Door

A relatively slow day. PY was at home rather than out at the office so that was lovely. I went to pick up my ‘intermediate glasses’ from the opticians in Wimbledon; taking the train but walked back with my coffee from Caffè Nero.  The glasses are designed to help me avoid taking my existing spectacles on and off when I am at my desk working. They are only meant for screen work so it’s very strange when I, inadvertently, gaze out the window and everything is a blur. I should also take them off before attempting to walk down the stairs because the bottom steps are not in focus and it’s a bit disorientating.  I didn’t have any video calls for anybody to comment on them. I kept them to the cheapest frames I could because this is more of an experiment than a necessity. 

In the evening we headed to Waterloo, not forgetting the Mermaid Gin bottle that has been sitting on the stool waiting to picked up.  The bottle is empty and is going to be used with some lights in it as a task light in the Isle of Wight flat. It was well-wrapped as we are also taking some spare towels with us.  I did the usual  over-checking of the doors before we left. We probably worried too much about the noises coming from the dishwasher as we were leaving. It was fine. I know, because we pointed an internet camera at it and we saw the cycle finish from the comfort of the train seats. I am not sure what we would have done if we’d seen something else happen.

We had salmon and avocado bowls from the Co-Op to eat for our dinner but we did stop to grab a coffee from Pret on the Waterloo concourse. It was surprisingly quiet. 

We were on the route through Hedge End and Basingstoke rather than the usual train. Probably something to do with the on-going work-to-rule by one of the train unions. The journey was uneventful.  I finished Ian Moore’s “Death and Croissants”, a book I’d picked up on our last visit to The Island. It was an easy, but enjoyable, read. I’d, somehow, ground to a halt with Sara Cox’s autobiography when there was a bit too much country (horses and cows) and, sometimes, a change of pace with a different style of book provides the break I need to get back to whatever I was reading. I think I’ll probably pick up the next in the Follet Valley Mystery series at some point.

Some kids were mucking around playing on the buffers at Portsmouth Harbour Station. I was worried one of them would fall off onto the electrified line but the staff ignored it and nobody was hurt. We took a quiet ferry across to Ryde and in the flat by 10:30.