Almost useful

Today’s picture shows the tiny amount of snow we had today to reassure readers from the south that just because we are in Scotland, it doesn’t mean we are always having bad weather.

The sprinkling of snow didn’t stop the extremely cold weather putting paid to any idea of cycling so I had a leisurely breakfast still clad in the dressing gown. Mrs Tootlepedal had discovered a leak behind the washing machine and called the plumber. He arrived and fixed the leak while I was still in my dressing gown  Our experience with the British worker this week has emphasised how lucky we are to live in Langholm and to deal with such excellent tradesmen.

The task of the day was to bring the bookcases back into the sitting room now that the new carpet has been laid.  As my back was only moderately better, it was fortunate that Mrs Tootlepedal was in fighting form. I had to stop her shifting the eight foot high bookcases on her own.  She did pretty well all the serious work such as individually dusting each book as it was returned to its shelf while I did some high quality supervising. In addition we managed to throw away quite a good number of books which we were never going to read again, though we kept quite a few that we haven’t even read once.

I entertained Dropscone (who brought a fine pile of drop scones with him) and Arthur Bell for coffee. Arthur said that he had seen  a great flock of waxwings on the golf course but there were none to be seen in the garden today. In their absence, the light was good enough for me to catch this coal tit an in unusually peaceful pose which made a change.

 

 

The goldfinches really don’t seem to think that the trip to the feeders is a good idea in the very cold temperatures but one bird did make the trip.

 

 

 

In the afternoon I did some more work on the Heritage DVD in preparation for recording Arthur talking about the mill machinery  for which we have pictures. This is a fiddly business involving adding text and captions to try to make the story of textiles in Langholm clear to the non specialist audience while still keeping it true to what happened.

In the evening I had a second helping of the Pakistan goat (lamb) curry which I made yesterday. It was improved by a second cooking and I will certainly try more recipes from the book Annabel gave me for my birthday. After my tea, I got a lift to the Archive Centre from Sandy and did some work with him and Jean before retiring to the Douglas Hotel for the ritual test of beer quality. It was fine.