The three wise men of Chamonix – aka two members of our tour group with the tour manager (left), in one of the main shopping streets of Chamonix. Seems long, long ago. Quite wintry here now, though today at least it’s dry. The shower room transformation is in progress: Dot was in the city for about three hours – partly with Carrie, partly buying me a long-arm stapler to facilitate my publishing activities. I now have 20 leaflets of Paston Poems ready to go, and this morning I printed out 20 A4 leaflets for the exhibition, giviing artists’ and poets’ notes.

Saturday was quite interesting. I was due to speak at a Christian Writers’ meeting at Lowestoft at 2pm – so I thought. I had a call at 11.10am telling me the meeting started then and went on till 2pm, including lunch. This had never been vouchsafed to me, but I offered to go immediately, which I did, arriving at high noon. I gave my talk to four people, then we had a quite nice lunch and chat. I arrived home around 5pm after dropping off Catherine Mapes at her home in York Street and then getting stuck unexpectedly in city traffic.

Another lunch out on Sunday – at church this time – followed by an afternoon catching up on television. It was too wet to do anything else. Ambient Wonder in the evening, with some interesting global input from Anna and Howard following their round-half-the-world trip. Sweet tea and something spicy in pastry featured strongly. All strangely effective.