Fishing For Compliments

Well done Hugh – we enjoyed watching your enthusiastic campaigning on TV last night [and love the new haircut!]

Just so you know, we are eating lots of fish lately – taking the Fish Fight very seriously round here…

• haddock and chips [Holiday Club staff lunch] last Friday
• tuna wraps [rod and line caught, of course] on Saturday
• smoked mackerel [with Waldorf Salad] yesterday
• kippers for breakfast this morning
• deep fried sardines – our meal tonight.

I don’t like sardines – or at least, didn’t think I did – but Bob loves cooking when he is on holiday – so on arrival yesterday, he made a multigrain loaf, and this morning, he bought some sardines [half price in the supermarket]”You'll have to cook them” I said. He did! I made a salad, and along with the bread, we’ve had a fabulous meal. And apparently I do enjoy sardines, when cooked like this.

Here’s the man, tucking into his repast

He looks so suspicious. I promise not to photograph every meal this holiday. Before you tell me that deep fried food is not on the usual GI Diet Sheet, I will just say that we are both still steadily losing weight – and both went for a short run this morning.

We are relaxing – very seriously – it is absolutely wonderful! I’d set up some blog posts in advance – I switched off the PC on Sunday evening, and it has only just gone back on. That is partly due to a fault with the phone/broadband connection. We had not dialling tone/Internet when we arrived yesterday. Neither of us could remember who our phone contract is with. I drove over to Christine’s and checked my bank account online on her PC to see who I pay the bill to. What a wonderfully accommodating best friend to have – she made me tea and was very sympathetic to my plight. Thanks Chris!

I rang Post Office Homephone and reported the problem.

“Well, it could be a fault with your equipment, and if there is a fault we will contact an engineer and get him to come out to you. But I cannot tell you about that as the account is not in your name. Is Rev Almond there?”

“No, HE is at our place, I’m at a friend’s house 3 miles away. If there is a fault, HOW will I know, and how will I know WHEN the engineer is coming?”

“Well, Mr Almond will have to contact us to find out” 

“And how will he do that?”

“He can phone us”

“But the phone is NOT WORKING at our place, that’s why I am ringing you from my friend’s phone”

“He could use a mobile”

“But this is Norfolk. The signal is weak, AND you charge for mobile calls, it is only landline calls that are free to this number”

“Hmmm, yes”

Fortunately Bob was able to call them later from his mobile, and a helpful man said it was a fault at the exchange and should be fixed this morning [actually it was between 3pm and 5pm this afternoon] and the helpful chap also put my name on the ‘approved’ list too.

I am glad to have the phone back – but recognise that having no internet for a while was a good thing too.

PC going off now, back to my knitting