:: birthdays

Having been pretty slack about sending out birthday greetings this year I was touched at how many people remembered mine! Presents included matching teacosy and scarf, fromm Pinky and Mum respectively. The scarf, bought in Dunedin (I assume) is light purple and the teacosy, bought in Auckland, is red, but they're made of the same kind of yarn, a wild hairy stuff. All very apt for today, when we got a fierce blast of weather from the Arctic. Lots of places got thick snow (including the south-west of England), but we just got sleet, which is miserable stuff.

Many thanks to everyone.

It's Bertie's birthday tomorrow - he'll be eight, which makes him about my age now. He's going quite grey and getting very grumbly and set in his ways. I was cursing him this morning - how delicious it would have been to have sat there reading as the sleet lashed the windows. How undelicious it was to struggle into several layers of woollies and waterproofs and trudge around the town.

Bizarrely the firm that looks after the gardens of the flats across the road chose today to turn up. They were trimming and mowing for a few hours in the worst of the weather. Otherwise it was just the dogwalkers out and about.

I'm still having plumbing woes. The main woe now is trying to get anyone to sort out my plumbing woes. It's frustrating because I'm pretty sure I could do it myself, but I'm too scared in case I a) bring down the ceiling (header tank) or b) blow the place up (timer clock). So I'm reduced to phoning the Recommended Plumber every day.

"So, do you think you can come this afternoon?"
"Weeeeellll, I might be able to get over before half three, but to tell you the truth I'm strugglin. We're so busy just now, and I've got to get these jobs finished before Christmas."
"What? You mean to say that even if you can come round and look at mine, you won't have time to do the actual work?"
"If I could just come round in the evening ... it's getting there by half three that's the problem."

So anyway now he's coming round on Monday evening, my day off. I suspect I will be very, very lucky to get anything done before Christmas. The alternative is to ring 500 other plumbers, who will all be too busy except for the one who has messed up so many jobs he doesn't get any repeat work. So as it's not urgent I'll just let the Recommended Plumber work through his To Do list.

In the meantime maybe I should drop some dye in the header tank so the icicles in the honeysuckle are nice festive colours.