weekend 29/30 nov 08

After giving up and getting up at 6.30 a.m. on Saturday, because a black kittin sitting on your face and chewing your ear is not actually conducive to sleep, and having found an extra three hours for the day as the LibDem questionnaire delivery has been cancelled, I had a lot planned. This is what we actually *achieved*.

Saturday:

• finally planted the remaining ten hyacinth bulbs – the nine outside ones have gone in an pot of three and a pot of six, and the last indoor one is in a square glass vase filled with pebbles
• checked model numbers and URLs for some of the stuff I want to sell on eBay
• briefly entertained the secretary of the Rural Branch of the local LibDems, who hadn’t received my e-mail about cancelled deliveries. He brought his 6 year old son, who was fascinated by the Tribe
• took a stack of stuff, including plastic bottles, dead freeview box, Le Creuset frying pan whose handle had fallen off, to the tip, and on the way back stopped at the hardware store at Backwell. We have driven past this shop dozens and dozens of times, and never gone in, and it was a positive treasure trove. We bore away two sorts of draught excluder, some white spirit, a hook for hanging a basket from the ceiling, a pack of curtain hooks (see later), two very interesting gadgets for cleaning glasses and phones (1 for upstairs, 1 for down). It was a real old-fashioned shop, and smelled of paraffin as is entirely right for such emporia. We shall visit again.

Then we ran out of steam a bit, and collapsed – watched Question Time and HIGNFY while we had lunch, and then watched five episodes of Come Dine With Me which seems to be on frequently, and thus the Tivo is always stuffed with them. And Saturday just sort of vanished, because then there was X Factor – why on earth is that leprechaun still in it?

On Sunday, we were a tad more industrious.

• perlmonger put up the portiere rod in anticipation of the arrival of the door curtain today. This should have been a swift job, but Sod was well to the fore. He had to move the doorbell box, and put up a batten, and cut the rod, and and and, but after a couple of hours it was up. He also put up a mug rack in the living room for the holding of Hats, which looks quite nice
• I got a load of stuff listed on eBay – there’s still some more to go, but it’s a good start. I hadn’t anticipated just how *long* it would take. The amp, mixer and keyboard all had to be unboxed and powered up. The keyboard had to be consulted on how to make it do a couple of things, as I’d forgotten, and thought it might be broken.

  They all had to be photographed, and looked up on the intertubes, and descriptions written. Gah. And the Gaggia ice cream maker has a pinhole in its bowl, so I can’t list that and I’m vexed. God knows how that happened – we’ve only used the bloody thing twice.

• I cooked half a gammon – in ginger beer, with an orange cut into quarters, half a cinnamon stick and some star anise. That’s this week’s lunches sorted
• cooked a piece of silverside as a pot roast – with port, mustard, shallots, carrots, all spice, balsamic vinegar, splash of fish sauce, bouquet garni. Cooked it very slowly, and it just about fell apart by dinner time. Served with red cabbage (from the freezer), sprouts and mash. Nom nom nom
• spilt vinegar all over the floor while I was cleaning
• lost the Ektorp sofa bed I was following on eBay 🙁

I didn’t: repot the wine, make a start on the horror that is the server room, get the two skirts and Crumpler camera bag and Polti Vaporetto listed on eBay, or do any other of the things on my endless list of Things To Do.

We have now rewatched the first four Harry Potter films, and so have just one to go. As I have a full governors’ meeting at the school tonight, and a Parish Plan meeting tomorrow, it will be Wednesday before we get to that.

And now it’s Monday, and onwards if not upwards.