Big day

[the gates were open again by the time we got there today]

Today did not start terribly well as it was wet on my way around Jubilee Way. It started raining on Ewell by-pass and I was going to tough it out, but after a few minutes decided against and unpacked the old-speak, yellow cycling cape. A few minutes later, it had stopped again and I packed it away. Then a few minutes after that, it started coming down again, so I unpacked the cape again. By the time I got to the roundabout at the corner of Hook Road Arena it was raining quite hard and I would not have been surprised if there had been lightning - of which there has been a fair bit over the last few weeks. Slightly hairy going around the roundabout as hand signals are awkward from underneath a cape, but I managed to get home in one piece.

Spot of cold beef for lunch (on which more in due course), by which time the sky had cleared and the sun was warm. Few minutes zizz on the back patio, then off to the tip (aka the community recycling centre) with some stuff we had cleared out of the roof over the weekend. Some of which stuff which had been sitting there for more than twenty years and we have finally worked out that we are unlikely to need it again. Or than anyone else is likely to need it. Or even take it off our hands. 

Plus various odds and ends from the garage. Like the £25 Kryptonite bicycle lock I found on my travels a year or so ago but never got around to getting in touch with them about unlocking it. In fact, I had forgotten all about it and bought a lock from Halfords since - but at least I did not pay £25 for it and it is nowhere near as heavy.

Plus a selection of older persons' DVD's, mainly costume dramas and murder soaps, now deemed to be surplus to requirements, despite our continuing failure to move our television beyond ITV3.

Printed off my online appointment letter - introduced last year to keep queues down a bit - a nuisance, but at least it worked.

Dug out BH's driving license complete with photograph.

Got into the tip OK, supervised on this occasion by a trio of cheerful young men. One of whom carried off the DVD's for inspection. So it is possible that some of them will find a home after all. So a satisfactory visit - our first for well over a year.

From there to the Dr. Barnardo's charity shop at Horton Retail, where they professed themselves happy to take a couple of surplus mugs and three surplus artworks, two of them originals and signed by the artist.

We rewarded ourselves with a four pack of hot cross buns from Coughlans, the Eccles cakes I was looking for being absent. As were the Chelsea buns which were our second string. To be toasted shortly.

PS 1: raining again now.

PS 2: 17:30: just had another sharp shower. Regression to April showers. Will the young sunflower plants hack it?

PS 3: 17:40: just been reading that our Home Secretary takes her lead from our fat leader when it comes to rules and agreements: ministers are far too busy and important to worry about that kind of stuff. Rules and agreements are for other people. This at the same time as explaining that her department will apply the full rigor of the law, dotting all the i's and crossing all the t's, when it comes to foreign people suspected of having never known about, forgotten, bent or broken a few rules when trying to stay here or when trying to get here. Twenty years service in our care or health industries notwithstanding.

Reference 1: https://www.barnardos.org.uk/.

Reference 2: http://www.coughlansbakery.co.uk/. From Thornton Heath, not far from where I spent my last year or so as an undergraduate. A place called Warwick Road, where, as it happened, there was a very good baker at the top of the road. Selling proper English white bread, hard to get these days, despite the ridiculous amount of choice one is offered.