Battening Down

It was predominantly dry today. This made a change after the recent rain and the floods that have hit some parts of the area.

I went to collect Ellie and take her to school. Zoe is still unwell and has no voice, so she stayed behind while I did the school drop-off.

Back home, after some breakfast and another armful of caffeine, I decided that we needed to batten down the garden. Storm Ciaran is forecast to hit and cause havoc for a couple of days. With winds forecast to reach 90 mph, it seemed like a good idea to clear the garden furniture. As we no longer have a car in the garage, all of the chairs could be squirrelled away safely.  With the garden clear, the next task was to clean up some stains on the landing carpet, which had been so carefully deposited by Jasper just after we got into bed the other night.

Finally, I was able to return to my journals. My first pass of the 1970s is complete. I will return to it at a later date as I have found some additional text and photos are worthy of inclusion. I then made a start on the 1980s. Again this is sparse, but does include some long entries transcribed from my letters during business trips and notes written when on holiday with the family.

After lunch, we both spent some time with our books before going to meet Ellie from school and take her home.

We have put up a sign on the door "Sorry, No Trick or Treats, please". Children were literally brought onto the estate by the carload in previous years and it was getting a bit silly. They have ruined it for the local kids. What we have done is tell a few families to ignore the sign and knock, as they are welcome.

Slow Progress

There was a lot more rain overnight. Fortunately, by the time I walked around to Zoe's it had stopped. Zoe's voice was still absent without leave, so Ellie and I had a very quiet walk to school. 

All of the rain has caused the Aldingbourne Rife to flood. This has inundated the caravan park near the shops, the Tesco store is shut and its car park under several feet of water, and the flood is spreading. This has caused the Emergency Services to shut the A29 through the area as the water encroaches on an electricity substation. The knock-on effect is that Sainsbury's is closed because nobody can get to it.

After washing our floors this morning (which seems a bit heartless in retrospect) I walked into the village to get my hair cut. The rain held off, but I had to stay alert to dodge any traffic splashing through the puddles. Once home, I returned to the journals for the 1970s. This seems to be grinding very slowly. The latter years of the 1970s were very sparse, in terms of journal entries, but quite busy when I review my photo library. I am struggling with the temptation to write journal entries based on the photos... but they would not be contemporaneous observations.

We dug the soup maker out of the cupboard and made our first soup of the season, for lunch. I was a little apprehensive as I couldn't remember the exact recipes I used last year. I need not have worried. It was excellent - parsnip, red pepper, carrot, butternut squash, sweet potato and onion.

The afternoon was spent with my book while Diane plodded onwards with her sewing pattern.

The Sound of Silence

 I mentioned that Diane and Kathie had been to Chichester on Friday and visited the Cathedral to see the Peace Doves. I failed to mention that, while there, Diane was stopped by a journalist and asked for her views on the exhibit. Well, it turns out that she has been quoted in the local Press. In the article "WATCH: Locals react to Chichester Cathedral peace doves", Sussex World includes: 

Dianne McMenemy said: “It’s an amazing display, it’s very well thought out. You don’t realise that there’s 15,000 doves on there. It really is a sight to see and worth coming down to have a look at if you're in the area.” 

(It is a shame they couldn't spell Diane correctly).

The weather today has ranged from bright sunshine to monsoon-like rains. It was certainly a day to stay indoors. Diane spent the day working on her sewing pattern and finding it quite frustrating.

I returned to the journals. I have arrived, metaphorically, in September 1976. that is the bulk of the '70s complete as entries become more sparse in the latter part of the decade. I have also completed the initial design and style changes required for the '80s, though haven't, as yet, looked at any content.

Ellie phoned this evening. She is back, having had a lovely week at Pete's. She phoned to say hello and to tell us that Zoe had lost her voice. She probably won't go to work tomorrow, but I will pop around to take Ellie to school.

The Early Years

 After the usual cousins' call, I settled back down to the old journals. Meanwhile, Diane returned to her sewing pattern. She is trying to develop a pattern for trousers that can be reused in multiple styles but will fit her perfectly.

It took several hours, but I finished the first pass of the 2000-2004 journal. It has left me with a "to-do" list to document various events that I had not previously mentioned but, in the grand scheme of things, really needed to be addressed.

I then moved on (or should I say back?) to the 1970s. Here, I had sparse entries covering the purchase of our first house, our marriage, and several other events. As I write, I have only got as far as 1974. What it has shown (again) is the value of the photo library that I have developed over the years. Some events are only documented through their photos, there was no accompanying journal entry at the time.

Journalling

Diane's friend Kathie came to visit and after a chat, and some tea, they headed off to spend the day in Chichester.

I made use of the day by returning to my journals and starting on the first pass for the years 2000-2004. These journals are not as copious as the more recent ones. The entries are quite sparse. Indeed, there are some months with no entries at all. I was able, however, to use my photo library to fill in many of the blanks with small collages of relevant photos. It has been very time-consuming and I still have about 6 weeks of 2004 to finish.

I need to think about the overall format of these sparse journals. As they contain multiple years, I must provide a clear separation between entries for each year but do so in a way that looks appropriate.

Jabbed

We were very proud to hear, last night, that Ellie has received a badge and the "Gymnast of the Month" award. That's pretty good considering she's only been going to gymnastics for about 5 weeks.

We had a yellow weather warning in force from 04:00 until midday. The threat was heavy rain. Whilst I did hear some rain overnight, it was dry when I came down this morning and stayed that way for most of the day, though we did have a few showers just to provide some punctuation for the weather.

It was a predictable start with Ocado's delivery and then the raid on Sainsbury's. We parted from the usual regime after that. We had appointments for our Covid jabs so we made our way into Bognor and made ourselves known at the reception desk. We were quite early, but they were hardly overrun! We queued for a few minutes and then after a few questions, the paramedic used us for darts practice. Hopefully, we are now protected against any surge in infections.

We had a quiet afternoon with a bit of reading, Diane did some ironing, and I updated the accounts before updating the software on Condor and my iPad.

Calibration Time, Come On

 Here in Sussex, we don't tolerate rain during the day. It would be too inconvenient, consequently, we arranged to have our allotted rainfall throughout the night. It did overrun, however, and it was probably 9 o'clock before it switched off.

We had an appointment at the hospital. Diane needed her regular blood test and had arranged for the first of three calibration checks on her blood analyser. We had a bit of waiting around as they only had 2 of 3 phlebotomists working today. Once the blood test was done, the appointment with the Anticoag Clinic was almost immediate. The nurse walked Diane through the self-test process and as we watched the result pop up, the lab delivered the hospital's results. They matched perfectly. We have two further calibration checks to complete before the hospital will accept the self-test results as accurate. The next test is scheduled for a week today.

We left the hospital and went into Chichester. I had a cheque (yes, what a quaint idea) to pay in from DVLA. The online app should be able to do this by photographing the cheque, but this failed every time I tried it. I decided I would report this to the Bank. We went through the process with the assistant. It failed again. I gave him the phone. It failed again. I suggested trying it against a dark background (as recommended). After several tries, it worked.

We stopped off for a coffee before returning to the car (picking up a Turner's Steak and Ale pie on the way) and heading home.

Shopping

We had a free day with nothing to constrain our time. We decided to head for Gunwharf Quay in Portsmouth and spend the day looking in the shops and grabbing a bite to eat while we were there. The traffic getting into Portsmouth was dreadful. Some roadworks near the Cathedral were causing a tailback onto the M275. We were in no hurry, so we sat patiently and eventually pulled into the underground car park.

We did a complete circuit of the shopping centre to get an idea of what shops were available. (So often, nowadays, you find town centres and malls with loads of empty units where businesses have moved out or gone bust). We were pleasantly surprised. It was awash with outlets for plenty of brands and had a real buzz. Having scouted the stores we returned to the start point and worked our way around again, this time going into relevant stores to see if we could find a smart autumn jacket for Diane. It was not easy. If you wanted puffer jackets or anoraks of some kind the choice was huge. If you wanted a smart, dressy jacket then you really had to search. W~e were up to the challenge and finally found the ideal jacket in Ted Baker.

With the jacket clutched in our hands, we made our way to get some lunch. The restaurants on the front by the Spinnaker Tower were heaving. We did an about turn and headed across to the quieter part of Gunwharf and settled down at "Loch Fyne". We had a lovely lunch and then strolled back to car and headed home. It had been a nice outing.

Just pottering

 A bit of a grey start to the day but it soon brightened up. We were not intending to go out, so the weather had little impact.

Diane had a phonically scheduled with Pauline so that accounted for the morning. She had another call arranged with Jan Mabbott so that accounted for the late afternoon.

I started the morning by attempting to implement a Plan C for the transfer of data from the blood analyser. My thought was that if I could use the browser to see the reports that it generated, then I could open a terminal window and explore what else was on the device and hopefully find the data. Well Plan C did not work from the MacBook. I then decided to try it from a Windows laptop. Again, no joy. I spent some time with Google but failed to find anything useful. I suspect we are going to have to make do with the reports and records on the device itself.

I returned to the spreadsheet for 2024's accounts. A few more tweaks were made. Any further changes would be gilding the lily. I think it's ready for prime time. Now, I just need to await the New Year.

I prepared the Manzo Piccante for dinner this evening. I think it was a lot better this time. I left the mozzarella until I was almost ready to serve up. This was much more stringy and juicy.

Doing Lunch

We had a very leisurely morning. After reading the news and catching up on social media I returned to the spreadsheet for next year's accounts. A few more tweaks here, a few refinements there, and some formulae optimised, it is approaching readiness.

As it was Darren's birthday last week, Zoe had arranged for lunch at The Black Horse in Binstead. They came with us in the Skoda as it is always a problem parking at The Black Horse. Darren's Mum and stepdad came, as did three of his brothers, two of his nieces and two of his nephews. It was quite a gathering. We had a lovely lunch with lots of laughter and chat. Before we knew it, it was 16:30. We had been shooting the breeze and eating a fine roast for over three hours.

We dropped Zoe and Darren back and then came home. I tried to link Diane's blood analyser to the iPad to look at the data and the reports. This failed miserably. I then tried Plan B by linking it to the MacBook. This was more successful as I could view the reports, but I still couldn't transfer the data. I have had another idea and will try a Plan C tomorrow.

Sentient

There was some heavy rain overnight. (This is the time when rain should be scheduled, rather than during the day). My day started with the cousins' call. There wasn't too much to report, but there was a great deal of banter as usual.

With the call over, I decided to start crafting the accounting spreadsheet for 2024. Each year, this is refined further, and then during the year, I spot additional refinements that can be incorporated in the following version. Today, I started to work through those refinements on the 2024 template. I am already convinced that this is a significant improvement on the 2023 spreadsheet. It's not quite sentient but it is certainly much more automated and much clearer to view and update.

The other long running task for the day was to cook up another batch of curry. A curry base was developed and cooked before a kilo of beef was added with 750ml water and it was allowed to simmer for 4 hours. I had one portion of this for dinner (which was superb) and managed to portion up 6 more to be stored in the freezer for future weeks. 

Service

 We were up early again, ready for Ellie to be dropped off. Today is the last day before half-term. Ellie was "up for it" and eager to get to school.

When we returned from the school escort duty, I took the Skoda around to Richmond Motors for its annual service and MOT. I dropped it with the service department and then was collared by a salesman, eager to entice me to upgrade. I allowed him the time to talk and suggested to him that he might not be making the best use of his time. I had, after all, spoken with another of the sales staff a couple of months ago and we concluded that the best they could offer was a car that had a lower specification than ours at a price that was 33% higher. I might be old, but I'm not senile (yet).

I walked home, It was a pleasant 30-minute stroll. Diane was focused on the laundry, so I buried myself in the accounts spreadsheets with a view to planning the changes that I would make by the time I cut the template for next year.

I received a video analysis of the car - nothing to report. By mid-afternoon, I had heard nothing so assumed that everything was tickets-boo and set off to walk back to the dealership. The car was waiting for me and the service had cost nearly £150 less than the original dealership would have charged. That seemed like a win,

Soon after I got home, Pete arrived to collect Ellie. She will be staying with him throughout the half-term holiday. When she had gone, I wasn't in the mood to cook so we ordered an Indian takeaway. Perfect end to the day really!

Not Much

 There is very little to report, today. I was up early so that Ellie could be dropped off. She was in her usual chirpy mood and hungry with it!  For breakfast, she demolished a huge bowl of watermelon, a ham sandwich, a further slice of ham, and a fried egg. She was well set up for the day by the time we delivered her to school.

Ocado were late this morning. It doesn't happen often, but they missed their slot by 25 minutes today. This was all very fine but did mean that we got to Sainsbury's later which means we arrived after the hearses delivered all the zombies who infest the aisles late morning on Thursdays. Fortunately, we did not have a great deal to get so I managed to maintain my sanity and hardly anybody was mown down by my trolley.

I set up the online banking app for Diane's phone. (Previously she had always logged on from the Mac rather than using the app).  Having completed that, I applied (on her behalf)  for another ISA and moved some of her savings to seed the account.

The rest of the day has followed a predictable course. We read for a while, then collected Ellie from school and looked after her until Darren came to collect her.

Plans Change

 Today is Darren's birthday. We had started the week with a plan to meet ups at Gunwharf Quays for lunch. We were going anyway, but Zoe had separately come up with the idea of lunch. By Monday, the plan had changed. Darren's mum, Barbs, was unwell and couldn't make it. Lunch was cancelled. We would go anyway, as was the original plan.

Tuesday even revealed a dreadful weather forecast for today. By the time I walked round to school with Ellie, the rain was just starting. Discussing it with Diane when I got home, our trip the Gunwharf was also cancelled. There's no point in going out in fouls weather when there is no need. We will rearrange for next week.

A delivery driver knocked on the door. The blood analyser that Diane ordered yesterday lunchtime was here by 10:30. We started the setup process and did as much as we can without performing a blood test. I tried to install some software on the iPhone to capture the readings, but it only seem to work in the US and the advertised Bluetooth connection feature, according to manufacturers Tech Support, doesn't work! Never mind, we have e a Plan B, and will connect the device with a USB cable. The question we stall have to answer is "Will this connect to iPhone, iPad, MacBook, or will I have to use my Windows laptop?" This question can't be answered until we have performed a blood test and the adapter I ordered arrives.

In order to use the analyser, it must be calibrated, and Diane needs to be guided in its use. The calibration is done by running normal veinous blood test at the hospital, and a test on the analyser. The results are compared. This has to be done 3 times over 3 weeks. Only then, assuming calibration is satisfactory, will the results be accepted by the hospital.

The weather forecast was correct. The rain has been torrential all afternoon. I'm very glad we changed our plans.

Afternoon Tea

 Well that's a turn up for the book. Having woken us at 06:00 yesterday, Ellie was still fast asleep when I got up for a shower at 07:00 this morning. In fact, I was dressed and downstairs making the coffee before she woke up. We completed the pre-school rituals and then walked her round to the classroom.

During the morning I focussed on the accounts in general and opening a new savings account. I was delighted to see that the money from the sale of the Fiesta was already nestling in my account.

Diane, have returned some items to Next, spent the time investigating the acquisition of a home INR testing kit. It took some digging around and realising that there were vast differences in the price of the same device, depending on who was supplying it. We eventually found a supplier whoo appears to be a main distributor for the manufacturer. A bit more research and a follow up phone call settled matters. The device is on order and should arrive in the next few days.

This afternoon, the Sonning Crew met up for the first time in ages. We were booked into The Ivy for afternoon tea. 

It was a bit noisy in there, it was one of the Chichester University graduation days and people were in there celebrating, It did make conversation a little difficult at times but it was nice to have the crew all together.

A couple of hours later we headed back to the car park and made our way home. It had been a very pleasant afternoon.

A bit carless

The patter of tiny feet woke me. It was just after 06:00 and Ellie wanted to watch her tablet. That wasn't going to happen. It is set up such that it won't switch on until 06:30. At 06:30 she came back and got into bed with us (and her tablet). That was the cue for me to get up and get going.

Zoe finished her night shift and headed back. We tracked her online as she came across country from Horsham. The question was "would she be home in time to take Ellie to school with us?" Fortunately, the answer was yes. She pulled up just after 08:30 and we traipsed round to school.

The main scheduled item for the day was the valuation of my Fiesta. I had been offered a good price online, but this had to be verified by an inspection at the dealer. Diane and I set off in convoy. We pulled into the garage at Portsmouth just before eleven and started the process. After the car had been examined, the online price was confirmed. I was delighted as the 9 year old car has only lost about 50% of its original purchase price. The whole process took an extraordinary amount of time because the dealership clearly hadn't mastered the link between their computers and printers. Eventually, with the help of a couple of additional salesmen, the printer burst into life, I got the requisite paperwork and we drove home. For the first time in nearly 50 years we are back down to a single car.

The afternoon was spent with our books.

Zoe has just dropped Ellie off with us. She has another night shift tonight so Ellie is sleeping here.

Trees and Books

It was very cold overnight. The heating came on for the first time in months.

We had a very quiet day. Diane spent time in her sewing room developing a pattern for some trousers. I spent time in the study refining some of the notes for the cruises I have been researching then switching over to do some work on the Family Tree. The afternoon was spent with my book.

I experimented with dinner. We had a small beef joint which I cooked in the Air Fryer. It only took 36 minutes at 165C. It was perfect, slightly pink, nice and ,moist, and had a good crust. A very successful experiment.

Zoe is working a night shift tonight. She got Ellie bathed and ready for bed then brought her here to sleep.

Before putting her to bed we spent some time listening to her read. She is doing very well, and we allowed her to read us another book when she got into bed.
 

Still Cruisin'

The temperature had dropped overnight. Despite this, we had a glorious day with wall-to-wall sunshine. I was up before 07:30 and had my cousins' call at 09:00.  That was about it, in terms of pre-arranged activities for today.

I spent much of the remainder of the morning and early afternoon doing further research into future cruises. I went through the offerings from 5 or 6 additional cruise lines, looked at their itineraries, looked at their prices, and reviewed YouTube videos of their accommodation. My spreadsheet grew but not by much. At least it gives us a decent starting point. 

Rant On:

By the way, if you are a person who posts YouTube videos of staterooms on ships (or anything else, for that matter), please use landscape mode and please keep still or move slowly and steadily. Some of the footage I have seen today was dreadful and was more likely to make you motion-sick than a Storm Force 11 weather event. Pick a spot, stand still, pan slowly; stop and pick another spot and pan slowly. Edit the two clips together. If you insist on moving about or filming while you walk, get a stabilizing gimbal (DJI do a nice one which will even stand on its own and track you as you move).

Rant Off.

Just Cruisin'

There has been a fair amount of rain during the day. It came through in pulses interspersed with some lovely sunshine.

 Zoe had a later start today. This meant that Ellie wasn't dropped off, but I could go there to provide the school escort service. I was also a sherpa for the walk. Ellie had her school photo, then PE which required a change of clothes, and after school, she had dancing which required a further change of clothes.

Diane was off to the hairdresser for the morning. I spent the time (and much of the day) researching cruises for 2025. I sent a shortlist to Trevor, who has come back with some further alternatives. I shall look at those and add them to the spreadsheet.

We collected Ellie from dancing and gave her a snack before Pete came to collect her for the weekend.

A Visit

 Ellie was dropped off for breakfast and the school run as usual and was chirpy and eager to get to school. We dropped her off and went home for our breakfast.

Being Thursday we had the Ocado delivery scheduled and then the top-up at Sainsbury's. Kim was in Bognor for her Covid jab so we arranged for her to drop in when we returned from the shops. It was lovely to see her and to sit and chat and hear all about her recent holiday on the Amalfi coast. We had seen all the photos on Facebook, but it was nice to hear the story of the holiday itself. She was with us for an hour or two before heading home.

We collected Ellie from school and stopped off at the park for a while. We were not home for long before Darren came to collect her as she had a play date arranged with her friend Ariana.

Nothing else of significance on today's page in the Book of Life.

Clean up

 Ellie was full of beans when she burst into the house this morning. She was "up for it" as they say! We deposited her at school at the allotted time and wandered home for breakfast.

Our day was focused on cleaning, dumping, sorting, and swapping. The chap from "Wash 'n' Gloss" was due this afternoon so I had to switch the cars around. I also had to check the various cubby holes and the boot to remove anything that would get in the chap's way. It was when I opened the boot that I remembered that I had dumped six metric tonnes of my old clothes in there after I last sorted out my wardrobe. A trip to the dump was required... and the mention of the trip begat more and more detritus that needed to go. Eventually, I headed off. I suspect the front wheels hardly touched the ground as I had so much in the back. It didn't, however, take long and several industrial skips were now full.

Diane took the opportunity to do her 6-monthly clothes swap. The autumn/Winter collection was retrieved and the Spring/Summer collection was stored away. This took most of the afternoon, much to the consternation of Jasper whose sleep was being disturbed (Karma, eh!).

"Wash 'n' Gloss" arrived and set to work on the Fiesta. I had requested the "Full" valet service and boy was he thorough. All in all, it took him 3 hours during which he crawled through and cleaned every crevice, every bit of glass, every millimetre of paintwork, the wheels, the tyres, the boot, and every millimetre of upholstery, the interior fittings and switchgear.  When he washed it, it looked as if he was contemplating giving the car a shave! 

I was immensely impressed. The finished item looked like a brand-new car, straight from the showroom. As soon as he had finished I put the car back in the garage as rain is forecast for the next couple of days.

While the valet was underway, I took some time to call "The Art Den" in Sidmouth and order a companion painting to the one that Jane and Trevor gave us for our Anniversary. The owner of the shop remembered Trevor - though that is hardly surprising - and promised to dispatch the artwork tomorrow for delivery on Friday. 

Nothing else is scheduled for today.

Domesticity

Diane was out the door early this morning. She had a health assessment at the Cardiac Rehab clinic to determine how much progress had been made. This was followed by the usual exercise session so it was mid-morning before she got home.

I took Ellie to school and then came home for breakfast before wading into a pile of ironing (much of which was mine). When Diane arrived home and we had chatted about the assessment over a cup of tea, she took over the ironing as it was getting to the fiddly, delicate items (with which I cannot be trusted). I retired to write down the recipe from last night's dinner.

After lunch, we had an hour or so with our books before going to collect Ellie. As usual, we stopped off at the park which seemed unusually busy today. While standing and watching Ellie we returned to a conversation we had started a few weeks ago. Was it really sensible to have two cars? Would it be better to sell my Fiesta? When we got home, I arranged to have the Fiesta valeted and contacted Evans Halshaw to get an idea of its value. I was pleasantly surprised, so I have arranged to have it inspected by them next Monday for an accurate quotation. Let's see what they offer.

Imitation

Ellie was dropped off at the usual time. She was very chirpy and after her usual bowl of fruit, asked for some porridge. She made short work of that and two fruit smoothies. It's good to see such an appetite for breakfast.  We dropped her off at school and got on with our morning. Diane had an appointment for her "MOT" with the nurse and I wanted to do some accounts and sort out the road fund license for the Skoda.

After breakfast, I usually go to the freezer to retrieve some meat or fish as the basis for the evening meal. Diane said she fancied some meatballs and I remembered the dish I tried at "Ask:Italian" last week. Could I replicate it? Could I find the recipe? The answer to the first question was open to debate. The answer to the second was a resounding "no". I looked up the menu online and reread the description. How hard could it be?

I needed a trip to Sainsbury's to pick up some items we didn't have in the store cupboard. I then set about planning how I would proceed. With a firm idea in mind, I retired to the Orangery for an hour of reading before collecting Ellie.

Ellie bounced out of school and asked for a stop-off at the park. We were there for quite a while and were just preparing to leave when we got a call from Zoe to say that Ellie had been invited for a play date with Neve. That was it; she was, metaphorically, off and running. I dropped her off with Manisha and Neve and went home to start on the evening meal. Meatballs, roasted red peppers, roasted balsamic red onions, tomato and red wine sauce and mozzarella found their way into the pot; meanwhile, garlic bread toasted. It was a huge success. I must sit down and write the recipe tomorrow.

While all this excitement was bubbling on the hob, Di was on the phone with Jan Mills as they caught up with each others' health status and the latest family gossip.

Success

 It was another lovely day. Diane made the most of it, spending more time tidying up in the garden. Before going out she alerted me to the fact an update had failed on her iPad. It needed more space. Finding and removing some old or irrelevant data took a silly amount of time. Eventually, it was done and the update was applied.

I returned to the exercise that I had started yesterday. It seemed strange that the bridging component I installed had no test or sample programs. Eventually, I asked the programming community and they confirmed that those files should have been installed. I uninstalled (removed) the component. I downloaded a slightly different installation package and installed that. Voila! The test cases and samples appeared and the code burst into life. Now I feel a little more confident about installing it on the iMac (Condor).

I was feeling smug so I shut the MacBook and spent much of the afternoon reading in the Orangery, while Diane sat and read in the garden (I have explained before that I am not a great one for sitting in the sun).

Renovation

I had a lie-in. It was 07:35 before I emerged. I couldn't lie there all morning there was coffee to drink and tea to make for Di.

Being Saturday, there was the cousins' call. This was the first one that I had attended for several weeks. It was nice to see them all, and good to hear about Tim's recent trip to Venice. In turn, they were interested in our cruise to Norway. While the call was in progress, Zoe and Ellie turned up. Zoe had brought back my MacBook as she no longer needed it.

The call completed, and I pressed the button to allow the iMac to upgrade to Sonoma (the latest release of the OS). I then went back to the family room and erased the MacBook before reinstalling it from scratch. The upgrade of the iMac was very quick. Surprisingly so. It seems to be just fine and everything I have tested is working as expected. The rebuild of the MacBook took longer but was completed without incident.

The fresh MacBook was deliberately reset so that I had a clean platform on which to download and try some software. BSF4ooRexx creates a bridge between the ooRexx language and Java. In the past, I have tried to install it once or twice and always ended up with a bit of an unsatisfactory mess. This time, with a couple of false starts, it appears to have been installed properly. I will test it further tomorrow. If it works, it will open up some new coding opportunities for me.

While this was going on, Diane was in the garden. She was pruning and dead-heading as she tidied up for the autumn (making the most of the lovely sunny weather).

Peace

Ellie was very excited when I went to join her for the walk to school. Her class had a school trip planned today. They were visiting Goodwood Farm. Off she went, rucksack on her back and clutching a bag with her wellies.

We headed to Chichester. Diane wanted to look for a jacket and a new dressing gown, and there was an exhibition at the Cathedral that we wanted to see. We hit the shops. M&S, SeaSalt, Crew Clothing, Oliver Bonas, TK Maxx, Mountain, Black's, Cotswold, and several others. Diane could find nothing that quite matched her requirements.

As an interlude between shops, we went to the Cathedral. There is an exhibit on display by the artist Peter Walker. The display contains 15,000 paper doves of peace. Each dove contains a message of peace, love and hope, written by local community groups, schools and members of the public.

It really was an extraordinary sight. We wandered back and forth beneath the cascade as it filled the nave of the Cathedral. Apparently, they changed the lighting occasionally, but it remained violet the whole time we were there. I suspect that it is even more of a spectacle as it gets dark outside, and the impact of the coloured spotlights becomes more marked.

We had a quiet hour or so back home before going to collect Ellie from her dancing lesson (this had nothing to do with the farm visit - just a normal after-school activity for Friday). She bounced out of the gym and then as we walked home, her face turned to thunder. We got the silent treatment for about half an hour. Eventually, she explained to Nana that she didn't know who was collecting her from dancing. I pointed out that the last thing that Mummy had said when we dropped her at school this morning, was that Nana and Grandpa would collect her. "Oh, I forgot", she said, and all was right with the world.

Pearls

I did the usual school escort service with Zoe and Ellie before heading home for breakfast. Being Thursday, the morning was fairly well mapped out. Ocado dutifully arrived with the bulk of the shopping and all was stowed away. Then we headed for Sainsbury's for the traditional top-up. So far, the day had followed a well-trodden path.

After lunch we slipped into the car and headed across country to Basingstoke. We had a good run and were parked up and entering the shopping centre soon after 16:00. We had time to have a good wander around and see how much it had changed over the years. It would be nice to have such a "destination" shopping centre near us.

We made our way towards the top of town, where all of the restaurants are situated. Each of the menus was examined and finally we decided to eat in "ASK:Italian". It was only 17:00 and the restaurant was very empty. Despite this, we were asked if we had a reservation. A smart comment flashed across my mind, but was quickly suppressed. We sat down and had a tasty meal. Diane chose Lasagne (A new recipe of Italian fresh egg pasta sheets, layered with rich beef and red wine ragu and topped with a creamy bechamel sauce and aged hard cheese. Served with beef meatballs, coppa ham, extra ragu and cheese.) and I chose Manzo Piccante (Short rigatoni with beef and red wine ragu, beef meatballs, fresh chillies, roasted peppers and balsamic red onions, topped with mozzarella.). Both meals were very good and I would certainly choose the same again.

We left and wandered back through the shopping mall to The Anvil. This is a theatre we used to visit when we lived in the area, but haven't been back for about 25 years. Kim had bought us tickets for a show. Originally, it was scheduled for April, but due to an attack of Covid-19 it had to be postponed until tonight. The seats that we had were in the third row and we had the most fantastic view.

At 19:45 Elkie Brookes came on stage with her band and proceeded to rattle the rafters with her amazingly powerful voice. She might be 78 but my goodness could she belt them out.

In the first half of the show, she concentrated on her well known and well loved classics, including: Nights in White Satin, Pearl's a Singer, and my favourite, Lilac Wine.

After the intermission, she came back on and did a few new numbers and some old blues classics. The audience lapped it up. Many were up and dancing. I think she must have known I was in the audience because she finished off this Bob Seger's "Night Moves" (and I love Bob Seger's music).

It was all over too quickly. We were walking back to the car soon after 22:00, and having fought our way out of the car park, headed home on almost empty roads. We walked in the door about 23:20. What a night.

Refinery

No alarms were set this morning. Not that they were needed. I had been awake since the early hours and even though we weren't expecting Ellie, I couldn't lie in. Diane had to slip out for her blood test when I wandered to Zoe's for the school escort service.

I returned to the codeface. I had realised that a lot more data could be mined from the Health data dump. The problem was knowing how to identify the correct records for each type. Yesterday's program was refined to perform a one-off run against the whole dump and extract each unique identifier. These were scraped from the output and inserted into the program documentation for future reference. I took it a stage further and ran several extracts of different data categories. All those tested worked well.

I had to pop around to Zoe's after school. Ellie was having a meltdown and needed some external intervention. I followed her to her room and managed to calm her down after a few minutes. She even went and apologised to Zoe and Darren.

Always learning

 It was a fairly usual start to the day. Ellie was dropped off for breakfast and to get ready for school. I walked her to the classroom while Diane got ready for her Cardiac Rehab session. She disappeared off to the Community Centre just as I returned from school. Her session went well and she had a chance to talk with the cardiac nurse for an update. All seems to be going well and is on track even though her pulse is still spiking occasionally.

I returned to the codeface. A few minor mods were made to the data extract program and I re-ran it. This produced a very serviceable CSV file which, in turn, became the basis of an Excel spreadsheet. The extracted data then had to be summarised and a facility was provided to examine small date ranges. Now, I'm a little rusty but was convinced there was a good way to do this. Several hours with YouTube educated me about the use of "Dynamic Arrays" and the subset of commands that can work with them. These are new features, introduced in 2019. I had never heard of them before but fell in love with them immediately. The hours they would have saved me when I was still at work would have been considerable.

After trying a number of different designs, I came up with one that suited our needs and should allow the data to be presented to the GP if necessary. Diane has just taken a look and given it the seal of approval.

The Codeface of data mining

Zoe's training continues this week with time in the petrol station. This meant an early start so Darren dropped Ellie with us soon after 07:00. She was in a very chirpy mood and seemed eager to get to school. We walked her to the classroom and then headed home for breakfast. Little was planned for the day.

Diane spent the morning catching up on her admin and making some appointments. I retired to the study and did some research into future cruise options. I was looking for cruises that start and end in Southampton or Portsmouth. There were plenty of options, but not necessarily choices that we would select. There is no hurry. I will return to this another day.

Diane set me a challenge. Can I get the medical data off her iPhone so that she can present relevant measurements to the doctor? Yes, thought I. But how. A little bit of Googling told me that I could not extract specific items, but I could export the whole data set. I experimented with my own data. A couple of gigabytes of data was compressed into a ZIP file and dropped onto my iCloud. Now, what could I do with it?

I went to the iMac - this would need some power. I unzipped the file and found the various subfiles. The one that I needed was nearly 2GB in length and contained all of the raw data records for all of the measurements the Health Data app captures. I scanned through the file until I found the relevant identifier for the data she requested. Now that I could see the structure and knew the identifier, it was a matter of writing a program to select it and dump it into a separate, more manageable file.

It was nice to be back at the codeface. An hour or two later, I had a routine that would power through the many millions of raw data records it would select the ones I wanted and would create a CSV file. This meant that I could easily do further processing using Excel. It was a very satisfying bit of work, but I have already thought of some minor improvements I could make. That will be a project for tomorrow.

Chilling

 It may be the beginning of October, but it is still warm, if not sunny. I lazed about in bed until 07:40 this morning and felt guilty for not being up and about. We sat and enjoyed breakfast while reading the press and social media and then, finally, started to stir.

Diane wanted to do some tidying in the garden and disappeared out the front of the house. I wanted to file the photos from the cruise and from yesterday. They were already backed up in Google Photos but hadn't yet hit my master database locally. The rest of the morning was spent downloading over 500 photos and videos in batches, then processing them with my "photo filer" program that creates all of the relevant subdirectories and corrects the creation dates to match the EXIF data. It also creates copies of video clips in a separate video clip library. Once all of the photos were filed I went through them (using Adobe Lightroom Classic) to make sure that all of the featured faces had been identified. Job done. Overnight tonight the backup routines will take two further copies of all of these images and videos and store them on other devices in my NAS farm.

The afternoon has been fairly quiet. Some reading, some resting, and the preparation of Sunday Lunch (dinner). This week we had roast pork with crackling, sugar snap peas, roasted potatoes, and roasted carrots. We have enough left over for another one or two meals.