News and woes in brief

Hi everyone.

We spent last weekend in London, staying with L, J and Mini.
Dreary wet weather on the Saturday, hot & windy on the
Sunday, when we went to a local city farm (in Merton) to see
the animals there. Rather dull journeys there and back on the
motorways ... decided to keep to a top speed of 60 mph to
conserve fuel, but added 15 mins or so onto journey each way.

Yesterday, a busy day.
Car in for its full annual service and MOT, which it passed
with some repair work (including a replacement ball joint).
£270 bill, but probably worth it, to keep it going another
year -- we'll scrap it in a year's time as it's rusting badly.
The car is an old Peugeot 306.

Pre-MOT, gave the car its annual wash ... and it now looks
quite good for an old lady.

Spent some time preparing what I'd be saying at my charity's
AGM yesterday, and later spoke at the same. I look after
the Gift Aid, the website, the emails and help out with the
Computer Club too. As regards the latter, I'm giving a
Powerpoint talk on using Windows Vista this coming Thursday
morning - the general consensus of opinion from what I've read
(and from various people I've spoken to) is that Vista is
good, but not worth getting until your XP machine needs
replacing. IE7 (which is part of the package) is said to
have better security features, than IE6, according to Jack
Schofield of The Guardian.

After some shopping at Tesco plus some refreshments at a local
pub (along with other U3A members), I went off to collect the
car, and later put a meal together. In the evening, Mrs C and I
drafted another letter of complaint to send off to an internet
company, about the mis-selling of its online advertising
service to us. It claims to value its customers, but as yet we
have not received an apology or a refund of our money.

Today ... well let me have a look at the list ...
Print off letter to above company and post it off by Recorded
Delivery. I'm sending a copy of the letter to the Sales
Director, whose name I found on the internet.
Get new Road Tax disc for car from same post office. £185
Delivery of some red wine from The Wine Society ... wine they've
got on offer at the moment
Preparations for revamping our through-lounge-dining room ...
Repairing water damage to some plasterwork (2 day job)
Ordering from John Lewis ...
Osbourne & Little wallpaper to go on two walls
6 wall-lights (Ashlyn brass design)
New dimmer light switch
Tester pots of matt paint for the other walls
New brass door handles (6)

also on the list..
glueing back together a pepper pot (broken by little A)
(it's a cute black & white china cat)
fixing the front handlebar of a new trike we've bought for
the grandchildren.
fixing up new wooden child safety-gate supports
fixing back up a couple of large antique mirrors onto
wooden supports.

Plus doing some window-shopping for a new jacket for myself
(and a new shirt) for a family wedding that's coming up in
a few weeks' time.

Also looking out for a few items lost in this house ...including
the cat immunisation certificates. Their annual jabs are due in
a month's time.

Things have tendency to disappear in this house -- they get tidied
up, especially when we've got someone coming to visit us ...
things get shoved into piles of clutter and are then moved off
somewhere else.

Of course, I'm to blame for all this ... I've got piles of clutter
in the study/third bedroom. Well, who else could be responsible for
all the clutter in this house?