Stretching my legs

 We had a disturbed night. Jasper seemed intent on practising his chants in preparation for the World Cup. Several times during the night, Diane had to tell him to shut up. The last time was just before 06:00, by which time I had given up, and I went downstairs for some coffee. At the appropriate hour, we both walked to Zoe's to collect Ellie for school. She seemed to be in a particularly buoyant mood this morning - and that always lifts the day. We dropped Ellie at school, and as Di went home, I set off on my first walk since we returned from Germany. It was a lovely, bright, sunny morning and an absolute pleasure to be out and about. It took me a few minutes to re-sync my brain with the audiobook I had been listening to before the holiday, but I was soon back in the swing of things.

After some breakfast and another coffee, we headed for Sainsbury's. As Di has a hair appointment on Thursday, we thought we would take a risk and shop today instead. As far as we can tell, we did no damage to the fabric of the Universe with our brazen disregard for standard operating procedures.

I had a bit of a blitz cleaning the inside of the car. It is astonishing how stuff accumulates in the various trays and cubby holes. It was an interesting archaeological exercise, and I was surprised by how much I found and how old some of it was (in some cases, it had followed us from previous cars).

I met our new neighbour while I was fiddling about. She seems quite delightful. She has moved into the area from Bournemouth and is currently having some work done around the house, and has a conservatory planned. I gave her a welcome bottle of wine, just to be neighbourly.

We had some Kindle time during the afternoon, then went to collect Ellie from football. We took her home, where Zoe was chatting to the chap who owns the local car valeting company. Still on a roll from my earlier archaeological trawl through the car, I booked an appointment for him to valet the car. I'm not quite sure what came over me.

(My cold is a lot better, but I have a residual cough that is driving me mad, and I have no doubt that it's driving Di mad also.)