Tag Archives: blood

I did not shoot the Sheriff

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Dot with her friend William
Dot with her friend William

We are now the proud if temporary possessors of a brand new Corsa, lent to us while the MX5 is repaired. I was taken to pick it up from Enterprise in Heigham Street on Friday afternoon. The traffic both ways was so bad that it took nearly an hour altogether, and my driver on the outward journey was not slow to point to the Grapes Hill roundabout as the problem.

The car has been on the drive since then, apart from two short trips – one to church yesterday, and one to the doctor’s today. I would also have driven it to the supermarket, but decided to wait till tomorrow because of the forecast heavy rain that annoyingly failed to materialise. Instead I watched the film Bitter Lake for the second time while Dot watched it for the first time. Still good, and available on iPlayer! It explains everything.

The visit to the doctor was routine, and had the added bonus of revealing a reduction in my blood pressure to 136/88. I had a discussion about the advisability of remaining on two Lanzoprasole tablets: the main reason for the visit. I feel better when on two a day; so naturally I have to try to get it back to one. Last Thursday, in a thinly related health event, I went to the hospital to see a urology nurse, which turned out to be a complete waste of time. She didn’t know why I was there, and nor did I (other than receiving a letter telling me to attend). On the plus side, I seem to be OK. On the minus side, she didn’t like me criticising her inaccurate diagram, and I didn’t like going in half an hour late.

When I got back from the doctor’s today I did some cutting and pulling in the garden to get something in our brown bin, which made me quite tired, but I’m sure it was good for me. Last week was a record as far as walking was concerned. When I say record, I mean the best week in the past month. Even counting Buxton.

Last Friday Dot and I went to a house somewhere in the middle of a field. I think it was Framingham Pigot, but it could have been Bixley or some other, nameless part of South Norfolk. The event was a brunch to celebrate the success of a charity run by one of Dot’s friends, Helen (a former head teacher), which involved collecting sugar for homeless shelters. Don’t ask. Anyway it was a nice event. Helen is lovely, her husband Chris was a nice bloke, and I spent much of the time talking to Sue and Roger Eagle, though not Louise, as Louise pointed out. She is the secretary of the charity, and a nurse, I believe. Probably not urology. The food was excellent.

We had to rush back to get the MX5 in place to be collected by the body repairers. It was duly carted off, and will not be seen again until next week. Dot has arranged for them to do another dent unrelated to the recent car park mishap, which will end up costing us over £300. So that’s all good.

In the evening we went to the centenary dinner of St Augustine’s Hall, which was honoured by the presence of the Sheriff of Norwich, William Armstrong OBE, the former Norwich Coroner who used to go out with Dot when they were both at City College. So obviously she chatted him up. His wife Monica was very nice. Obviously I didn’t chat her up. Or shoot the Sheriff, though I’m saying nothing about his deputy. Nice meal provided by Carrie’s crowd, and I helped with the washing up. The plaque looked good – a rare example of a suggestion of mine coming to fruition.

On Valentine’s Day Dot went to see Norwich City beat Wolves 2-0, which made her happy and relieved that she was not an unmitigated jinx. In the evening I cooked her an M&S meal that I had bought earlier. It came with fizzy stuff and was quite tasty.

On Sunday after church we were prepared to go and see Jessie, but it turned out she was spending the afternoon with Roger; so we stayed in. I walked up to the Rosary while Dot did some sewing. I know that’s hard to believe. Also hard to believe is the fact that I sent off for and have now fixed a new letterbox. It wasn’t easy, of course. The fittings were not quite right (although they looked right on the diagram), and I had to cut off some plastic bits and screw in where nothing had been screwed before. I amaze myself. The cut in my hand was not very deep.

Bluebells at Irstead

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Another gap there, I’m afraid. It’s taking me some time to get back to normal, whatever that is. Still, we have been reasonably busy.

On Monday last week, still feeling pretty jet-lagged, we went to Eleanor’s in Recreation Road (off the Avenues) for an at-home. Eleanor is chaplain at the hospital, a recent member of our congregation and is also ordained, so she took our Easter Communion when we were away. We met a few of her family, and some other members of St Augustine’s who popped in. Dot was able to advise a young woman on the path to take towards a career in teaching, so that was all good.

No let-up the next day, when a meeting of the Paston trustees took place at North Walsham. I managed to stay sufficiently awake to take the minutes, and was still fairly awake in the evening when we went with the Robinsons to the Red Lion in Eaton for a birthday celebration meal (Philip’s). I haven’t been very lucky (or clever) with my menu choices recently, and the smoked haddock was OK, but not exceptional. We all came back to 22, and there was a showing of holiday photographs on Apple TV.

Dot on the boardwalk at Barton Broad
Dot on the boardwalk at Barton Broad

The next day (Wednesday) was blank, so we decided eventually to go for a walk. I had seen a walk at Irstead in a book, but couldn’t find it, so did some web research, and we ended up surprisingly doing almost precisely the walk I’d lost (I found it again later). Irstead is pretty remote (a dead end village), but it has a lovely church, and there were plenty of bluebells nearby. We walked down narrow lanes to a newish boardwalk stretching out into Barton Broad; at the end it was pretty idyllic in the sunshine. The walk continued and was about 3½ miles altogether.

On  Thursday we had invited Jenny and Mary round for a meal as part of the new church initiative (don’t ask), but Mary was unable to come; so we had a lovely meal and evening with Jenny, who is sadly about to leave Norwich.

The “pressure” continued on Friday, when we went to an exhibition by Rupert and others at a house in Plumstead Road East. All rather strange – the house didn’t look welcoming, but it turned out to be a bit like the Tardis, with two lovely big rooms. Chatted to Rupert and in the end bought one of his paintings (not paid for yet), which he will bring round when he has the chance.

The same evening was the Paston annual meeting at the Ship Inn, Mundesley. Dot and I arrived very early as a result of unexpectedly traffic-free roads, but fortunately Rob and Penny were already there and had seized the room, which the waiters had been about to use for random diners. Some sort of misunderstanding, but they had sorted it out. In the end a very select gathering on a cold and foggy night (oh yes it was). I said a little bit about Chronicle and took the chair for the re-election of Rob, and Jo supplied some nice sandwiches. Lucy, not at all well, staggered over to give the treasurer’s report, and then staggered back with Dot’s help.

Dig-and-dial phone at Salthouse
Dig-and-dial phone at Salthouse

A weekend with the Coomes was scheduled, but Kristine rang at around 9am on the Saturday to say David had a very bad stomach problem. Dot moped around for a bit, and so we decided to go to Blakeney Hotel for afternoon tea, and that worked quite well. We got chairs and a nice view. The tide was high. We continued to Salthouse, where we were shocked to find the steep shingle bank had been flattened by the sea, and the car park buried. Added to Norwich losing 4-0 to Manchester Utd, this was a bit of a blow.

After church on Sunday we ventured out again to visit Jessie. I was feeling a bit ropey, but we had a nice time. My blood pressure, taken on Monday, was down slightly but still high and I tried to get the practice nurse interested in my problems, but she demonstrated an alarming lack of curiosity. I am now trying a bit of gluten-free to see if it helps. Meanwhile Dot was doing useful work in the garden, and not complaining.

At lunchtime I reported problems we’d been having with the pump on the central heating (it wouldn’t turn off at night), and amazingly I got an immediate response. Must have been a slow day. A guy came and not only fixed the pump but did our annual service too.

After the storm surge

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Uneven floor

After the storm surge, we drove out to the coast last Thursday to survey the damage. We started at Hemsby, where I spent many a week in my youth, wandering the valley between the dunes and playing cricket in the rare smooth bit. Idyllic times. The valley is still there, though we usually approach it from the Winterton end, but the dunes on the seaward side have been eaten away by the sea and are much lower.

In the recent surge the damage was done south of the Gap, where we rarely ventured when I was young. I got some quite dramatic pictures of semi-demolished houses (one with a washing machine hanging on by its power cord). We then moved on to Happisburgh, where only one house now remains in the road to nowhere: a lot of land lost along the cliffs to the south. Then Walcott, where the road was opened. The sea wall was OK, but there was quite bit of damage to properties across the road. We had fish and chips at Bacton and drove home.

Bedroom with sea view
Bedroom with sea view

On the way home the car started making a strange rattling noise underneath. So the next day, on the way to the Archant pensioners’ Christmas dinner,  I called in at the garage – and while I was eating my meal and chatting to former colleagues, they fixed it. The protective shield under the engine had come loose.  The meal was average, but it was nice to see the colleagues. It was raining.

Preached on Sunday on John the Baptist and spent much of the weekend writing cards, with very little walking. However I have made up for it since, having achieved nearly 15 miles since Monday. This included much shopping, but also a walk up to the vicarage to pick up an urgent cheque that had to be paid into the bank.

Dot had a blood test early on Monday, and had to avoid alcohol over the weekend, which was of course quite difficult. We await the results. On the ending I made a rare visit to the chess club, where I took part in the Bob Royall Christmas event, which featured such rare variations as extermination chess, Fischer random, diagonal pawns and team chess. Despite being handed a defeat in round one, where we had to move to a new board halfway through, and the board I moved to was completely lost, I managed to finish equal third out of 12. I was particularly pleased because I found some key moves in the team chess and set up wins.

However, I was very tired afterwards, and found it hard to sleep. That was the main reason I stopped playing regularly, so it wasn’t too encouraging. Good evening, though.

A full attendance at the Tuesday Group on Tuesday, for which I cooked chilli con quorn, a well known Christmas dish. Judy brought some stolen; so all was not lost.

Yesterday Dot forgot to look in her diary and arrived at Barbara’s around 11am, or roughly two hours too early. Meanwhile I was delivering cards and buying more presents. Dot got back in time to take the bus up to Chapelfield and queue to obtain certain footballers’ autograph on a ball. Took Dot’s picture with said footballers.

After this we hastened home to get ready for the Sillars Orchestra Christmas outing at Merge, a Malaysian restaurant at the junction of Dereham Road and Grapes Hill. Quite a pleasant evening, though Dot was much keener on the food than I was. I had a chat with the conductor and others, and afterwards we were invited for coffee by Neville and Mary (Clarinet) Thrower. I was in the same class as Neville at school, though he wasn’t Neville then of course: he was Thrower, or occasionally Chucker.

Alien experience at the Cathedral

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Rêve d’Herbert in the Cathedral Close

Pressure has eased somewhat, although we still remain pretty busy. Weather is a bit cooler, but not unpleasant. Gave my talk to the Norwich tourist guides on Thursday evening, and it went well after an initial panic when the projector wouldn’t work because it was switched to video instead of computer, something with my limited experience I didn’t know it could do.

About 15-20 guides present, including the unique and obscure Jude, who landed me in it in the first place. Surprisingly, she brought Roger with her. The talk lasted about an hour, with a few questions afterwards, and the guides were quite complimentary. I had been worried about speaking to them because of their vast knowledge, but I must have come up with one or two things they didn’t know.

One of them came up with something I didn’t know: one of the many John Pastons – this one a brother of Erasmus, Clement and Thomas – is buried in Huntingfield Church in Suffolk. Will have to go and look at some point. Did a bit of research on it when I came home.

I had managed to complete the brochures on Pastons in Norwich and Dragon Hall (a new, smaller flyer) by the time I gave the talk, and so was able to make them available. The Pastons in Norwich one was Vistaprint, and I had to manually correct an error in all 100 of them (my error), but managed to do it without spoiling the look. The other one I created myself on Pages. Left a few of them at the Library yesterday after attending a talk there by Dr Karen Smyth on Julian of Norwich.

This is Julian week, and after the talk (and a chat with Karen, who is speaking at Dragon Hall on the Pastons, and Louise Øhrstrøm, the Danish Julian expert who spoke at St Augustine’s) we went up and looked at a display of books on Julian. Interesting map of medieval Norwich.

March of the aliens

Afterwards Dot and I had lunch at Presto and had a long chat with Kathy and Roberto. In the evening we went up to the Cathedral Close for the opening event of the Norfolk and Norwich Festival, which was an amazing performance by a group of French artists unlike anything I’ve ever seen. They were rather like Iain M Banks’ Culture books, in that any attempt to describe what was going on would fall woefully short. Basically they were on stilts, shrouded in white, and used inflated costumes and lights to produce eerie, alien effects as they walked through the crowds, ending down on the Green with a kind of dance and launch of lighted balloons. Incredible. Dot and I were so intent on taking pictures that we lost each other in the crowds at one point, but were reunited under a lamppost by the Green. I am not easily impressed by spectacle, but this was totally exceptional.

Thursday had been a good day even before the talk at Central Baptist Church to the guides. It was one of those days when everything falls into place. After taking Dot up into the city I left the car at Kwik Fit for a slow puncture to be fixed, and while there noticed that they did windscreen wipers. Dot had broken one of hers, so when I returned with my car later in the day, she took hers, and they did it on the spot. Also arranged for BT to come and install Infinity (there’s a poem in that somewhere) and British Gas to do our annual service. And I got in touch with Andrew’s carer, had along chat and got her mobile phone number. Should be going over there on Tuesday with Dot, hopefully to catch the doctor on his ward rounds and to see Minster Lodge, which Andrew said would “do for now”. Deep shock.

On Wednesday I had a nice surprise when I visited the doctor: my blood pressure had dropped considerably, despite my not taking the additional pill that the doctor had been under the impression I was taking. He still tried to persuade me to take it, but I declined.

In the evening Dot and I went to the Christian Resource Centre to hear the coroner, William Armstrong, give a before-dinner talk. He is an old admirer of Dot’s (they were at City College together), and the two of them had a chat afterwards while I was talking to Régine Godfrey and her husband Peter, next to whom we had been sitting. She is French and writes for an Archant magazine; so we had something in common (complaints about page designers). I was also able to keep up with her remarks about French politics and the French words that she used on and off, so I was quite pleased. They live in the old hospital complex on St Stephen’s.

The talk was excellent too, as was the meal, though I think I prefer the usual format of having the meal first.

On Bank Holiday Monday we called to see Jessie for tea and cake, then I walked to the cemetery to get a bit of exercise. Dot joined me there, of course. A beautiful day, and I think we did well to keep clear of the crowds who apparently, and understandably, flocked to the coast. Today we’re awaiting the arrival of Linda to cut our hair. Much cooler now, with a bit of rain.

The women, not the drugs

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Dot in the grounds of the UEA during a recent walk. Can’t explain the sun.

Not a week that will trouble my top ten. For some reason I was feeling down at the start of it, and this was exacerbated when I got a good position in my chess game on Monday and, needing only a draw for a team win, proceeded to lose concentration completely and go under very quickly in a pawns-and-bishop ending.

The week “ended” with a visit to the doctor yesterday. My blood pressure has gone down – thanks to my daily walks – but he still thinks I need another pill, as well as some work on my arm/shoulder, which has been giving me trouble. At the moment I am resisting the additional pill (I didn’t take it this morning) but he thinks I’m taking it, which is not the best situation. He is working on statistics, which I don’t have the greatest faith in.

I also messed up Thursday, when I could have gone to see the new Archbishop at the Forum and/or the Cathedral, followed by Sam S playing with his band, The Upgrade, at the Waterfront in the evening. Both opportunities were squandered in typical fashion. Instead, I got a mysterious call from A Ethel’s number in the evening while Dot was at a governors’ meeting, and when I tried to ring back (the call ended after a couple of rings) it just rang and rang. After consulting with Angela, I went with Dot (who had just got home) to see what the problem was and found Ethel sitting on a chair in her petticoat, with the apparently broken phone in her hands and saying she hadn’t rung us. So that was fine. No, it really was.

In other news, I have managed to complete a flyer for the Dragon Hall day, barring a few minor additional bits of information. On Monday I went with Rob to the Norfolk Record Office for a progress meeting for the autumn exhibition there, and that went quite well. Lucy couldn’t go as she is in a bad way with another infection and a bad prognosis from her doctor.

My nephew Sam stayed with us for a couple of nights, but spent most of the time with his parents, of course, organising the purchase of a new laptop for Joy and a new gaming computer for Phil. It was Phil’s birthday on Tuesday: he is 61. I got him a CD he requested, some wine and a rather esoteric book about remote islands which took my fancy in Waterstones.

I’ve finished a biography of Leonard Cohen – I’m Your Man, by Sylvie Simmons – which was beautifully written and compulsive, as well as telling me various things about LC that I didn’t know. I had an idea about the number of women, but not the quantity of drugs. That’s where I went wrong.

I e-mailed the UEA lecturer who spoke to us about translation and attached my “translation” of the Lord’s Prayer from Aramaic. She asked me to do a guest blog on it, which can’t be bad.

Natural break … Just had our hair cut, and this evening we are participating in a Quiz and Chips Night as part of the Roger Mason-Liz French-George-and-Fiona team. Jude is setting the questions, so it should be interesting.

Rare ventures into the wintry world

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At last I’m feeling better: it was the longest-lasting stomach problem I can remember having, but it seems to be past. And to add lustre to this damp, cold and windy morning, my blood test results are normal, whatever that means. Well, it means that my PSA level is still negligible (0.1) and whatever caused my recent ailment wasn’t in my system a couple of days before, or couldn’t be detected by a blood test. Isn’t medicine fascinating?

Meanwhile, Dot seems to have got nearly all the Christmas presents, making a sweep through various outlets. I went into the city a couple of days ago and paid in church money, then bought a couple of presents, and some Christmas cards from the Norwich Christian Resource Centre. On the way up London street I bumped into Stephanie, who I hadn’t seen for a long time. So that was all good.

On another of my rare ventures into the wintry outside world I visited the supermarket with Dot. I want that noted. Inside, I’ve written a new article for my website and ordered a couple of Christmas things, as well as organising what Nicholas calls the Christmas play. It isn’t, of course.

A question of pressure

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Quoich Water, and plenty of it.

When we were in Scotland, the average temperature was around 6-8C. This week 26C has been recorded at Aviemore, and it was 24C yesterday at Aboyne, where it was snowing less than a week ago. But it’s warm and sunny here in Norfolk too, ever since they fixed the power cut. Odd, Holmes.

I’ve had a blood test followed by a visit to the doctor, with the result that I have an extra pill to lower my blood pressure. Good news on that front: it’s down to 152/94, which is a considerable improvement.

The power cut did rather hamper my compilation of a financial report for the DCC, but I suspect that my version of a financial report (description of how we’re doing) is not the the kind of thing required (forecast of what we’ll have at the end of the year). Yes, I could make a guess, based on what is coming in and what is going out, but since that could fluctuate wildly, I don’t see how it would be much use. I mean, what if we only had a few loaves and fishes?

In much the same news, I paid in quite a large number of cheques to the DCC’s bank account on Tuesday and then dropped some Paston flyers off at St Peter Mancroft Church, where I had a very pleasant conversation with a woman from Kingston on Thames (originally). I then popped into the Forum to see the Norwich 20 Group exhibition and ran into Hilary Mellon, who was pretending to be a steward. Also left some flyers at the Tourist Information office.

On the way home ran into swathes of Celtic supporters, up for an Adam Drury testimonial match. I observed on Facebook that I was OK, since my wife was born in Glasgow, which elicited astonishment from my nephew Sam, who didn’t know his aunt was Scottish. I think I’ll leave him thinking she’s Scottish – at least until he reads this.

On Wednesday evening we went to a Norfolk and Norwich Festival concert at St Andrew’s Hall which was notable on several counts. First, there was a long queue to get in, which in view of the fact that we had paid a considerable amount to get tickets about two months ago, is pretty miserable organisation. It also started nearly 15 minutes late and was about the shortest concert I’ve ever been to, finishing around 45 minutes later. I worked out that it cost us, as a couple, over £1 a minute.

The music – Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony – was good, by  Spira Mirabilis from Italy, who operate without a conductor and are extremely excitable, as you might expect. But I thought it poor return for the money invested and was rather disgruntled. We went home and watched an episode of Lewis, which was much better value.

During the power cut on Monday Phil and Joy lent us a flask of boiling water. I walked up to their house yesterday to return the flask (a convenient distance). Trying to keep my blood pressure down.

Beeps and compressions

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First stages of the top layer go down – QPR fan Mark in the background

Day Five, and Mark is downstairs again, finishing off the kitchen. He laid most of the kitchen and hall floor yesterday, and I have to say it looks pretty good. Today he’s doing the edges, then the bit under the stairs; after which, he’ll start on the study. He assures me he will definitely finish on Monday. We’ve established he’s a QPR supporter who used to live in Acton, where I worked between 1969 and 1972 on the Acton Gazette.

The whole floor process is painstaking. After laying marine ply with great precision, he covered the floor with some wet sticky stuff which had to be left to dry, then planed down to be even flatter than it looked already. Then a section of the floor was glued, and the strips of Spacia laid – again very, very precisely, starting with a long strip down the centre.

Yesterday I visited the surgery to get a blood pressure monitor attached to me by Mrs Minter (making it a Minter monitor). She said her parents knew the people who built our house before emigrating to Australia. Apparently their name was Nash. Doesn’t ring a bell, but the facts fitted. The blood pressure monitor is an extremely irritating device which reminds me of what mobile phones used to look like (and weigh like) before they became usable. Every half hour it beeps and then compresses my arm to get a reading. Frequently it doesn’t work, so it repeats the process. At night it doesn’t beep but does do the rest every two hours. I wasn’t aware of the compression, but it must have woken me around 6am, and I didn’t get back to sleep after that. Pretty annoying, and it’s also uncomfortable and makes doing certain things difficult. I estimate it’s put my blood pressure up about 30% which, considering I was told it was very high when Mrs Minter took it at the surgery, has probably resulted in an increase of about 40% over the last 24 hours. I reckon the only way you can get an accurate blood pressure reading is to take it without the victim knowing. I’m doomed.

Amid all the beeping and compressing I went to the inaugural meeting of the St Augustine’s Poetry Group last night, while Dot attended Developing Consciousness, which I guess is roughly the same thing without the rhythm. There were three of us at the poetry group: Stuart (whose baby it is), Nic Golding and myself. Surprisingly, it went quite well. Stuart and I read a few poems; Nic hadn’t brought any because of “printer problems”. We’re meeting again next month.

Blood and storms

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Bit of a nasty few minutes when I rang to get the results of my blood test. They have a new computer system, which is apparently confusing. The receptionist told me it was all normal, and the PSA was 3.1. This is normal enough in a person with a properly functioning prostate, but not at all normal in someone who hasn’t got one – like me, for example. After being stunned for a while, I was urged by my wife to call back, which I did and got the other receptionist – a more experienced one who checked with a nurse and told me it was actually 0.1. So that was Dot’s prayer answered straight away. That is normal for someone like me, and while I am still not well and on more antibiotics, it appears the cancer is not staging a comeback.

Not sure what is actually wrong. I felt pretty ill on Sunday and Monday and went to the doctor’s on Monday morning. He couldn’t find anything wrong, the blood is obviously OK, and yet I have this very tight and heavy feeling round my abdomen and feel tired and scratchy. Ah well, it’s probably a virus. I dragged Dot to the doctor with me, as she still gets dizziness. The doctor was reassuring and gave her some different pills. So we carry on functioning, but not on full power. Tonight the Tuesday Group comes round for a pre-Christmas meal, just about all the cards are sent and the presents wrapped.

I had to cancel my dentist’s appointment on Monday, and I am now awaiting a call back to fix a new one. Sam and Ellie came round yesterday with a card, and happily I had one ready for them. Ellie is now five, and a pretty bright little thing. The weather has been blustery, but not blustery enough to blow our rubbish away overnight. More storms are promised, however.

A significant centenary

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My mother in untypical pose on our Lea Francis on holiday in Devon, not long before my father died

My mother was born 100 years ago today, in Eaton village, just outside Norwich. She remembered seeing “the first car go up Eaton hill” and lived through huge changes – most significant of which for her was the early death of her husband at the age of 42, leaving her with three small boys to bring up. It triggered her move back from Coventry to Norwich (I preceded her by six weeks, staying with our former neighbours in Brian Avenue so that I could start school in the city).

Her father was a gardener. She was a teacher and lived to the age of 82. She was a very dutiful mother but in a way never got over her husband’s death. At home she was always there, and I appreciate most of all her decision not to oppose my going to London to live and work, though it would have been easy to put moral pressure on me to stay. I never asked her why.

Sadly she didn’t live to see her great-grandchildren, but she would have loved them as much as we all do. Dot and I went to Caddington on Wednesday – a beautifully sunny drive – to watch Oliver perform in his school concert (he led out the boys’ choir), to help put up the Christmas decorations and to have supper with David while they went to karate. Amy’s reading is coming on really well. We drove back quite late: I’m sure there’s something wrong with the car headlights, but I don’t know what. Today Dot has taken my car to Bradwell (near Yarmouth) for interviewing, so I hope she’s not too late back.

She spent Saturday in London with Anne, and thankfully a poor weather outlook turned out to be quite wrong. They went to the Degas exhibition at the Royal Academy, had lunch at Fortnum and Mason’s and then did a little shopping before catching the 21.30 train back. They got very cheap tickets – so cheap that they travelled first class, as befits first-class women.

The next evening we went to the Seagull again and I read half a dozen poems, as well as presenting a brown envelope that I hope contained a cheque to Lynn Mummery, the winner of the Two Valleys poetry competition, which I had judged. I was pleased to discover that she was quite a new writer, and I encouraged her to come to the next Seagull extravaganza in a couple of months’ time. We shall see.

The gas man cameth on Tuesday to service our central heating. He was a chatty guy who left his torch behind, but before that he checked all our radiators, fixed a couple of the valves that had broken and revealed how I could get the radiators in the living room warmer by shutting off a valve in the bedroom. You learn something new every day. He also replaced a pump in the airing cupboard which I believed had a sticking valve. I now suspect he may have replaced the wrong one, but hey, what can you do?

Off to the surgery in a minute to get my blood tested following a visit to the doctor last week. I’ve just finished seven days of antibiotics and was feeling quite good till I stopped taking them. Oddly, though, I think this may be a coincidence. I hope the blood will reveal something significant (but something that can be easily put right).