The sound of violins is wafting down from the living room: Door has four friends from Sillars round to rehearse, and they sound pretty good, I have to say. Meanwhile I can’t watch TV, of course; so I played through some chess games from En Passant (I do this once a month on computer) and did just enough steps to make this month the best for a year. I did it inside, mainly, because it’s cool and windy, with intermittent spots of rain. Not much fun, though I grabbed a couple of dry minutes earlier to hang Dot’s new flower basket above the garage door.

Also earlier I edited quite a lot of Paston stuff while Dot visited a school at Brooke. I did this on my new keyboard, which David bought me to go with my iPad, and I have to say it’s brilliant. New worlds are opening up. FaceTimed him to thank him. It’s very warm in Canada, through not in his basement.

 You’ve already heard about the start of last Saturday, but later on we watched Wales lose 4-0 to Denmark. After ten minutes I said: “This looks quite even – which means that one of them will win 4-0.” Prophet or what? It was also the first day of the Tour de France, which is kind of reassuring, and Dot saw the episode of The Killing that she missed by falling asleep. We both watched the next one. Dot did a lot of work in the garden, which looks terrific.

Sunday was quite warm but a bit breezy. I led and preached at church. Dot led prayers. My sermon seemed to go down well, but for some reason I’ve been feeling a bit down. Our new assistant priest is about to be licensed in a joint service, and Nicky at St Luke’s has accused Carrie of trying to take over the music, which seems true enough. Walked up to post a card to Margery, who is not at all well, then walked a little way into the Rosary. Watched several episodes of The Killing (yes, it’s compulsive), the Tour de France, which featured several crashes, and a rather boring Grand Prix, as well as some football. Spoke to Andrew on FaceTime. 

The next day was dull but relatively warm. I wrote an article on the CNS event for the EDP and sent pix from Geoff Smith. Also wrote a piece for my website and posted books to Adrian and Fred. Dot rearranged the living room for the violin group already mentioned, and of course it’s Wimbledon! Usual stuff: Murray almost throwing away win after leading by two sets and 5-0, but despite losing th third set 7-5 he managed to recover and pull it off. Also watched the Tour de France of course, and later highlights of two great Euro games, Switzerland beating France on penalties after being 3-1 down. Late in bed. 

It was a bit cooler yesterday, with some rain in the afternoon. Drove to Blofield at 10am to meet Peter Stibbons, but he didn’t show up. Rang Barbara Pilch, and she said he had a chest infection. So I did the Blofield walk and found there was a new route. Later checked with the Paston website and discovered that the walk there was quite different to mine anyway. I am definitely getting to be redundant.

Back home, Dot walked to Morrison’s, and I met her in the car and took the food home while she walked home along the river. Watched an episode of Fargo, then England v Germany, which we left after soup to go to the licensing at St Luke’s. Howard told us the England result, 2-0, which was annoying. Watched what we hadn’t seen when we got home, then Cavendish winning a stage of the Tour de France and Ukraine beating Sweden 2-1 in the last minute of extra time. All this paled into significance against my fitting a new toilet seat in the shower room, only hours after it arrived and only a day after we’d ordered it.