Glad to get away

I'll be glad of this break as everything seemed to be going bananas in Brighton over the last few days.  It didn't help that for much of the morning yesterday my internet connection was only spasmodic.  And even when I did have a reasonable connection, several of the sites I needed to visit were having problems themselves.

I have been trying, without any success at all, to make a start on the minutes of the Lions' zone meeting from Monday last week.  I did manage to get the latest issue of Jungle Jottings out of the way, for which I am grateful, but there are a few other little bits and pieces that will have to wait until we get back.  By then the grass will need cutting again, and I still have to dig the vegetable plot when the onions and garlic should already be planted!

My main bugbear has been Brighton Lions Housing Society, of which I am both secretary and treasurer as well as the unofficial deputy chairman.  We have been negotiating for some time with the owners of a plot on which we would like to erect a small block of flats.  It has been a complicated business with planning problems and various other spanners being thrown in the works.  the trouble is that Bill, our chairman, has been doing most of the work and he is away for three weeks in Mexico.  I'm away now, and the chairman of the land-owning company goes away tomorrow.  And they were hoping to have a deal tied up by 15th May.  As I pointed out to them yesterday, we are awaiting a report from our valuers, then we need to agree a price, then we need to be sure the planning committee will agree to what we want, then we will have to arrange finance.  That will all take a bit longer than three weeks.

I hope that by the time this is posted I will be the proud possessor of a heat lamp.  My shoulders are causing me, not pain exactly, but quite considerable discomfort and I hope a few minutes every day with a heat lamp might improve things.  But heigh, what's a little discomfort in my shoulders when I've two legs, two arms and all other essential parts intact.