Fairies At The Bottom Of The Garden

I’m in the car, so that I can head home at lunchtime to check on the dogs but also to check that we actually have a workman in the house.

When I visit, the dogs seem fine. As I opened the bedroom door MD lifted his head off the bed and opened one eye to acknowledge my presence but I had to prod the one with the dodgy ticker (gently) so that he noticed me. I also had to prod the workman who was languishing in his van. I suppose I should be grateful he's here at all.

I kept trying to talk to him about his toilet/sink plans but his phone kept ringing so I gave up. He's still working on the ceiling lights but does appear to have done a bit more of the shower plumbing. It would be stating the obvious to say he still has a huge amount to do.

Then we then had about 15 minutes of ball, with the dogs not the plumber, before I headed off back to work.

Then the bathroom shop ring me to say they have found us a toilet and will deliver it on Friday.

Apparently our plumber had rang them and told them it was holding his tiling up... erm, what tiling? But whatever, he’s persuaded them to have a look down the back of a big sofa somewhere and they now have one.

I am guessing they have pinched this off somebody else’s order and right now they are ringing that person to tell them the toilet they thought they’d reserved is currently out of stock...

The plumber then rings me himself, in triumphant mood, to also tell me about the toilet and to say he’s now finished for the day. Which is an impressively long day for him finishing at ten past four. He also assures me he’ll be there promptly at 8:30am tomorrow.

Everyone still assures us it will all be finished on Friday... so there you go. I believe in fairies at the bottom of the garden as well. Although if there are, we’ll have to apologise to MD who's been saying that (loudly) for years.

After work I go for a shower at the velodrome because obviously we don’t have one. Then I head off to my parent's place and then the match. Derby revert to type and fail to score in a 0-0 draw with Brentford. We recover afterwards in the Navigation.

(Tuesday 18^th October)

Barometer Dog

I wanted to do a short run this morning. Well I didn't want to but I felt the need to keep the mileage up. Problem is I needed to get up at 6am to do this and at 6am the rain was pounding against the window. Well perhaps not exactly pounding but not pleasant. You know it's not the weather to put the dog out when the dog doesn't move from his position on your feet on the bed even when your feet go to the back door to open it. Unless you're an all weathers version like MD, who will go out for a bark at the fairies at the bottom of the garden whatever the weather. Meanwhile our barometer dog, Doggo, stays put in the warm. I skip the run and instead join him and L back to bed for half an hour.

L claims to ‘crawl’ in to work from the gym. At least she did some physical activity, I crawled in from the bus stop. Of course it has now stopped raining and blue skies are abound, just in time for tennis. Damn. Hopefully it’ll rain and then I can a run later instead.

It doesn’t but it's a decent game and a much closer one. Particularly the second set which we have to move to another court to finish because we overrun. This court though doesn’t have floodlights and I try to strive for an honourable 5-5 draw at which point bad light would have surely stopped play but sadly fail, and go down 6-4.

L meets us in the pub where, in an about turn from last week, there’s nothing under 5% and the Abbot is back. There we are sipping our drinks just after 9pm, gearing ourselves up for one of their £5 curries when they start taking all the menus away. Hang on a sec, it says served until 10pm. They can’t go changing the rules just like that. A mad panic ensues and under pressure they rustle us up a couple of leftover Bhunas.

(Thursday 25th August)