Stop

I got up and went for my morning walk. It was bright and warm enough for a light jacket but not hot. As I was walking down Bushy Road, I noticed this sign on the verge where they are allowing the grass to grow long. It's supposed to help the wildlife. I didn't see any dumped rubbish. I wonder who it’s aimed at?

I always feel better when I have been out. I left it a little later than I should have done and was in a rush to get to the day's first meeting. But I made coffee and ate the overnight oats that PY prepared yesterday before I got on the calls.

Just before 10 a.m., the washing machine engineer turned up. This is the third visit. I explained the problem, and he did not seem fazed by having to unscrew everything to get to the back of the machine. I left him to it, and after about half an hour, he reported that there was a leak that would need a new part, which he had already ordered. I would like to know if this has been the problem all along and if it should have been uncovered on the first visit.

I got a call from the insurance company. I thought they were calling to schedule the follow-up repair, but they were using the existence of the engineer's call out to try and upsell me on more insurance. I declined the lot. While I was on the call, I received a text from the repairers with a scheduled date. I needed to move it, but they were very efficient. I also moved my dental appointment as I can no longer attend on Saturday. I felt terrible that it was being cancelled in the week of the appointment, but the person I spoke to was very relaxed about it, and I managed to get new appointments within a couple of weeks.

After work, we went to the quiz at The Alexandra. It’s a weekly quiz, although we’ve settled on once a month. PY was already seated and doing the picture part of the quiz when I arrived. We ordered fish & chips, and Jo & Mark arrived. We seemed to be very consistent this time. After our disappointing performance last time, our consistency made us better. We came joint 9th. If you can’t come first or second in this quiz, then 9th is the place to be because there’s a prize. We lost out on a tie-break. The answer to one of the music questions was Errol Brown, and the tie-break asked how old he was when he died. We guessed 78. He was 71.