Thursday 18th November

                Verity is finally back in the village – though I’m not sure exactly how long she’ll be around – full of tales of Spanish woe and London excitement.  She dropped round for coffee, bringing with her a box of the biscuits she’d bought at the deli.

                “They’re rather good,” she said, dunking a chocolate cherry cookie into her coffee.  “I didn’t know you had it in you!”

                I did point out that she didn’t need to buy them, I could easily make a few extra for her.

                “That’s not good business practice!  This way you make an extra sale, a little extra money, and the three people behind me in the queue in the deli heard me singing their praises.  The biscuits, that is, not the people in the queue... Anyway, who knows, they might have bought some too!”

                I had to concede the point and she continued to fill me in on Max and Spanish hospitals and the parties she’d been to in London in the last few days.

                “Spanish hospitals are very clean,” she admitted, “but they all speak Spanish.”

                This should not have come as a surprise to her.  “Didn’t anyone speak English?”  I knew Verity only spoke the one language fluently, and I didn’t think Max’s business Spanish ran to ‘my pee bag needs changing’.

                “Well, sort of, but never the first person you found, and even when you did find one, they had a strong accent.”

                This seemed a somewhat unfair criticism but there was no telling Verity.  The biggest thing in favour of Spanish hospitals, it seemed, was the lack of large wards, but maybe Max had ended up in a private hospital.  It would certainly explain why it had all cost so much.

                “And the party last night!” Verity went on, full of excitement.  “It was all to do with that charity I’m involved with, you know the one, it was technically a fundraising do with canapés and champagne at £50 a head, plus a raffle and a tombola and so on, but I was chatting to the social secretary and she’s asked me to join the events committee.  Lots of do’s to be organised at places like the Savoy, maybe a chance to be in the second circle at next year’s wedding –”

                “What wedding?” I interrupted.

                “Will and Kate’s, of course.”  She gave me a pitying look.  I’d brought it on myself, I suppose.  I don’t really see the wedding as having much impact on life here in the village.  Verity sees things rather differently.

                Unsurprisingly, she had to dash.  She leads a very exotic life at times.  But we have our own little dramas.  There was a phone call later from an angry advertiser about the newsletter.

                “I haven’t received a copy of this month’s newsletter!” they rumbled down the phone.  “I’m supposed to get a copy of each issue my ad is in!”

                I flicked through the latest issue and told them that their ad wasn’t in this month’s, so that would be why they hadn’t received a copy.

                “Well, I’m paid up until January, so now I expect an ad in February too.  You can’t just not run my ad because you don’t feel like it.”

                I got the impression that they’d been annoyed by something else previously, because I couldn’t quite see why they would be so angry about a missing ad in one month’s edition, but I assured them I  would look into it and adjust our records accordingly.  Naturally, when I checked the records, if you can dignify the collection of bits of paper that I have with such a title, the advertiser was only half right.  They’d paid up to January but they’d indicated that they didn’t want an ad in November’s issue.  I’m going to wait until tomorrow to let them know, though.  Give them a chance to calm down a bit.

Wednesday 17th November

As predicted, the weather has been grey and/or wet and miserable all day, but at least I don’t live in Cornwall.  They’ve clearly had even more rain and if anyone wanted to get into or out of the county, they’d be hard-pressed.  I wouldn’t even recommend making the trip by boat, as there is talk of gales.

So, remaining in again, I trawled the internet.  I am getting better at Facebook, though Celeste still complains that I don’t understand the difference between writing on her wall and writing a status update and has threatened to come home and give me lessons.  George has been more laid-back about it: ‘Cool, Mum, welcome 2 FB’ was written on my page from him on the second day, and I haven’t heard from him since.  

But I have also been spending time looking at local pages and blogs and was somewhat irritated to find one today that says the local council is putting up parking charges.  Now, 10p an hour is not much extra to pay, in the grand scheme of things, I suppose, but I was rather more narked to see that they are going to start charging for parking in the evenings – when the town is already half-dead anyway – and on Sundays, presumably to nab the people visiting the outlet mall who park in town and then (shock horror!) walk to the shops.  And although it doesn’t affect me directly, I was a little surprised to see that they are thinking of charging the blue-badge holders.  What with the clamp-down on obtaining a blue-badge in the first place, I’d have thought those who managed to claim one would have been in even more need of flexibility when parking.

Will it stop me from going into town?  Probably not.  I don’t go in that often as it is, trying where possible to buy from the shops in the village, which supports them rather than the supermarkets and also saves the cost of petrol while giving me some exercise.  Some things I have to drive for, such as the doctor (who has his own car park) and the dentist (who doesn’t).  And of course, the parking in town is not nearly as expensive as the parking in the city, which has an hourly rate of approximately three times that of the town.  We still pay it, though it does make the park and ride look quite attractive these days.

Tuesday 16th November

                Given that I now have a party to go to and some house guests on Friday night, I thought it might be an idea to tidy up a bit.  It’s a funny thing how my daughter’s room remains relatively tidy no matter what happens in there – not that Ronnie was having late night parties or anything – but my son’s room always looks as though as bomb has hit it (and it’s not an unpopular place).  George seems to have a knack for distributing the smallest number of things over the maximum number of surfaces, and once he’s done that a few times, you’re left wondering where to start.  However, I think I’ve got it more or less under control now, after a day spent up there rearranging cables and stuffing boxes into cupboards.  I’ll vacuum and polish later in the week when there’s less time for the dust to spoil it before someone has to sleep in there.  

Fortunately the weather has been foul today, so it was no hardship at all to stay home.   Fog apparently cleared in the local towns but of course, because we’re a village, the microclimate or something meant that we had a grey haze over the entire day.  I had wondered about getting Colin to tidy up the sort-of cut he did last week, but once I’d decided not to leave the house, that was removed from the plan.  And Verity, in case you’re reading this and worrying about Hedonism, when I say ‘I decided not to leave the house’, I meant by car.  Of course I walked round the corner to feed the cat!

I’m hoping the weather is a bit nicer tomorrow because not only does my hair need its trim, but a party is a good excuse for a shopping expedition.  The forecast does not look promising, however.

Monday 15th November

                It was a really cold start to the day again and I could probably have done without Chloe coming and banging on the door, telling me to come out and get some fresh air.  However, she does it in such a charming way that it’s difficult not to join her.  The windscreens were all still coated in ice and Chloe warned me that the roads were a bit slippy in places.  I wrapped up with scarf and gloves in addition to tracksuit top and bottoms and we set off. 

                Naturally, after a while, with a little running thrown in to augment the walking, I’d worked up a serious sweat.  We were hooted at one point as some of the school-run folks headed off to their various destinations, but that was probably Chloe rather than me, to be honest.  Red head or not, she’s more likely to attract a wolf-whistle than I am.

                When we got back, Chloe was quite keen to practise some squats and press-ups, but I was rather more enthusiastic about a cup of tea, so we compromised and had a cup of tea first, using up the rest of the time she had with a few lunges.  Chloe thinks I’m improving and asked how often I’d been going to the gym in the meantime.

                “Gym? Me? Umm...”

                At which point, I got a general rebuke that I could look forward to receiving each week if I don’t get some other exercise in the course of the week.  Chloe then shot off to see Jenny, who had asked about having some sessions with her.

                Verity phoned a bit later.  “Did you get my message?”

                “What message?”

                “That although we’re back in the country we had to stay in London for a few days, so could you carry on feeding Hedonism for a bit longer?  Didn’t he tell you?  Bloody men!  Poor Heddy, he’ll be starving.”

                Thinking of the overall size and shape of Hedonism, I privately doubted that but reassured Verity that I had fed Hedonism on Saturday morning, so he’d only gone one day without additional food.  She got off the phone quite quickly (for her) so that I could go and ensure that Hedonism hadn’t faded away to nothing.  As the saying goes, fat chance!

                I stayed in for the rest of the day.  I should probably have done some work in the garden, which I don’t seem to have touched for ages, but frankly it was so cold, I couldn’t face it.  There was only one other item of interest, and that was an invitation from Delyth to a birthday party on Friday.

                “I’m sorry it’s such short notice,” she said.  “I was checking on the replies at the weekend and noticed you weren’t on it.  And then I realised that when I’d sent the invites out, I hadn’t really known you.  I mean, I knew you by sight, as it were, but I didn’t Know you.”

                I assured her that I knew what she meant and mentally went through my calendar for the week.  Friday evening was clear so I told her that the OH and I would be glad to come.

                “I don’t suppose you’d be able to put up one or two of my guests who are coming from further afield, would you?  Otherwise they run the risk of drinking and driving...”  She did at least sound apologetic asking this.

                “I’m sure that’ll be fine,” I told her.  Liberty Hall, this.  The kids certainly seem to think so, why shouldn’t everyone else!

Friday to Sunday - 12th to 14th November

                You know how sometimes you just don’t seem to have enough hours in the day, no matter how well you try to organise things?  I’ve been having one of those times.  And it’s meant that I was just too tired on Friday evening and on Saturday evening to update the blog.  So for anyone who cares, my apologies.

                As I’m sure you remember, on Friday I was scheduled to head back down to the hairdresser’s, to have the colour put back in my hair and have the cut tidied up a bit.  That is a problem with short hair, it can look terribly untidy terribly quickly, but then my hair looked pretty untidy beforehand anyway, so perhaps I shouldn’t worry about it.

                Ronnie came with me to do a little pottering round town, which probably meant buy a magazine and then sit in a cafe for a couple of hours reading it, or so I thought, and we arranged that we would rendezvous at the salon two hours after the appointment started.

                Which would have been a perfectly reasonable plan had it not been for the power cut.  I had only been there for about a quarter of an hour, and this had enabled Shebnam to plaster my hair with the chemical concoction required to render it red again, when the lights in the salon suddenly went out.

                “Has someone forgotten to pay the electricity bill?” I asked, joking, thinking maybe someone had just leant against a switch somewhere.

                But within minutes the entire salon staff were rushing up and down the high street, trying to get information.  No electricity anywhere, it seemed.  The whole area was affected, which meant commerce pretty much ground to a halt.  No power meant no tills, no credit-card machines, no phones in many cases, no lights for shoppers to see what they were buying, no computerised stock-price system for the supermarkets.  I would like to be able to say that it brought out the good old English Dunkirk spirit in all of us, but there was rather a lot of bad-tempered swearing about cuts and the bloody government, as if they had anything to do with it.

                Finally, I caught Shebnam’s attention and asked how long I should have the gunk on my head before all my hair fell out.  She had had a severe sense-of-humour failure.  “We can’t do anything, there’s no power, don’t have a go at me,” she snarled.

                I tried again.  “I know all that.  I’m just a bit concerned about what might happen if we leave it in too long.”

                She pulled a face and semi-dragged me to a basin.  “It’ll have to be cold water,” she told me with what I thought was a certain amount of malicious glee.  “There’s no hot water without the electricity.”

                I winced at the thought, told myself I could bear and prepared to grit my teeth.  My god, gallons of cold water pouring over your head for several minutes at a time is COLD!  Then, not satisfied with my whimpering, she put some shampoo or conditioner or something to repair the damage done by the chemicals and poured more cold water over me.  I was going to ask for a cup of coffee or something to try and warm myself up from the inside, but remembered that kettles in this modern age would be electrically-powered.

                Naturally enough, without electricity the hairdryers weren’t working either, and Colin, who cut my hair this time, towel-dried it to the best of his ability, but it’s not the same.  And furthermore, it meant he wasn’t able to check the final cut the way stylists normally do, drying your hair and then trimming millimetre-long sections to stick to your cheeks and into the curls of your ear and to drop down the back of your neck.  So at least I missed out on the need for a shower immediately afterwards, but it was clear later that it was not Colin’s best work.

                Ronnie turned up part-way through the trimming. 

                “It’s a pity the electric’s off,” was all she would say.  Pity wasn’t the word I would have chosen, but we were in public.

                Finally we were able to leave.  Fortunately, I had enough cash to pay for the colouring and told Colin I would be back in a few days for him to finish the cut.  He blanched a little but decided not to argue.  I can be very determined when I choose.

                The power-cut had remarkably enough not affected the village, just the town centre.  Ronnie put the kettle on while I went upstairs and dried my hair properly.  When I came down again, she rather shyly presented me with a box of chocolates, the Thornton’s Continental mix.  “It wasn’t quite what I wanted to get you,” she said, “but they weren’t sure of the prices of things and they couldn’t look them up without the electrics.  It’s just to say thank you for having me for the last little while.”

                I gave her a hug.  “You really didn’t need to,” I told her.  “And for what it’s worth, these are my favourites!”

                You might have thought that was enough for one day, but we were in the middle of relaxing in a warm house with a working TV and working lights, when the phone rang.  It was someone called Sarah who had got my number from Jenny.

                “I hope you don’t mind me asking, but we’re desperate.  Front of House is at least as important as the backstage crew, because if people can’t get in, they can’t see the show, can they?”  She sounded a little as though she was trying to convince herself, rather than me, because the line was frankly rather feeble, but I let her off.  But the upshot was, a local singing group were doing a performance of Calamity Jane and were very short-handed in the Front of House department.   I assured her that I would be able to help, and managed to say hello to the OH as we passed on the driveway.

                The show was popular and Sarah had been quite correct when she said they were short-handed; moments of extreme boredom interspersed with minutes of almost sheer panic, we were so inundated.  But eventually the audience left the school hall and we were able to tidy up.  Which in itself took such a long time that I really didn’t feel like writing the blog when I got home.

                Which was a shame, because having spent Saturday morning trying out some new biscuit recipes and setting a casserole in progress, I was just about to take Ronnie to the station via Verity’s so that she could leave a note, when the phone rang again, and it was again Sarah.

                “You were absolutely fantastic last night.  I don’t suppose you’d be able to help out again today, would you?”

                Before I knew what I was saying, words of agreement were spouting out of my mouth, and it seemed I had agreed to do Front of House for a matinee and an evening performance.  There was in theory a long enough gap between the two shows for me to come home and cook tea for the OH, but in the end, there was some sort of catastrophe on one of the nearby main roads which meant that most of the string section of the orchestra/band hadn’t arrived by the start-time listed on the ticket, and a couple of cast members had only just sprinted through the lobby.  We delayed starting for a while, and a trombone player tried to keep some of the children quiet by taking requests and making generally silly noises on his instrument, but the late start meant a late finish and no time to go home before it would have been time to come back again.  I phoned the OH to break the news to him.

                “That’s all right,” he said.  “I’ll go down the pub for something.  There’s some football on that I can watch, see if Liverpool are onto something or not.”

                He seemed far too happy about that arrangement but at least it took the pressure off me.  And I got back so late and so tired again, that the blog was postponed again.  Apparently Liverpool are not onto something and Verity phoned, but at that time of night it didn’t seem appropriate to phone her back, and she hasn’t yet tried phoning today.  I’ve been having a quiet day, feeding the Christmas cake and tidying up Celestine’s room now that Ronnie has vacated it.  To be honest, I don’t mind not having to deal with the whirlwind that Verity can be and I’m sure she’ll call again.