A weekend at home

We had a lovely weekend. It was exciting to come back from work on Friday and know that my partner was home. I’d gone to M&S and bought one of those ‘eat in for a tenner’ deals they do and I have to say it was delightful. Butternut squash and goats cheese lasagne, roasted veg, fruit dessert and a bottle of plonk. Of course, whilst it appears to be fantastic deal (the wine alone was £4.99 before the discount was applied), you never just go into M&S for one thing. And they know that, they know they are dealing with the weak, the over-enthusiastic and the greedy. Sadly I was all three and ended up spending not £10 as planned, but nearly £30. This is not just marketing; this is M&S marketing…

We ended up at Route 38 (an American style dinner on the A38) with some friends on Saturday morning, where we had a good old catch up (even though we’d seen them the week before!) and large and rather lovely breakfasts. Then we went our separate ways; us to see a clock maker. My partner inherited her grandfather’s long-case clock (circa 1830) but it had stopped working. The clock means a great deal to all of us and so we wanted it fixed by the best and in a tiny village in Cornwall we think we found exactly that.

He’s slightly eccentric, an impression not helped by the magnifying lens that protrudes from one of the lenses of his glasses, but also by his love of clocks – all clocks. Absolutely all of them – his ability to talk hind legs off of unsuspecting donkeys and his general world-weariness. He is a craftsman in a society that no longer values its crafts people. It saddens him that there are “so-called” clock repairers and restorers out there who do a lousy job and charge people the earth for the privilege. So he toils away, building on his reputation of excellence and often having to clean up other people’s messes. Anyway, we were completely enchanted and trust him to be able to sort out our grandfather clock – mind you, it’s costing us £300 to have it done!

I sorted books in the afternoon despite really suffering from this cold and ended up having a fairly early night. Sunday we did a big shop because I was getting fed up going out for lunch and paying a lot of money for manky sandwiches when I can make some lovely sarnies myself, and then we sorted the bedroom and most of our clothes. I was in bed by 8pm reading and keeping everything crossed that the cold would be gone by morning. It wasn’t… oh well…