27February1998

Friday, 27 February 98
My dear folks,

Mave is tucked up in a furry ball on his blanket. Carmina Burana echoes around the study. A wealth of conversations & faxes has brought me up to date with several of your lives. Thank you for your news. After four long shifts, I’ve the weekend to myself. The shifts have been getting easier as I get to grips with the job. The hours this week suited me well, 1400 to midnight. Gave me time to get things done before work & a ride back home along quiet roads in afterwards. Next week, it’s 0600 to 1600. We’re promised foul weather this weekend, snow storms up north & general nastiness elsewhere. Violent winds in northern England have already stripped roofs off buildings & left a trail of capsized trucks along the motorways. If it’s not too nasty, I shall try to get some walking in. I need it.

In-between shifts I’ve been doing the little things that wait upon us. Someone nicked one of our dustbins – we suspect the builder renovating a flat next door - so I bought a new one & painted several large white “90s” on it before installing it. I also changed the light switch on the bathroom ceiling. Don’t sniff. It’s a delicate & challenging job.

For safety reasons British bathrooms have the spring-loaded pull switches whose string-pulls dangle just inside the door. The springs wear out after a few years. Problem is that one has to turn off the power to get at the light switch on the ceiling of a windowless bathroom. And the new switches are much bigger than the old variety that we still have. This means that, having dismantled the switch in semi-darkness, I have to transfer the innards of the new switch to the old switch housing & put it all together again while the spring tries to blow the thing apart. I’m pleased to say the switch works again. Makes me think of the fellows who dismantle bombs for a living.

I cycled out to the fringes of Chiswick one morning for a chat with Simply Travel, the company that may take over our bookings next year. We’ve met their representatives several times & know several people in the Algarve who have gone in with them. Their regional chief is flying to Portugal shortly & will call in on Jones again for a further look at the units before we conclude any deal. Out of interest, I asked a couple of local estate agents around to value the flat. I may one day do a deal with one of my flat owners and I wanted an idea of what the apartment might fetch. Inevitably, the agents’ estimates varied widely. What they did agree on was the strong demand for property in the area – which is nice to know.

Midweek the postman rang the bell with a parcel that turned out to be the new power unit for my Logitech scanner, all the way from Switzerland. I’d spent hours getting the scanner checked by the suppliers who told me (before the guarantee ran out in December) that it worked fine for them. But it wouldn’t work off either of my computers. So I got on to the Logitech Helpline who, in their efforts to revive it, sent me first a new connecting unit, then (when that didn’t work) the latest software package & finally the new power unit – all free of charge. I plugged the power unit in with my fingers crossed. To my great joy, the scanner promptly returned, like Rip van Winkel, to life & has been hard at work ever since. I wrote a sincerely grateful letter to Logitech, thanking them for their extraordinary service.

Such are my small successes. The inevitable flat repairs & Quinta correspondence have filled any other spare moments. And I’ve gone through 18 years of files with a fine toothcomb & emptied tons of redundant paper into the paper bin on the opposite pavement. In spite of the activity I’ve been feeling a bit restless as if there was something missing from my life without my quite knowing what. I’m well aware of my absent wife. Mave has missed her too.

He hates being left alone in the flat all day. And he wants to go out in the early hours after I’ve fed him. I don’t mind his going out during the day but it’s out after midnight. He got so frustrated the other night that he nipped me, something he used to do to Barbara from time to time & for no obvious reason, to her great irritation. I explained to him that he might be able to get away with it with her but as far as I was concerned it was tantamount to a suicide note. After an hour of somewhat strained relations we made it up & he went to sleep on my lap as usual. Mavis is not one to hold a grudge, not while there’s only one lap & feeder in the flat, anyhow.

What many of you may not know is that Mavis writes secret letters to my younger niece in Germany, mainly of a plaintive nature & with atrocious spelling. It’s a correspondence that both parties appear to enjoy to judge by his missives (of which I sometimes catch a glimpse) & the replies he gets. He’s a dreadful whinger & can be a bit of a tittle-tattle but at least he writes with feeling & from the heart.

Jones, for her part, has been spending much of her days looking after our dog, Sampson. Sampson has been walked & brushed & cooked for within an inch of his life. Jones can’t believe how much he eats, although his ribs continue to show. He has been much bothered at times by an itchy skin that he scratches until he bleeds. Still, he appears, by the sound of things, to have settled in well enough. Jones’s cat, Noite, for her part, has ignored her & continued to live her contented life in the cottage with our house sitters. Jones misses the comfort of her cat which, I assure her, will move back into MCP the moment the house sitters depart. Jones accepts this but still misses her cat.

Saturday:
No sign of that weather yet, not in this part of the world anyhow. In fact, apart from a really cold wind, it’s been a lovely day. I walked into the computer fair via Regents Park and home again via Hyde Park. There were signs warning of the traffic chaos tomorrow when an estimated 250,000 country life enthusiasts are expected in London on a mega-march in support of a variety of causes. The legally threatened fox hunting fraternity are said to be the moving spirits but the march’s aims are sufficiently diverse to have attracted leading lights from both government & official opposition. It’s a good day to stay out of town. And I guess the foxes will get a day off as well while the huntsmen rally.

Jones, I found two Portuguese language CD ROM courses at the computer fair, one for absolute beginners at £25 and a 2nd one that didn’t specify for £14, which I bought. I’ll load it up and let you know how it looks. Strange that after months of looking in vain for anything on the subject, I should walk into a choice. The proprietor showed me a selection of similar courses in languages ranging from Finnish to Chinese. I also managed to change my new mouse for one with the right fitting although I have yet to persuade it to function properly.

I stopped over at Dillons to get Steven Pinker’s new book “How the Mind Works”. It’s had some excellent write ups here. At the same time I bought Michael Hawkins “Hunting down the universe” which has also enjoyed favourable reviews. One of these days I shall know a great deal.

Bevan is joining me for a Chinese supper this evening, whether ordered in or consumed out remains to be seen.

Blessings.
T