January

We welcomed in the New Year in our traditional way, albeit a couple of hours early, our main celebration being a reprise of our Christmas lunch on New Year’s Day.

Helen had invited Jay to have a day out in London on her birthday (Friday 2), including a visit to a large IKEA store, where they also had lunch (see Jay’s, below).

The Christmas decorations came down on Sunday 4 and our tree joined the growing pile at the recycling point at the garden centre just over the road.

The following day we finally gave up on our old washing machine: we had brought it with us when we moved, so must have had at least 15 years’ use out of it, though it had become increasingly choosey about the programmes it was prepared to run and had started to complain noisily during its spinning – the final time finishing with a very loud clunk, after which we found the drum no longer moved freely. The new one arrived on Friday 9, while Teresa was out for the day seeing Helen in London. We had fondly imagined a seamless transfer of the new machine into the existing plumbing, but it was not to be. Our old one was hard wired into a switched and fused wall socket, and apparently nowadays no-one but a qualified electrician can even touch such a dangerous arrangement, and we were also told, erroneously I believe, that removing the bonded-on plug supplied with the machine would invalidate the guarantee. So we were left to do the installation ourselves. The most immediate problem was to move the machine at all, because the very grippy rubber feet prevented sliding it across the floor, and the space for it was under a shelf with about a one inch clearance which precluded walking it across the floor. Roger was racking his brains for inspiration, when Teresa returned from her trip to London bearing a packet of metal jam-pot lids for her jam-making. In a light bulb moment we popped a tin lid under each foot, and the machine slid neatly into position as easily as if it were on wheels. The actual connexion was quite manageable after that and luckily we had a spare normal socket to provide the power.

The annual bowls club dinner was on Friday 23 at the Rising Sun on Cleeve Hill near Cheltenham. As last year, a well attended and very successful evening, with a good meal for a reasonable price: click to see the menu (left). By far the most popular choice seemed to be the Christmas dinner, and the one down side was that those who chose the other options had to wait a while for them to arrive. However, as a bonus, we received an unexpected cheese course and the coffee was, apparently, complimentary.

On Saturday 24 we again participated in the annual RSPB’s birdwatch exercise – eyes glued to the garden for an hour. Once again the birds seemed reluctant to show, but I suppose in the end we just about recorded a typical selection, though the family of blackbirds, regulars in the past, failed to appear.

Home Diary 2015