The gas man cometh...

Readers of this rambling journal will know that for months now the gas fire in the room where we spend the greater part of the day (when we're not ploughtering around in the rain, that is) has not been functioning properly, so we've been less than toasty in a room that we're inclined to regard as a haven. This is the fire that the supplier cast a cursory look at and left us no better off because he wanted to get the ferry and go back to Airdrie or somesuch place to get his tea ...

At last today the parts had come and our gas man turned up bang on the dot of 8.30am, a fact that means that I got up about an hour earlier than is my wont. As you can see, he took the whole shebang to bits and fitted new whatsits and replaced the batteries and we said a prayer over it (no, we didn't, but we might have) and after a good two hours or more it came on again and burned properly and no, I didn't hug the gas man but I might have.

While he was busy I had to go down to the surgery to have bloods taken, courtesy of yet another former pupil - the one who tells me we can't chat till after a blood pressure reading because we tend to laugh too much and skew the levels. The longer we live here, the more I realise how much we've become part of the fabric of this town - and it's good. A Good Thing.

Apart from all this pre-coffee excitement, I managed to do a washing and dispose of it suitably, reach #2 in the Diamond League for a brief spell in my Italian exercises and cook a rather delicious pasta. And then the usual collapse to try to recover before choir, from which I'm just home.

And with that, I'm off. My own marmalade tonight, I think - I've not tried it yet!