Z's Saturday

I keep forgetting that I'm going out tonight. I remembered yesterday and put my ticket in my bag, but it was only half an hour ago when I was planning dinner, having invited the family round for a barbecue tomorrow (hope over experience, indeed) which will use all the food I'd bought for the weekend, that I remembered, with a little jolt (slight overreaction there, but I plead involuntariness), tonight's concert. So I've asked the Sage if he wouldn't mind cooking his own dinner and I'll eat out.

Some years I book for many of the Snape Prom concerts but this year only four. It used to be that they were my annual holiday - I couldn't really get away overnight without a great deal of preparation - but now that isn't the case. I booked rather late and so some concerts were sold out, but I've chosen a variety of jazz and a classical concert. I don't quite know what to expect tonight but that's what's interesting. I'm going on my own so have no one to please but myself.

I don't think I've mentioned that Al is having some major necessary work done on the shop. The upstairs sash window needed to be replaced and he was having some rotten wood cut out of the door frame at the same time, as well as some minor work done on the brickwork and the outside repainted. As so often happens when you start work on an old building, rather more rot was discovered than had been apparent and, as usual, most of it had been caused by bodged work many years ago, in this case when the shop front and door was being put in some 60 years ago. It meant that his iron-framed canopy was resting on the door frame which had been inserted in front of the original and has rot in, and not on any structurally solid part of the building at all. This is going to be an expensive operation - but there we go, he's not had to spend anything much there in the nearly 7 years he's had the shop.

Life is endlessly entertaining there, right in the middle of town by the market square. Because Ben the Builder had a ladder up against the side of the shop in the road, he'd put traffic cones against the pavement the other side to stop people parking (there are double yellow lines there anyway which are generally ignored). Yesterday, a woman came in the shop "the silver Audi isn't yours, is it?" Al and I both confirmed it wasn't. The owner had parked it a foot from the kerb (nicely away from the cones) and she couldn't get past. She sighed and went and got in her car again and started to reverse. Al and I heard a shout from Ben. She had reversed into his ladder, which was clearly visible and which she had presumably meant to miss. Fortunately, it didn't tip over. As she and Ben were discussing the matter, a woman scuttled along, head down, got into the Audi and hastily drove away. Could have been very nasty, but fortunately was quite amusing instead.

I just had another phone call about Ro's car. The Sage advertised it for sale and it went the same evening. Pretty old, no road tax but a full MOT, diesel, reliable, so not surprising. I suppose we'll be fending off phone calls for a while to come. I'm not sure why the Sage put the ad in for 2 weeks - a car always goes at once if you've priced it to sell. Anyway, Ro is now carless and dropped in to the conversation the other day that now he's 25 (and past the dangerous young driver age) I might put him on my insurance. Cheeky child - he's the one who chose to be carless.