Thursday, 11 February 2016

A Day of Pain & Frustration



This afternoon we’re expecting the engineer from the stable door manufacturers to come to inspect our leaking kitchen door. The carpet is currently damp, rather than wet. You can tell the last couple of days have been dry except for the odd light shower. However, the rags we've placed along the bottom of the door to try to keep the worst of the water out, are sodden. I can only hope we come to a more satisfactory solution this time, whatever it may be.

Once that is sorted we are tempted to have a few days away. We both seem overtired. Yesterday was one of the most uncomfortable days I’ve had for years, such as I had to resort to painkillers before I even got out of bed in the morning. (I usually keep going without until I remove my knee braces in the evening, unless I’ve been particularly active, which isn’t often.)

However, the aches didn’t stop me doing a little weeding in the garden. Little being the operative word as the wet soil was just so cold. My fingers soon felt frozen. However, it was a delight to see the snowdrops are finally opening up in the bright sunshine.

Later on we went into Morecambe. My watch had stopped, in need of a new battery. We went along to our usual shop to find it was closed – the storms had blown off the roof & it was now being repaired. We went on to a shop we had previously used. That had ceased trading, the premises now available for sale or rental. So we decided to try the jewellers in the precinct, the only other jewellers we know of in Morecambe – they only replaced a very few watch batteries. The assistant had a look at my watch & declared my watch was not one they catered for. She suggested I tried Timpsons, the shoe repairers & key cutters, further in the precinct. We tried there. Finally we found somewhere that could do the job. I was beginning to think we would have to make another dread trip into Lancaster.

While we were waiting for the battery to be put in, we went to look for some bread rolls for the burgers I made yesterday. We first thought of Tescos in the precinct, to remember that is one of the stores closed in the recent cutbacks by Tesco. So we tried Iceland – only packs of 8. Then Poundland, the same. Greggs the bakers, no rolls. Home bargains, no luck. We abandoned that thought & concluded we would just stop at the supermarket here in the village. At least they sell a reasonable range of bread. Sure enough we did manage to find some there.

Afterwards we went down to the local village pub, to find it busy. Unfortunately that meant screaming kids as well. To my mind pubs are not the place for kids. It’s very boring for them so not surprisingly they end up screaming & running around. The parents rarely seem to pay them any attention. They certainly don’t bring anything with them to entertain them – colouring books, games, for example. You can’t expect pre-school & primary school children to keep quiet long if all the entertainment is adults talking to one another. They want attention. They want something more exciting to do. However, so many parents today just blissfully ignore the activity of their children regardless of the impact on other pub users. They don’t even shush them.

So much for my blast for the day!

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