Buying lots of meat

2nd & 3rd October

A seriously lazy start yesterday was followed by a roundabout walk to the shops. Sheila and I strolled the length of the towpath through the village just to see who was about. We held hands for much of the walk, though seemingly this behaviour is resented by some bystanders (I mean, we're nearly 60, it's disgusting!)

As I keep saying, this second adolescence is so much more fun.

I have to give credit where it's due to BW. After all my carping about the waste of money with the dreaded bollards, they have spent a good chunk of it to good purpose below Alrewas Lock, where you enter the river section.

For as long as we've been coming this way, the mooring below the lock has been pretty dodgy, and getting worse with every winter. Now they are doing a thorough job of repiling the relevant bank and installing a good number of bollards (may be they are spares from the narrow lock programme). There must be around 120 feet of good mooring taking shape down there.

It's not quite ready yet, and there's a rather scary looking pontoon with a short trek through the fields to the lock as a temporary mooring, but it's clearly going to be all done shortly.

Having admired this, we went to Coates the butcher and bought yet more meat. They are presently doing their excellent hip bone steak with £4 per kilo off. It still cost over £12/kilo, mind, but well worth it. Together with the other meat we bought, I've now filled the freezer.

Much of the rest of the day was spent doing internet stuff, including the month end financial housekeeping. The connection wasn't brilliant: it never is here, and Sheila was going quietly bananas trying to access some of the websites.

It did lead me to discover a useful little utility for those like me working a Huawei modem under Mac OS X. Called Cheetahwatch, it lets you see the signal strength and similar stuff that's not been available to us until now.

I decided to use some of the chuck steak I'd bought to make a stew for dinner. That meant that I had to go back into the village for some veg, also from Coates, who have set out to make up for the loss of the greengrocers that used to be here.

Today was the coldest start we've had yet. The drive belt for the domestic alternator had had a little squeal to itself yesterday, so before starting the engine today I had a brief wrestle with it and managed to get it just that bit tighter.

I then trotted off to the surgery for the first of the various medical encounters lined up for this month, namely a blood test. On my way back, I popped into Coates yet again, this time to get some pork tenderloin for tonight. Elanor is joining us for dinner, so I think I'll do it as foil wrapped parcels with garlic, served with mashed spuds and Savoy cabbage.

I also got a couple of their pasties for lunch; one of those and a mug of soup makes an excellent meal on a day like this.

Since the weather has clearly made a seasonal shift, we've done the half yearly clothes swap, putting away the T-shirts and shorts, and getting out the thermals and long sleeved shirts. As always, we were quite ruthless about not storing stuff that we haven't used this summer. Elanor can check it over tonight in case there's anything she has a use for, then the balance will go in the recycling bin.

Mid afternoon was the trip to the dentist for both of us– all was well, so that's that bit dealt with for another six months, hopefully.

Tomorrow we head into Burton, as I've got hospital appointments Monday and Tuesday.