The missing piece

Today I received, by tracked postage, the replacement piece (hand made, apparently) for the piece that was missing from one of my jigsaws, which I'd bought in June but hadn't got round to doing until August (see my blip of August 27th). This is a new customer service, apparently, and I can't praise it highly enough. I'd managed to save the jigsaw on a board covered with cling film (they're not very big puzzles) so I could just slot the new piece into place. Fortunately, it fitted. 

I went for a walk along the canal, where much dredging is in evidence and there are even waterlilies growing in places. I headed east, past the Stroud Brewery pub, to the Long Table cafe and social enterprise at Brimscombe Mill. It was supposed to have to close in August after a change of ownership: the new landlord was going to kick them out, but that hasn't happened (yet) fortunately. 

I visited the canal bookshop in its large portakabin and listened to the latest gossip/moaning by the volunteers about the new development plans ('Who says we should be busier? Why?) and popped over to the village shop to get a newspaper. Sat drinking tea and attempting the crossword until I realised how how  humid it was and how thickheaded I felt, then ambled home, this time via the Longfield second hand furniture warehouse just off the canal towpath. The air has been humid, with thunderstorms and torrential rain, for days and days. It never clears, except immediately after the rain. It's like living in another country. 

When I got home, I had some lunch, lay down with Indie and the laptop, and promptly fell asleep during an episode of rich holiday, poor holiday. 


Got up later, changed and went down to the Town Surgery, narrowly avoiding the rain. We were having a bit of a do, as the practice manager is retiring and turning 60, all at once. After the speeches etc, we went on to an Italian restaurant run by Albanians. The food was very good. I'd been dreading it because I don't know the folks there as well as the ones at my host surgery, but it was a great evening, and I got a lift almost home, and a plan to go walking with one of the receptionists who is about my age. Also, great inspiration: one of the GPs took her mother to Paris for the day to watch the Paralympics ! Of course they flew, which is not very green, but I admire the spontaneity of it .

I wish I had done more with my mother before she remarried and became a carer and got dementia and and and ....but we'd never have flown to Paris from the West Highlands for the day, and I've never had loadsamoney, and come to think of it, she did have holidays in Bahrain, Botswana, the Rocky mountains, and Auckland and Stroud in her 60s and 70s, so she didn't do badly. The last time she visited here was in 2012, on the way to the unveiling of a plaque  on the Isle of Wight (one of my forebears created the first railway there). She was still able to travel by train on her own from Glasgow to Gloucester, and a few days later  from Gloucester to the coast, where one of my sister's friends put her up for the night before putting her on the boat. She was an anxious traveller by then, but was showing no signs of dementia at that point.