Sharing

I've chatted up many of my neighbours and broadcast an appeal on the neighbourhood website but so far no sign of my lawnmower cover. When it's not so cold and I'm feeling energetic I'll organise a proper search. Walking has been limited to a stroll up the lane for a few days now as I grapple with the effects of a coughing bug with a nice sideline in night sweats. Very appetising. To compensate, I've played with Hugo in the garden when we've returned home, and each time he has gone loopy, spinning round and round in circles, and charging back to me. He's grabbed anything he could find to run off with, then come close enough to tempt me with it before dashing off again. He's full of beans. Yesterday we spotted Alfie way up the lane, and he started to cry and make little dashing movements in his eagerness to get to his little white friend. And today when we called on a new neighbour to offer a belated welcome and ask if they'd seen my cover, their dog barking at a window drove poor Hugo to near apoplexy in his desire to play. I feel sorry for him, but I'm afraid for the moment it's just him and me. It won't always be thus lad.

Unusually for me I thought the afternoon might drag a bit, but my friendly neighbour David popped by with a bunch of daffs for me, and we very contentedly whiled away an hour together. As an ex-bookseller it's obvious he's my kind of person, and we have remarkably similar tastes in books. He left with a couple that I've just finished reading and he had on his list to buy, and when we meet again he has a few for me to borrow in return. Inter alia we discussed funerals, and discovered we share a disdain for people who prepare theirs in complete detail in advance of their death. What is the point when they won't be there to enjoy it? I would hope there would be some music to make my mourners cry, the Lachrymosa from Mozart's Requiem maybe, perhaps a Welsh male voice choir singing Myfanwy. But otherwise they can do as they like. They're the ones who will have to endure the thing.