Friday, 17 November 2006

The "Magic Oven"

I stayed in the office last night until I had cleared my physical and electronic in-trays (shooting off an array of e-mails to different people) and I also succeeded in getting out fifty enquiry letters to groups affected by WBC’s lease proposals. I do enjoy a challenge.

I finally left the office in the dead of night and was home in forty-five minutes. Jackie was sound asleep and had left me a note saying my dinner was in the “magic oven”. It was too late to eat, so I just drank some tea and finished reading The War and Uncle Walter, the WW2 diaries of a civil servant approaching retirement. This book had fascinated me over the last week or so.

Kiss and tea

On Friday morning, Jackie woke me at 11:00 with a kiss and a cup of tea, saying she was off to her dental appointment. I roused myself slowly, enjoyed a long luxourious bath, and then gave the kitchen a thorough clean. Only moments after finishing the floor, aged Ken came through the cat flap with muddy paws.

To get my mind off Ken, I read through a few papers and made some telephone calls following up a few things from the previous night.

Then it was time for my own dential appointment. To counter the perennial media stories of immigrants and asylum seekers, it is worth recording that my dentist was educated in Sri Lanka and trained in Denmark, but is paying taxes in the UK and working for the NHS. On the actual appointment, I will simply say that evolution has done nothing to prepare us for having foreign objects inserted in our mouths.

Later, I also visited the optician to get my eyes sorted out, and the hairdresser (a remarkable lady called Jane).

Friday night, Jackie and I enjoyed a curry and watched BBC Children In Need.