Stitch up

We had a gentle start to the day. There was no need for an alarm, but I woke up at 07:00 anyway. I snuck downstairs to make coffee and read the news, leaving Diane to sleep for as long as Jasper would allow. At 09:00 I had the usual call with the cousins. This was fun as there had been a suggested theme of "meat-related" sayings. The theme petered out quite quickly but it did stir discussion of Kate's forthcoming trip to the UK, whether you can use the reactor on a nuclear submarine to cook (when the microwave breaks down), and whether you can protect against meat pilfering with a burger alarm.

Though rain had been forecast for late in the day, it was a bright morning, scoured by a chilly wind. Diane wanted to do a Spring Clean in the front garden. The leaf blower was retrieved and the leaf vacuum was fired up. Working in tandem (and ably assisted by the east wind) we soon dislodged the fallen leaves from last Autumn and those not removed by the wind were soon vacuumed up. Our lesson from this was to always deal with the leaves on a windy day when nature provides the optimum assistance. With that done, Di continued to tidy and prune the flowers and shrubs and I washed down the paintwork. It was a very successful exercise.

After lunch, as I was finishing my latest book, I received a message from Trevor. They had been due to travel to Seville for a few days. He has tested positive for Covid, however, so the trip is on hold. Let's hope he recovers quickly.

Audible is a service, now owned by Amazon, which provides audiobooks. I have probably discussed it in the past as I have used it extensively, particularly when I was still working and needed some entertainment while commuting by car or train. I no longer subscribe, but I still have a significant number of titles in my library that I haven't yet listened to. As the weather is now improving and I am hoping to get some more walking in my weekly routine, I thought it the ideal time to select the next unread book in my library. It was not that easy. The "app" through which I used to listen is now suggesting that I need to accept a "Free Trial" which then morphs into a payment of £7.99 a month. I don't think so! What a stitch-up!  I spent a couple of hours tracking down a way to access my library and downloading the books. Then I managed to load the books into the "Books" app on my MacBook. Now I need to find a way of synchronizing the books across all my Apple devices. This last bit is proving problematic at present, but I will continue to investigate.