Sunday Lunch

Gina and the girls came (after getting severely lost and having the patience to get on the right road again) and so did Diana. It made home seem like Home and we stuffed our faces on blueberries, raspberries and halva.
It counteracted the feeling I have that we Brits spent too much time laughing at the former East European countries' lack of efficiency. The phone isn't working (again) after they forgot to give me my old number back and it took an extra week to do that, and so I couldn't set up the internet, and so on and so on.
It worked for a while, just to show me it could (what a tease!) and is now as silent as a tomb.

I now speak to telephone helplines in a stupidly slow voice, enunciating each word so carefully that my kitchen is full of spittle, and making the operator repeat everything back to me (they have always misheard at least one word, and that's before the mistakes in their keystrokes) so the whole thing sounds like an early Edison recording, complete with hisses and pops (that's the steam escaping from my ears and my blood vessels bursting with frustration).

At least there is now a guitar propped up in the living room, waiting expectantly for some songs to land in it.

I hear from Martin that their debut Skifflecat day in the north west was a roaring success: their guitars sound great and everyone was fascinated by their tea chest basses. Brilliant!