As I mentioned last time, I’ve been putting together a birthday present for Oliver that consists of my story Little and the new year game illustrated by a variety of photographs, most of which I took specially. There is a red bus in it that is not the tour bus for Norwich, but it’s the only red bus I could find. Several other pictures are similarly approximations, but I’m pleased with them generally. Hope he likes it.

Won my first chess game of the season on Monday. Got a good advantage out of the opening, then gradually frittered it away until I was probably losing, but by that time he was down to about 30 seconds, and I won on time.

Dot has a new job: she’s a DSSO, which is a diocesan schools support officer: it’s for 28 days a year, and she has more than 20 schools to visit on a kind of pastoral basis. There are four DSSOs altogether, and I guess you could say she was headhunted for it, which is pretty good. Her career has been pretty much a huge success, unlike some people’s I could mention. Today she heard that she got an “outstanding” in the distance learning task she did for her other job as a church schools inspector. She’s quite a star, and I shall bask in her reflected glory. I do quite a good bask.

This week she’s also put some work in on the third string to her bow, which is her Philosophy for Children project in partnership with Barbara. She went down to Suffolk to see Barbara on Tuesday, and on Wednesday she had a meeting of the Norfolk Association of First and Primary Head Teachers (Nafphte), so it’s been a busy week for her. I feel positively inert in comparison, but I did join her earlier on Wednesday in meeting her Aunt Jessie at Wroxham and visiting her husband, who is in a home there. We then went on to Wroxham Barns, intending to eat there, but were put off by a coachload of scavengers and went instead to Divine, a new restaurant at North Walsham, where we had an excellent meal.

In the evening of the same day we both went to the DCC meeting at Horsford, giving Howard G a lift. Howard joined us from the Cambridge train, and the next morning was flying from Norwich to Manchester and back. He’s just returned from a trip taking in Denmark, Finland, Russia, Kazakhstan, Uzbekhistan, China, Tibet and Nepal. Howard makes Usain Bolt look as though he’s standing still.

Went to see Dr Hampsheir yesterday for some precautionary antibiotics for our trip to Switzerland. I’m still catheterising daily, and I didn’t want to be stuck halfway through the holiday with an infection. He was very helpful, and I got the impression he would have prescribed me just about anything.

Yesterday was Oliver’s sixth birthday – we chatted to him on the Web – and today is David and Vicky’s tenth wedding anniversary. We’re going down to stay with them tomorrow and Sunday. After a couple of nice days it’s turned wet and overcast again, so Dot and I went to see The Duchess at the cinema this afternoon: it would have carried more conviction if someone could have made Keira Knightley’s hair look less like a misshapen ball of wool, but it wasn’t bad. Some interesting locations, among which I’m sure were North Norfolk, in the Salthouse area, but I could be mistaken.

I’ve put a bit of commentary on my website, but I’m getting to the point where there’s not much more to say on the subjects of speed and climate change. Some bandwagons are impossible to divert. I have however introduced a LATER slot on the home page! How innovative is that…