Hmm

Here it is three o'clock in the afternoon and I'm only just putting finger to keyboard.  I had fully expected to be doing this five hours ago but, just as I was about to take the dog for her morning walk in the park, the Old Bat asked if I would have time to drive her to her oxygen treatment session.  The wind had got up a bit and she does find that trying.  I suspect that a lot of the problem is lack of confidence rather than a probability that she will be blown over, but either way she needs my arm as well as her stick.  I do wonder just how long it will be before she is unable to leave the house without me.  As it is, these days she only goes on her own on Tuesdays - to the supermarket - and Fridays - to the MS centre.  The rest of the week her car sits in the garage costing me money.  I suppose in a good week it might be driven almost as far as 15 miles but at least it provides an illusion of independence and dignity.

What I had thought to burble on about this morning was an obituary I read in the paper of a Chinese chappie who had spent 70 years studying one book.  But I've changed my mind.  Maybe tomorrow.  Unless I am acting the Red Queen: "Jam yesterday, jam tomorrow but never jam today".

I have long held that the city of Brighton & Hove, despite its quarter million population, is really little more than a village.  There are so many family connections, entanglements and entwinements that it can be positively dangerous to run down anybody in front of a third person.  That third person is just as likely to say, "That's my mother's cousin's best friend you are talking about" or something similar.  Of course, the world is getting ever smaller and many of us find we bump into somebody from our home town in the most unlikely of places.  Something like that happened to me this week - but doubled.  It was while I was at Herstmonceux Castle with the blind club.  I was sitting at a table for the meal with several ladies I had never met before.  The two immediately to my right were both volunteer helpers but as one was on her first day they had never met before either.  Somehow, in the course of our conversation, I mentioned that I had lived in the Medway towns.  "Whereabouts in the Medway towns?" asked the lady two to my right.  "Gillingham."  "Oh, I lived in Rainham," she replied (Rainham being a suburb of Gillingham).  "Really?" exclaimed the lady in between us.  "I lived at Rainham Mark!" (a suburb of Rainham.)

Well, that's good news.  I have just taken a phone call from VW who promise me a full refund of £753 and the cheque will be sent late next week.  But a snag: it will be sent recorded delivery which means I will have to sign for it and we will be in France from the end of next week.  Nina promises to hold onto the cheque until we get back.  So maybe....

More good news.  Well, not so much good as very pleasing.  I received an email this morning from somebody I have never heard of.  He stumbled across this blog when googling something and sent these complimentary remarks:

"...which led .to your blog "Pebbles in the sea". It was a delight - I read it out loud to my wife. But thanks for the blog - more a stone endlessly skipping over the sea."

Deary me, a chap could get swollen-headed!