Friday February 10th 2023

A day that doesn't quite go as we planned. Lois and I thought we just had to visit the pharmacy attached to our doctor's surgery to pick up Lois's statins.

Luckily however, a chance development enables us to end our personal "dirty window hell" and also have our personal "book hell" and "tool hell", plus our "bathroom supplies hell" alleviated, so it turns out well in the end.

The windows on our new-build home get really dusty and dirty as a result of the fact that we are, in effect, living in the middle of a building-site, This morning I happen to catch sight of a window-cleaner doing the windows on one of the houses on the other side of the street. We manage to catch a word with the guy before he disappears, and, at our request, he does our windows there and then. For the time being, when there's so much construction work going on, we've asked him to come and "do us" every month.

part of the building-site that is the housing estate we live in -

the constant construction work makes our windows incredibly dirty and dusty.

I catch sight of the van belonging to "Martin's Window Cleaning Services"

while Martin is talking to one of our neighbours across the street.

Martin turns out to be a really nice guy, and we get him to come over and do our windows too. He does the job, and when he leaves he gives us a few leaflets advertising his business and invites us to pass those to any of our neighbours who might be interested in his service, so I guess he's trying to build up his business in the area.

10:00 Next job is to try and get local hero "Flatpack Jim", to end our 3 personal hells, our "book hell", our "tool hell" and our "bathroom supplies hell" by assembling our 3 flatpacks of furniture, two from IKEA and one from so-called Homcom [Who they? - Ed].

I phone him but we're not expecting him to able to fit us in before our daughter Alison and two of her children visit us at the end of next week.

We're in luck, however. When I ring him, "Flatpack Jim" is in Cheltenham, where he's just arrived only to find that a job he was expecting to do today had been cancelled. So he's got a free day, which is convenient for us. He's here by 10:30 am and finishes by 1 pm, just in time for Lois and me to have lunch, and then go upstairs for a nap, which is nice. After that the serious work of putting stuff away in our shiny-new cabinets and bookcases begins.

Eventually it gets done.

our personal "book mountain" - just imagine the "book hell" we've been living in!!!

our "book hell" is now just a distant memory,

thanks to "Flatpack Jim" and an IKEA Billy Bookcase - hurrah!

Similarly, our "larder hell" and "bathroom supplies hell" have also now both been banished by "Flatpack Jim". 

Now, at last, we can really start to live a little!!!! This is the first day of the rest of our life haha!!!!

17:30 Lois disappears upstairs again to take part in her great-niece Molly's "chair yoga" class on zoom. Molly lives in Leeds, Yorkshire. She has a job in the city's Social Services Department, quite a stressful job helping disadvantaged or vulnerable residents, and she manages to get away from the stress of the job by creating a good second career as a yoga teacher, both on zoom and locally in person.

one of Molly's upcoming yoga courses

one of Molly's popular "Twist and Shout" sessions

19:00 We settle down on the couch and do the puzzles in next week's Radio Times. 

The "Eggheads" quiz has become really annoying now. What's the point of a quiz where Lois and I don't know any of the answers for sure, and so we just have a make our best guess out of the multiple-choice answers. 

It's total madness!!! 

Wake up, Radio Times, and get a new load of "Egghead" question-setters in, who aren't simply trying to impress each other - that's what we say, anyway!!!!

21:30 We wind down with an old episode of "The IT Crowd", first shown in 2008, a series based on a small IT team working for a company in London: just Moss and Roy, and their boss, Jen. 

You must remember this episode - it's the one where Moss and Roy learn to "talk football" so they can seem like "real men" to the other men in the pub they go to. Moss finds a website that gives a daily feed of things to say about the previous night's games.

IT professionals Moss and Roy (left) try to impress their footballing friend (right)

with their comments on the previous night's football games

"See that ludicrous display last night? What was Wenger thinking, sending Walcott on that early? Thing about Arsenal is, they always try and walk it in!"

I decide to make a note of these phrases in case they come in useful in a pub, although I'd have to make it clear that I was talking about a "classic" game, from 2008 - otherwise my credibility would be shot to ribbons.

Later, Roy and Moss try to tell their boss, Jen, that her new boyfriend Michael "looks like a magician". Jen denies this at first, but then, on Jen's next date with Michael, she realises that they are right, so then she's forced to dump him.

Poor Michael !!!!!

22:00 We go to bed - zzzzzzzzz!!!!!!