Still very cold, but dry and windless, the sort of day on which washing freezes and then dries on the line. I made it out to IKEA, and to my considerable surprise found pretty well everything on my shopping list, and got it all home without too much trouble. Now all I have to do is bake all those cookies ( Read more... )

As I went to bed last night I could hear rain starting to blow against the window, and when I got up most of the snow had gone, and we had reverted to proper English Christmas weather, i.e. grey and damp. The temperature has risen to a balmy 4 degrees (39 F), and I even went out without my wooly hat ( Read more... )

After putting off my annual visit to Ikea, a brilliant idea came to me just as I was falling asleep last night. Since I have so much time off nowadays, there was no reason why, instead of making one journey and nearly killing myself lugging two or three huge bags of stuff home, I could make two journeys, one for new glasses and bedlinen and ( Read more... )

The Bt engineer showed up very promptly this morning, at about 8.30, and confirmed that the Bt home hub was the problem; apparently they are two sorts, and I have the older version, but neither of them is perfect. I should be sent a new one, but meanwhile the old router does perfectly well. The weather today is horribly grey and dreich, but I may ( Read more... )

I finally managed to get to Ikea today, rather than Monday, which meant I had to go on my own. My hip was especially stiff on Monday and yesterday, and the walking about seems to have helped it a good deal, although it also set off the knee. I was fairly successful, got most of the stuff I wanted, and I'm not too worried about having to go again ( Read more... )

The Brother arrived yesterday, with three bags of compost for the terrace, but no trellis. Plan A had been to get him to bring paint (to repaint the two walls up there that had faded, trellis (to attach to the newly-painted walls) and compost (for the plants that would be growing up the trellis). However, in the event, all he turned up with were ( Read more... )

A remarkably busy day so far, including the washing of a huge load of sheets and towels at the laundrette and a visit to Ikea, where I failed to but a mattress pad, but bought pear cider and new glasses to drink it from, and some new bendy chopping boards. I did try to buy the chopping boards locally ( Read more... )

Didn't go in to college today, escaping some of the panel-painting duties by my noble offer to go to Ikea for light bulbs and clip-lights. They had the bulbs and lights, but hardly anything else, and I ended up spending quite a bit on exotic Swedish foodstuffs and essential fairy lights (one chain of summer flowers and one of birch leaves ( Read more... )