Visitors

We had a quiet day. After a lazy breakfast, I went across to Chris & Maureen's house to boost the heating so that the house would be warm for their return tomorrow morning. It was only when I approached the thermostats that I realised I had forgotten the intricacies of the controls. Having changed all of our devices 18 months ago, I had forgotten what user-hostile devices they had been. I fiddled about until things seemed to be set correctly, then resolved to return in a couple of hours to check. Fortunately, when I returned, it was evident that the heating was working.

I chopped up some large boxes to put in the recycling bin and had planned to go for a walk afterwards. I had a slightly woozy head when I finished, so I skipped the walk and took my blood pressure instead! This measured a healthy 118/72, so the wooziness was unlikely to be a problem with high or low blood pressure. I decided to just take it easy for the rest of the day.

Taking it easy involved a period of research into automating some savings deposits into the Stocks & Shares ISA. I wanted this to work as a "push" from my bank account rather than a "pull" from the ISA. Despite all the help documentation and research on Google and ChatGPT, I was unable to do what I wanted. Trading 212 seems to obscure their details, so in the end, I made do with a "pull", but I do find that sub-optimal. I may well return to this in the future.

The early afternoon saw some Kindle time in the Orangery until the sun dropped behind the neighbouring houses. We moved into the lounge to continue our books.

Trevor, Sue and Jean came to visit. They were a little later than planned, but that was no real problem. We caught up on all the family news, and Sue regaled us with stories of her grandchildren and how they were about to take over the world of theatre, of dance, of gymnastics, of politics, of science, of architecture and so forth! We also had a lecture about the measures being taken to reduce Trevor's cholesterol. With that in mind, we ordered a delivery from "Habib" (our local Indian), and while waiting for that, I prepared some salmon, chips and peas for Diane and Jean. (The salmon was the first of a batch of individual salmon steaks I had ordered from "Fresh Fish Daily". They are a Scottish producer and shipped the fish down from Edinburgh last night. The verdict was "superb".)

The chat continued over the meal and into the evening. They left at about 21:30, and we had a quiet hour.