Toby's birthday and a possible transformation

The rest of the week was spent doing our usual things such as going to the library, shopping, paying bills and so on. It was Toby's birthday on the 17th, so sent him an ecard. I have always thought that the Star Trek idea of beaming people from place to place was a good idea.
In the evening we went to the Curry Club where we met Ken, and we had a nice meal.

I also sent off a Premium Bond tracing letter, as I used to have some Premium Bonds many years ago, and cannot remember cashing them in. There is a distinct possibility that I am really a millionaire, as there are apparently millions of unclaimed winnings.

On Friday I went off again with Maheena to do some meditation, and to listen to some of the teaching, some of which I could not go along with, but the teacher suggested that it was because I had joined towards the end of the course, so we agreed that I should not come on Fridays until a new session begins.

I had a breakthrough on Saturday. I always sleep badly, consequently I am an authority on world news, as I listen to the World Service BBC radio programme during the night, the shipping forecasts, and then when it hands over to radio 4 , the farmer's news and then the Today programme. Now, once I get into bed I fall asleep almost before I am in a comfortable position (which usually takes hours of tossing and turning), and sleep soundly all night. My secret is to dab a couple of drops of essential lavender oil onto my neck, on the pulse point. What knockout drops! I expect that when I catch up with years of missed sleep, my personality will be transformed!

The man who lost his trousers, and another fine art.

We seemed to have another busy week, Mas was busy on his computer, and I did a lot of gardening and walking. Pete called, saying that his visit to school had gone well, and they liked my pictures of the Skelly characters.

Mas and I went swimming, and when he went off to town on Thursday I went swimming again. This time, talking to another swimmer, he mentioned that he had all his kit stolen yesterday, including his wallet and car keys. When Mas came home he was really tired; he hates travelling on the tube. We decided on the spur of the moment to go off to the curry club, and have a meal there. Luckily our new friend Ken was there, and we had a nice meal, but an even more interesting conversation, and amongst other things he told us about his recent holiday in India, and we talked about meditation and French films.

The next morning I walked down to the station, and on the way saw the two Jims who are neighbours. Irish Jim, talking of Lilu, (Ben and Poppy's small white dog,) said he would not take that dog out. He said he had seen Lilu (who was on a lead) tear the trousers right off a man she did not like the look of. This made the other Jim and me laugh a lot. On a more serious note, Jim's neighbours, on either side of him, were recently burgled. That makes five burglaries on one side of our road.

I met Christiane at Hendon Station, and we travelled off to Olympia as she had free tickets to the International Fine Art Fair that was on today.

We spent a long time looking at

everything, there were beautiful carvings from Japan in ivory, wonderful hand stitched

sculpture over animal skeletons, and lots of jewellery too.

We stopped for a cup of tea, and we had bought some biscuits with us. Eventually tired, but feeling we had seen everything we left and went home again, another nice day!

Once home again I had a quick tidy up, and before long Manu came round, and we sat in the conservatory and had some cool white wine and chatted. Manu wants me to check with the local church hall to see if we could use one of their rooms, one evening a week, so that our art class people can use it. I will check with them. We had a nice evening, but both Mas and I felt really tired and staggered off to bed as soon as we could muster up the energy to climb up the stairs.

Cheerful friends and cheerless weather

I went off for a short walk this morning, and could not seem to settle down to all the things I should be getting on with.

As planned Robert came down to us early in the evening, and we went off again to The Man in the Moon as it was their curry club evening. Luckily we were early enough to get a booth to ourselves, and immediately the place filled up with customers. Before long Ken came in and joined us, and we had dinner and chatted, with many laughs, till 11.30pm when we all left to go home.

The cat woke me at 5.50am this morning, and I felt quite tired all day. The weather was depressingly grey and drizzly. I called Pete briefly, then listened to a Jeeves and Wooster on the radio. Later Toby called and chatted as he has returned home after visiting Alex in California. I watched 'Coast', and later Mas and I had a G & T to cheer ourselves up after such gloomy weather all day.