Home Diary 2013

October

On Tuesday 1 Teresa and Jay flew off to Portugal for a week, taking advantage of the start of off-season rates before the weather deteriorates significantly. Once again staying in the convenient villa Solmar in Albufeira, they visited all their old familiar haunts plus a few new ones. The villa is only a ten minute walk to the beach or town centre, but they also made good use of the very cheap local bus services to make the occasional excursion further afield. Despite a mixed forecast, the weather was kind – warm and sunny except for one showery day. She has posted some of her pictures here and here.

On Wednesday 2 Roger resumed indoor bowls at Littleton, followed by another game on Monday 7.

In addition, Roger had a number of chores to keep him busy while Teresa and Jay were away: Jay wanted a car cover from Lidl’s to keep the frost off on her early morning starts for skating, Teresa wanted a kitchen rail to hang pans on, Jay’s bike had a puncture and needed a new inner tube, the lawn needed mowing and Teresa’s plants required watering every day.

On Saturday 5 there was a bowls club working party to begin renovation of the wooden sheds where equipment for the green is kept.

On Sunday 6 Roger went to see Helen in Oxford, where they spent most of their time in the Ashmolean museum. Previous visits had been before the modernisation project had been completed, or had been restricted in time, but we were able this time to see the full range of collections, including several we had not seen before.

An added bonus was a display on the forecourt by the National Youth Folklore Troupe of England, who performed some lively traditional dances to jigs and reels provided by a small string band.

We watched the dancers in the beautiful autumn sun for a while, before having lunch in the nearby Giraffe restaurant, which was noisy and busy. By the time we finished, we had barely ten minutes to look round the nearest bookshop, before walking to the station with a spare suitcase of Helen’s with stuff for her flat. It was our bad luck that the dropping off car park was closed for the day, so we dragged the suitcase (at least it had wheels) all the way on foot. By dint of sprinting the last 100 yards, Helen caught her train with literally seconds to spare, and Roger headed back to Toddington.

Roger drove to Birmingham airport on Tuesday 8 to collect Teresa and Jay: awkward parking but, as luck would have it, our timing was spot on and we were soon on the way back to Oxford to drop Jay off, thence back home, all pretty tired by then.

On Saturday 12 we presented ourselves for our winter flu jabs.

Roger was busy during the week of 14 auditing the bowls club accounts.

A quieter end to the month, with Roger suffering for a week or two with a sore chest brought on by one or other of his more energetic activities, while Teresa developed a bad back, for no obvious reason: both tried to rest their afflictions as much as possible.

Home Diary 2013