibly by a 20-minute interval, which probably shows that poetry audiences are very thirsty. Martin Figura himself was good – more monologue than poetry, but he did justice to the story, during which his father kills his mother.  This did actually happen, which just goes to show.

Yesterday I got a call from a woman who wanted to use my poem Some Kind of Lamb in the Wymondham Abbey magazine. She was very complimentary about the poem and said that several of her friends had it pinned up. That is the kind of thing that makes writing poetry worthwhile. That and the writing itself.

I have also written a short piece on Betjeman and Clare for the Parish Pump website, at the request of Anne Coomes. And at last I’ve put together five of my songs with chords for the next Seagull session. Dot and I practised some of them tonight. Sounded good.