Pieces

14.0C and mostly cloudy. Wind to 26 mph with gusts to 37 mph.

Apothecary7's day off. We went to Broughty Ferry and after a quick visit to the M&S Simply Food, and a shoe shop, we went to the Oxfam shop and much to my surprise I found book two in the trilogy I started recently. Last week I found book three in the Oxfam shop in Dundee.

After lunch we took Maeve the Deerhound for a walk. We went up to the church then continued out along the country road to Scryne before turning back. We turned left at Craigmill farm and went down the track to the shore road. We came back along the cycle path and round in a long loop, heading into Carnoustie then up the main road before turning along for home.

Later Apothecary7 planted up her sunflower, cosmos, and cowslip seeds in modules and has put them all in the greenhouse alongside the vegetable and salad seeds, some of which are germinating.

I phoned Scottish Gas and arranged for an experienced heating advisor to come on Friday and give us a proper quote for a new boiler. The man who came yesterday slipped his quote through the letterbox this morning without ringing the bell, and has also sent it by email ... twice. From memory it has a different total from the one he made up when he was here and at least one item has been added. When I spoke to Scottish Gas today I did explain how unsure he had been even of their quotation software on his tablet, how I felt that no real advice on boiler choice had been given, how long he seemed to take, and that I had no faith in his quote or the solutions he offered to potential installation issues. One idea he had was to run a gas pipe up the outside of the house, and another idea to create more space in the cupboard where the current boiler is sited was to knock out a fixed shelf with hammer blows (that would have left the internal sides of the cupbard looking as good as new !). There was no problem at all making an new appointment with an experienced advisor.

None of the few photos I took when we were out walking took my fancy, so I raided Apothecary7's stock of hand coloured paper for a piece of acrylic ink coloured tissue and got some pieces of beachcombed pottery from my box of new finds so I could get an indoor shot for today.

DMC-LX7 f/1.6 1/125 sec. ISO-80 5mm