Fiona's Quiet Life

so. yes­ter­day after­noon out comes an engin­eer, tests the boiler,?ignition ?says he, i will order one and fit it tomor­row after­noon, and off he goes this morn­ing they phone and say it hasn’t come in and they will let me know when they have it.….so much for a con­tract with Scot­tish gas.

how­ever the log fire kept me nice and warm all yes­ter­day at a tem­per­at­ure of 20 degrees and this morn­ing my friend Orly and i had morn­ing cof­fee huddled in front of the gas fire in the lounge which is so effi­cient that i had to turn it down.….….…rest of the house is freez­ing though…leapt into bed with great speed last night.

and tomor­rows lunch with Nicola’s? In-Laws is can­celled as she has hurt her shoulder and the only avail­able appoint­ment is tomor­row at lunch­time. so my quiet life is nice and quiet again, for now.

and i actu­ally made a pot of soup yes­ter­day so my refus­ing to cook might be com­ing to an end.it was lovely.…even bet­ter today.

i have been order­ing from the iwoot web site it is my favour­ite site at the moment.

and i need a chair for the din­ing room so that more than one per­son can sit com­fort­ably in front of the fire but it needs to go with my old chair ( the one slightly vis­ible by book­case in photo) as it belonged to a favour­ite uncle , a new one would look too new so i looked on eBay, there is the per­fect one but has to be col­lec­ted from Sur­rey( approx 550 miles away) the ques­tion is, am i daft enough to drive there and back just for a chair, the answer is , know­ing me pos­sibly yes. much more fun than try­ing to arrange a van.

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didn’t do any work in the attic as the lad­der fell to bits so i spent a while fix­ing a some­thing to keep the hatch door closed so that i wouldn’t freeze or be inund­ated with spiders.….….it was just the bot­tom of the lad­der came away from the hatch so it now wont close when the lad­der goes up and the lad­der whizzes out at me when i try to get it down , i will fix it prop­erly tomorrow,

what i did do? Yes­ter­day after pro­cras­tin­at­ing for a year was . i put up a secur­ity cam­era over my front door so now i can see and hear people at the front of the house, i had thought it would be dif­fi­cult to do but it was very easy.

It is a good thing i have the nice new log fire because the boiler is kaput.…..not to worry i have a main­ten­ance con­tract, thank heav­ens, and a guy is com­ing out tomor­row to fix it.

My new cam­era over the door works well, friends wave bottles of wine at it and i let them in .

try­ing to make the din­ing room look more attract­ive by remov­ing all the excess fur­niture and the big com­puter, now it needs a chair to match the comfy one that is there, but it is leather and the match­ing one is hugely expens­ive and also it is 30 years old and a bit weather beaten .….……it lived in the gar­age for a while.….… how­ever eBay have some sim­ilar at a reas­on­able price so per­haps i will bid.oooh the excitement.

oth­er­wise nice quiet day. hav­ing had a couple of really bad nights i fell into a deep deep sleep this after­noon, find­ing it dif­fi­cult to wake up , so i shall go to bed , that is bound to wake me up.

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There he was yes­ter­day after­noon grin­ning up at me from the Obit­u­ar­ies page of the Brit­ish Med­ical Journal, it was nice to see him.….….he is the one with the wooly hat on.

We used to have a com­pet­i­tion to be the first to see a Christ­mas tree in a house window.….haven’t seen any yet. when i was a child we didn’t put it up till Christ­mas eve, now it seems to go on for weeks. I have a real live tree in a large pot in the garden, get­ting it in the house gets more dif­fi­cult every year.

i am sup­posed to be clear­ing out the attic at the moment, it is a low attic and i can­not stand upright in it so i am put­ting it off. it is not really a mess just still has things that i don’t need in it and some­where are the Christ­mas dec­or­a­tions .….….……maybe a quick game of speedy bubbles before.….…..

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OK , that’s it, no more clothes shop­ping i promise.….……in my defence it was the Enrico fact­ory sale and i am a size lar­ger than i was due to com­fort eat­ing after my mother died in June, after Basil died in Feb­ru­ary I hardly ate any­thing unless my neigh­bours forced me to, also hav­ing been stuck in the house all those years all my clothes are frumpy.…AND i promise?I will take lots of stuff to a char­ity shop this after­noon on the way to the dentist.

It is a beau­ti­ful sunny day just one degree above freez­ing and there is ice on the duck pond in the park.

Mean­while it is time I stopped buy­ing things for me to wear and star­ted buy­ing Christ­mas presents for every­body else. the Asber­gers suf­fer­ing grand­son Cameron woke his par­ents in the middle of the night wor­ry­ing about what i was doing at Christ­mas. what i am going to do is pretend?I am away and veget­ate all day in front of the telly eat­ing lots of usu­ally for­bid­den foods. I have received so many invit­a­tions for Christ­mas day and i am very moved by all the offers but i really really want to enjoy the day on my own. i like to be on my own. i may volun­teer to do some­thing use­ful on Christ­mas day but i think i am too selfish as the thought of guilt free veget­at­ing is very seductive.…..as opposed to the guilty veget­at­ing i do every other day.

why is it that with a per­fectly clear con­science .…..apart from the veget­at­ing thing.……i still don’t get a full nights sleep . even in the depths of the grand canyon hav­ing walked over 10 miles each day in rough ter­rain i still woke sev­eral times dur­ing the night.

time for a little light lunch…i am eat­ing my way through the freezer, due to buy­ing clothes not food.

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It was a great dinner/dance we raised over one hun­dred thou­sand pounds for Hope. it got off to a sticky start as all the roads round the build­ing … in the centre of Lon­don .…had been closed for some unac­count­able reason. our driver gave up an dropped us off near the ’ gher­kin’, there we were Abby, Esther and i run­ning through the streets of Lon­don in our ball gowns, it was fun.……one of the best pat­rons of the char­ity gave up and went home without his dinner.

we had , had a won­der­fully ‘girly day, try­ing on dresses and shoes and ear­rings. Esther had been feel­ing ill all day with a slight tem­per­at­ure so she wore a great big fleece over her lovely soph­ist­ic­ated dress.

there was an auc­tion to raise money , i bid on one of the things.…..a busi­ness class return flight to Las Vagas. suite at the Vene­tian hotel, tick­ets to Barry Manilow and a meet­ing with him back stage.….….…i did not bid nearly enough didn’t really want it but just thought i would start things off at ?1000.….….it went for a bout ?8000 i think. A prin­cess who was attend­ing took off one of her rings and added it to the things being auc­tioned, the win­ning bid­der then re-donated it to be auc­tioned at sotherbys.

we stayed till the end, Judith lost her coat which she had put in a corner while set­ting up, brought home some flowers and got back to the house ‚after drop­ping off Ian’s cousin and her friend, at 3. A.M

i am now in Chip­pen­ham with Nic, Chris and the wee boys.….……i gave them real cow­boy hats from vagas…the one who will be 2 next week ran round say­ing “yee Hah I’m a cool dude”

they have gone to bed and so shall i soon as Esther woke me up in the night as she wasn’t feel­ing well .Ah the joys of Grand-parent hood

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