I seem to remember we used to have a yellow thing in the sky that gave off a certain amount of heat. No sign of it since I last posted here, and for a while before that. Gloomy, grey and damp weather persists. Of course there could be something else in the sky soon, because the US, UK and France have just attacked targets in Syria. Expect a backlash any time.

Not a particularly happy week in other ways. Spent ages trying to help Debbie with getting a group e-mail sent out via mailchimp, which I had to pick up as I went along. All seemed to be well in the end, but Debbie then got in touch to say it hadn’t gone, which meant the involvement of the dreaded Liz D, as mailchimp expert. Eventually it turned out that mailchimp couldn’t cope with having copy pasted into it from Word, which seems a pretty big deficiency to me, especially as there’s nothing to say there’s anything wrong.

Then yesterday our church treasurer rang to say the bank wouldn’t deal with her and would I, as a former treasurer and signatory, ring them to sort it out. I made the mistake of saying yes, and then had the usual trouble with TSB, who wanted memorable information that I had forgotten years ago. I got very angry and could actually feel my blood pressure rising. In the end I referred the treasurer to Howard, who lives close to a TSB branch and is also a signatory, but I felt bad for the rest of the day. In fact, I still haven’t completely recovered.

This set me up well for the ceilidh at St Luke’s in the evening, which was a farewell gathering for the vicar. Dot went early for a practice (she’s in the ceilidh band with Anna, Howard and Phil), and I was going to give the whole thing a miss for obvious reasons, but Sophie rang and asked if I could give Phyllis a lift; so I did. As I arrived Howard was filling in bank forms, which made me feel bad, especially as he’s leaving for Nepal today and hadn’t packed yet. I hung around for a while and talked to various people, but eventually had to leave, before the vicar arrived.

Some good things happened. Amy sent us lots of pictures from Cornwall, and I wrote a poem about the Maids Head. On Thursday we went for meal at Prezzo with Angela and Rodney, partly to discuss arrangements for our golden wedding do. It was a nice meal, but that branch of Prezzo is closing in a month, which is very annoying. We know the staff, it’s close to us and we like the food. Afterwards A & R came back for a drink, and we chatted for quite a while.

Earlier in the week Dot rang up Colin Wright about cutting down the trees in our front garden, which were beginning to look pretty ugly. As it happened, he was in Norwich and came round to have a look, then said he could do them the next day. He arrived at 9am, half an hour early, took down the trees and installed some trellis work in that corner of the garden. Dot and I moved some  plants to make it look less stark, and I’m sure in due course it will be very attractive. As I write, Dot is trying to train the ivy across some wire to form an arch.

Astonishingly the following day (Thursday) my brother Phil walked the mile from his house to mine and arrived unexpectedly with a belated Easter card from his son Sam. He stayed for a cup of tea, and then Dot drove him back on the way to the shops. Well, not really on the way, but out there somewhere. Phil seems a lot better recently, but of course he still has the Parkinson’s. My ankle has improved a lot, but I’m still not walking any great distances.