There is a football in the middle of our lawn. It has been there a few weeks now, nay months. Our John was kicking it about sometime over the summer and there it stayed. I might occasionally give it a gentle tap, moving it.
The football is now surrounded by fallen leaves. Unaware of any symbolism here although I could make something up. “Permanent impermanence”. Let it roll.
Autumn is very much out there. After the rain of the weekend the days ahead look clear. The relevance of this is that Thursday is golf day. Whilst an arthritic hip is currently keeping me off the greens I do join the golfers for dinner afterwards. If it rains we just do the dinner and over the winter it seems likely that it will be mostly just dinner. We are a crowd of fair weather golfers. I expect the hip sitch to be sorted and should be back on the fairways next season. The occasional use of a buggy should allow me to keep my hand in.
The leaves fall now in flurries. At the end of the summer it was the occasional leaf, drifting by my window, but now they come down in groups. Teams. Branchfuls. At some stage we will need to decide on the optimum time for lawn leaf clearance. This is important. Do it too soon and you do it twice or more. Leave it too late and the lawn gets damaged.
The other news is that the dishwasher is still broken. Error code F11. Drain pump. Can’t see any blockage. THG has reached out to our dishwasher repair man so see how it goze. I reckon it’s only our second dishwasher in this kitchen in oo maybe twenty years so perhaps it is coming to the end of its useful life. See what dishwasher repair man says. I have visions of a bloke turning up in overalls purposefully clutching a spanner.
Tis a Monday morning according to every calendar I have looked at. Google calendar. Plus it says so on the top right hand corner of my macbook screen. That’s two sources, both being global tech giants (behemoths?), agreeing on this subject. Plus my native wit and intuition brought me to the same conclusion, knowing as I do that yesterday was a Sunday. Important 🙂
There is nothing in the calendar for today but there are a number of items on the jobs list that might well get done. Fixing the catch on the cupboard door in the hallway. It’s where THG keeps some of her shoes. Fixed it once but obvs didn’t do a good enough job. Will put more effort into it this morning. It should be a simple matter of glueing the magnetic catch in properly.
I also have a tool tidy to make in the garage and a little shelf to hold drinks next to the sofa in the shed. Not particularly important jobs but little things that all add up to a better overall experience. The shed is getting a major investment in lighting which will not be ready until mid December. You will have to wait to see what that is.
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I was minded to play Autumn Leaves by Edith Piaf. I have it on repeat. Seems to be an appropriate tune for the moment, not that I am in a particularly melancholic mood. It is certainly relaxing. Just felt one of those shudders of relaxation go through my shoulders. Moved on to La vie en rose.
Doesn’t take much leaning back with eyes closed to imagine you are in Paris. Reality is Paris doesn’t live up to the romantic image brought up by these songs. Doubt anywhere does. Except maybe New York which is a totally mad place.
Been giving some thought as to where to go on our next big trip. Got tons of Avios. Half thinking maybe Hawaii followed by somewhere else on the way back. India? Needs a lot of careful consideration. We haven’t done the Pacific nor the sub-continent. Does it matter? No. I dunno. Plenty of time to think about it as we are looking at 2026. 2025 is already spoken for!
Moved on to Jacques Brell. Ne me quitte pas. One of the all time greats. Don’t really get on with most of his other stuff but that one song just blows everything else away.
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You may or may not know I cancelled my Virgin broadband account and am returning their router. Got an email from them identifying two routers I needed to return. Sigh. I returned one of them years ago when they sent me the new one. So I’ve just spent an hour trying to get through to them to sort this out. I finally got a WhatsApp message telling me to ignore the email and just go ahead and send the one back.
Now just waiting for Amex to call me. I’m trying to buy tickets for Jeff Lynne’s farewell gig in Hyde Park next summer using the Amex presale facility. Unfortunately the Amex ain’t working on their website!!! Amex usually has a very quick customer service response but on this occasion it’s taking ages. A lot more than the ten minutes for a ringback their message said. Presumably lots of people trying to do the same thing. Finally spoke to Amex who said it was the crap ticketing site at fault.
Anyway all’s well that ends well and THG and I are on our way to see Jeff Lynne next summer. Diamond VIPs us both 🙂