Tense

With the Christmas supermarket delivery due at around 7pm, R and I went off into Stratford this morning to source a few things I hadn't been able to order. I was waiting for an email detailing any substitutions or missing items in my delivery, and hoping that this would arrive while we were within striking distance of some shops, and as time went on and there was still no word from Ocado I began to get increasingly tense. 

While R started the trip with a walk along the river, I headed straight for the churchyard to try to entice some birds. In quick succession I discovered two things that ratcheted up my tension quite significantly: firstly, my little bag of bird bait was at home, in the pocket of a different jacket; and secondly, I'd forgotten to bring a spare battery. The first omission wan't fatal to my photographic prospects because there were plenty of birds rummaging around the churchyard - though some of them landed in front of me so expectantly, being by now quite well trained, that I felt horribly guilty about leaving them unfed. The second was a bigger problem, because as soon as I turned on the camera it began flashing a low battery warning, and after just thirty frames it shut down completely. So I was lucky that this Song Thrush had stood so obligingly still, in almost non-existent light on a gravestone under a yew tree, and allowed me to capture its portrait.

After walking, birds, and coffee, we went to Waitrose - still having had no word from Ocado - and rattled efficiently through our shopping list. Then we went for another coffee. Then, still having heard nothing, we set off for home via Stratford Garden Centre, where we dawdled through the purchase of a bucket of fat balls. We were scuttling back to the car through a sudden monsoon deluge when the Ocado email finally arrived, with the news of three substitutions on the order (one acceptable, two not), but also - horror of horrors - NO STILTON. So back we went to Waitrose, where we discovered that there's some kind of international Stilton crisis going on, but where luckily we were able to buy some from their very last (ever??) 2kg block. 

Christmas rescued, we finally got to return home and make lunch. I spent the rest of the afternoon wrapping gifts, and the early part of the evening cramming food into cupboards, fridge, and cool boxes. Then we ended the day in front of the television, watching the final two episodes of series two of Slow Horses on AppleTV. Having (equivocally) enjoyed the first series, I felt pretty let down by the second, which significantly reworked the plot of the book, and not to its advantage. 4/10: could do better.