
The plumber did sort the leak out, but he discovered that we need a new stopcock. Meanwhile, we have bought a new 48″ TV (Samsung 4K), a BT YouView replacement for our Humax box and a Sony CD player. We managed to get them all home from John Lewis in our car, though it was a much tighter fit than I thought it would be. It’s a taken few days, but I now have them up and running, together with our Apple TV, though the day-to-day operation is far from smooth. It goes without saying that we are not using any of them to their full potential, or even correctly.
The whole operation was so all-consuming that we totally forgot that we had tickets to see Brian Patten at Halesworth on Sunday before Dot had arrange to have an evening meal with Jessie, Roger and Debbie. Clearly Brian Patten couldn’t compete. I offered the tickets on Facebook and rang a couple of people, but sadly they went to waste. Still, we had a good time at North Walsham. Jessie’s cousin Margaret and the Vicar of Suffield came round to discuss family history, with particular reference to Lacey Pike, who was killed at Gallipoli. I was able to contribute a small amount, but not much. Lacey was Dot’s grandmother’s brother, unless I’ve very much mistaken.
As I write Dot is in Hull with Barbara, training some teachers there in Philosophy4Children. After she left yesterday (at about 3pm) I walked up to Revelation with a heavy bag of secondhand books, then continued to the church hall, where I found Carrie and Sophie. I was able to retrieve some cash from the safe and remembered at the last minute to check the meters: I need to speak to British Gas at some point soon.
From there I progressed to Halfords and bought a digital tyre inflator, which I felt we needed, and then proceeded home via the Riverside Path and The Close. Pretty tired at the end of all that. I found I’d done over 4 miles in the day. So I cooked myself a pie and watched Norwich lose 6-2 to Newcastle without looking at all bad, and Ireland and Scotland lose in the rugby world cup quarter-finals, the latter because of a very bad refereeing decision.
I forgot to mention that last Thursday, in the midst of my electrical challenges, I went up to the Theatre Royal to see Martin Laurance’s new exhibition (Dot decided to give it a miss). Very good selection of pictures; if I hadn’t just bought a television, I might have been tempted. Ran into Rupert Mallin, who was in rude health, and on the way out poet Hilary Mellon.