What do I have to do...

...to get a gravy bone?

Gus and I squeezed in an afternoon walk between things happening at home. The delivery of furniture from Wifie's Mum's house arrived with two cheerful Geordie lads in the early afternoon.

Then the next wait was for Phil the plumber. The central heating boiler has been leaking, and the leak was getting worse. The news was bad. It needs a new part, and the supplier is not open on a weekend. So we shall be having a chilly weekend everywhere in the house but the living room, where the wood burner is alight and throwing out welcome warmth.

After that I had to steel myself to ring the tax people in the ongoing project to sort out my dad's tax returns. This last few weeks has been a Kafkaesque experience of bureaucracy at its worst, and today I was expecting more of the same as I navigated the automated answering system and waited for 20 minutes to speak to a real person. But when K finally came on the line, she was exactly what I least expected: an understanding, helpful and sympathetic person who told me exactly what I needed to know and wanted to hear. Real progress at last.