Trivia

I spent an hour yesterday sharpening my spade and edge cutter with a stone sharpener which is a wedge of graphite or cobolt carefully created in a factory. Anyway, the men in the hardware store told me not to drop it on a hard floor whatever I did as it would shatter, and I was very careful with it. I was getting the tools ready for Nick who is coming to perform surgery on my lawn on Friday and because he cycles up from Peasenhall he won't have any of his own tools with him. What a difference it made! I tried them both out on a patch of lawn when I'd finished and the edger especially sliced through the tough fibres of the grass like a blade through low-fat Benecol. Just as I was finishing Caroline turned up with her Kenwood mixer. She had told me on Sunday that her blender jug had broken and she was blowed if she was going to buy another. I remembered from a few days earlier that I had inexplicably found no fewer than three in my cupboard when I made the first soup of the winter (courgette and potato), and that she was welcome to one of them. We tried to fit them onto her mixer with no success, but she wondered what would happen if she just held it in place and Bingo! So she left happy.

I've ordered two rugs from John Lewis with the proviso that I will return whichever one is least suitable. You can do that with John Lewis, bless them, and they even give you 90 days to decide. The rug is to sit between the sofas in my sitting room, in front of the fire, to replace the temporary one which really belongs in the kitchen, especially in the winter. I've been searching rather half-heartedly for a while, but last week I had a more serious look and to my amazement I found these two which are the right size and, I think, the right colour. I think the lighter one will be best, but you don't know until they are placed in situ. Here they are, the smaller one the Kabir Goby and the larger one the Osta Kabir. Hopefully they'll arrive when I'm in. It's a busy week this week though I'll be here all day Friday with Nick. On Saturday I'm off to London for the day to see the Agnes Martin exhibition at the Tate Modern before it closes. It comes highly recommended, with a capital H and R.

And so the day ended with the first Italian evening class of the new academic year. It was fun to see everyone, and to meet the new influx of joiners which has brought us up to 20. Predictably I know a few of these already. It really is a small world. I came home with my head reeling and fell onto the sofa to watch a recorded University Challenge, followed by The Catch, an everyday story of trawlermen on the high seas. Both are so relaxing I was like a marshmallow when I finally went to bed at 11pm.