2007 — 27 November: equally drizzly Tuesday, so far

Time (07:16) and it's time our little household stirred into some form of action, so we can pick up a replacement plastic light cluster from the garage down in Millbrook. Do you know, I vaguely recall having to get up at this sort of time virtually every day of my working life? How ghastly was that? Still, at least the only emails at this time tend to be low-interest commercial ones and those relating to fun things like the Butterflies and Wheels snippets. (Always worth a look.)

Foggy dew

Safely back at 10 or so, despite what I now like to think of as the Dim Designer adding more than a touch of fog to the atmospheric mix to make things more amusing for this neophyte driver. Still, I now have a brand new uncracked rear light plastic cover supplied at cost and fitted for free. Thank you, Kings Toyota. When Christa and I bought the new car there in early October they were kind enough to deliver it, so (as we'd been de-cluttering the loft) we donated one giant and two pint-sized soft toy gorillas¹ to them, suggesting they might raffle them off for a Christmas type thing. I now am delighted to see that they've actually placed the furry trio in a part of the showroom, clustered around a kiddie-sized TV and the younger children of their customers have taken to this simian family in a big way. Excellent! Christa would have been tickled completely pink — it's exactly what she would have wanted, and would have put a very large smile on her face.

Next task: finish sinking the cup of tea,² and then pop in to pay the funeral bill, having topped up the current account appropriately last night, courtesy of this new-fangled Interweb thingy. I've said it before, and I'll doubtless say it again from time to time: I can clearly hear Christa saying "Good God!" as she looks over my shoulder and contemplates the cost of her farewell ceremony. (And, to be honest, that is not a twinkle in her eye — I recognise the look!)

I would say Jessica ("You may not be able to change the world, but at least you can embarrass the guilty") Mitford³ would turn in her grave, but I'd better not. (She was cremated, too, for a mere $475 or so!)

Another (temporary) farewell

Peter wanted to make an early start back to London, while there's still a bit of gloomy November daylight, at least. It reminds me of an earlier departure a month ago. He'll be back for the weekend of my Driving Test, and we've already tentatively arranged to go and see the film of the first part of Philip Pullman's Dark Materials trilogy which, for reasons to do with marketing executives in Hollywood, or possibly not,⁴ has been retitled The Golden Compass. (In fact, he's just taken my hardback copies for Natalie to read. Or was it for Gemma? One forgets!) I'd better start saving my loose change for the tickets, I guess! Us poor pensioners...

Footnotes

¹  Taking an inventory of exactly what's lurking up in our loft is going to be a fun exercise, I tell you! I distinctly remember putting boxes up there that had been moved unopened from the loft of our previous house, and that was in 1981.
²  Which reminds me: I need some more tea bags!
³  According to another late heroine of mine (Molly Ivins): One story [Mitford] loved to tell in Texas went back to her days in Washington, when she was a young widow with a baby daughter. She filled her duty letters to her mother, Lady Redesdale, with whom she had little in common, with social chit-chat, and once she wrote that she had enjoyed having a tea with Lady Bird Johnson. Her mother wrote back, "I have checked Debrett's and can find no mention of this Lady Bird-Johnson."
⁴  I've been corrected — and not for the first time — by the chum who will (maybe) ask the Chief Bureaucrat to put me on the payroll one day...