Friday 7 July 2023
It’s raining, windy and chilly-looking but is apparently 14°C and it’s not even 07:30. I have just been watching a hare in the garden, happily munching away at our lawn. We think it’s a young hare as it doesn’t seem to have yet realised the perils of so often being so close to our house. It’s very sweet and I can see its ears blowing in the wind.
No midges (too windy) and water likely just a drippy-trickle, but hopefully plan – what are we on now, plan T? Plan U? Anyway, hopefully plan T will work out on Sunday, which might then mean turning the water off from the spring to the tank for three days with a big Ta-Dah event on Wednesday (incidentally, the day before I’m likely to be going to London for a few days, where there will be water, sigh).
Chris was out from about 08:30 to 16:00 yesterday. He only went out to get a tyre replaced (not a slow puncture, but a corroded valve) and to pick up a few bits of shopping. In the end, it took him at least an hour and a half to get to Innerleithen (can be about forty minutes) due to very lengthy diversions in directions neither of us had been before, after a (not serious) road traffic accident. It was established his car didn’t need the new tyre, but it did need a new valve. The valve would come from Galashiels, the route being the one Chris had taken there, ie very lengthy diversion. The valve eventually arrived. Wrong valve. You can see where this is going. He ended up in Innerleithen until lunch time and then went on to Peebles to buy diesel, which after such a long detour he knew he’d need yesterday rather than waiting until the next trip into a town, and he had a few other things to do/buy in Peebles. He could have done most things in Galashiels or Selkirk were it not that King Charles and Camilla were visiting those two towns so various parts of the towns were closed off.
As a result of Chris’s trip, he went to the fishmonger and butcher and has promised me a breakfast of scallops and bacon. I was about to say that we’d never do that in London, but we have. It’s a favourite treat breakfast, or in fact favourite food combination to be eaten any time of day. Very decadent and a lovely treat. For the past few days, I’ve been getting up and working earlier with a view to a catch-up nap later. I have used the extra time well but the snoozing hasn’t been forthcoming. This morning, I have already looked longingly at the huge beanbag in the corner of my office, wondering whether it’s too early for a nap. It is, I know, but even so it is very tempting.