It was almost sunny for the entire day today. What a difference a bit of blue sky makes. And the anticipated storms of 8pm were only a very slight drizzle.

In order to celebrate properly, I took to the garden and, firstly, mowed the lawn. To say it needed it would be as big and understatement as saying that Titanic ran into an ice cube.

The long grasses of the African savannah

Of course, the grass was pretty sodden so it kept chugging up the blades and stopping the engine but eventually I managed to make it all look a little more presentable. Of course the path makes an excellent mowing strip as well as somewhere to bounce the mower in order to rid it of clumps of grass.

Still lush but lots shorter...and I think I've lost Day-z

The bit behind me looks much better as well. Speaking of which, I also planted the standard rose we bought weeks ago. It’s been sitting down the side of the house, propped up by the big blue recycling bin. It’s a lovely yellow, scented, standard rose and we’re hoping for great things from it.

It’s a David Austin English fragrant rose called Graham Thomas so, from now on, will be called Graham. When it flowers (repeatedly, apparently) it should look like this:

Graham's label

The day was so beautiful that, of course, we also went for a walk in the park. I decided to treat the poodles because they’ve been stuck inside for a week and took them all the way around. We met lots of other people taking their grateful dogs on sun-laden jaunts, all happily wagging their tails and full of the joys of being let out after a month of rain.

All was gorgeous until we reached the football pitch near the golf course. Last week the circus was in town and they always pitch up there but usually the rain is kept to a minimum for the duration of their stay. Of course, this wasn’t the case last week. In fact, normally I get to see them gradually getting everything set up for the big event on the weekend but, apart from seeing the trucks at great distance from the path into town, I’d seen nowt of their visit.

I may have seen nowt of their arrival and set up but I certainly saw a lot of what they left. They have devastated the park!!!! Ghastly great ruts of churned up grass and mud. It looks like a battle field after a jolly good rampant shelling from the Panzer Division of the German army.

Where picnics once took place

Honestly, I felt like crying. Only a few short weeks ago, I watched families frolicking, playing bat and ball games, giggling in the sun, eating home made treats on the grass. Groups of teenagers for once smiling as they laid back absorbing much needed vitamin D. Hundreds of dogs chasing hundreds of tennis balls. Now, all that’s left, is a desolate wasteland of truck treads.

Sob, sob

And with more rain forecast, it’s going to take a while to get back to anything approaching usable. It makes me so sad.

Rather than end on such a miserable note, here’s a ladybird that was happily sitting on the lavatera, watching me mow earlier in the day.

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

I’m fairly certain that this has been one of the worst Sunday’s we’ve ever spent in the UK. I admit, that could be a slight exaggeration if I include the Christmas we went to the Lakes, but even so, it was pretty dire.

It was like all the rain we’ve already had decided to double up and fall in one day. As a consequence, we didn’t leave the house. Of course I went shopping in the morning (and managed to get soaked) but that was it for me and Mirinda stayed inside.

I find that days like this are good times to perform a bit of essential housekeeping on the website – clearing out old files, fixing up photo albums that no longer work. While there’s no obvious evidence of my having done anything useful, at least I know the site is working a little bit better.

As I go through the many pages, I often wonder whether I should change it all. It does occur to me that I’m possibly one of the only people who actually look back over old photos and journals so, for that reason alone, perhaps I should make it what I want.

Perhaps, once all the travel journals are transferred to the blog, I will make wholesale changes, just to spruce it up. Of course, this can only be accomplished when the weather is rubbish and I have nothing else to do, given the size of our website.

In the meantime, I just look out the back window and thank Dave we now have a path. I reminded Mirinda how awful the back garden would be if not for the path. We may dither over other changes to our house but this one has proven a boom.

PS: The reason I might not be able to make the first FATN committee meeting (as I mentioned yesterday) is because I’m expecting a delivery on Tuesday and have no idea when it’s due.

It’s now official. I am now a bona fide member of the Talking Newspaper committee…though I might have to miss the first committee meeting, which is not a good start.

Today was the 40th annual general meeting of the Talking Newspaper so I left the house to walk across the path to the Upper Hale village hall, where the hordes of volunteers and listeners waited for the proceedings to begin.

Our chairman, John, has decided to step down this year and so, during his long speech, he handed over to Ann, our new chairman. We also have a new president. Sir Richard Thornton was also stepping down.

He’s been a very busy man in local life. He served as the Queen’s High Sheriff of Surrey for a bit as well as the Lord Lieutenant of Surrey (which he retired from in 1997). I’ve never met him but he sounds like a wonderful chap and the chairman had lots of wonderful things to say about his patronage of the group over the years.

Replacing Sir Richard is Dame Elizabeth Anson. She is a barrister, has been a magistrate and also sits on the boards of lots of charitable organisations. She gave a short speech telling us how important it is to get the word out to the visually impaired that our service exists for them.

After the official bit of the AGM, we moved on to the ‘entertainments’ which featured a blonde woman called Sally in a lovely floral dress singing Songs from the Shows to the accompaniment of a pianist. It wasn’t as dire as it sounds. Sally has a lovely voice (she sang at both of Ann’s daughters’ weddings) and gave us a varied repertoire which included a number from Salad Days which took me back. It was Jane’s I Sit in the Sun which was quite ironic given the fact that it’s rained all month.

After the song, ex-chairman John, having noticed I’d been mouthing the lyrics, asked how I knew the show. I said I’d played Tim in a production of Salad Days to which he replied that one of his first girlfriends performed in the original West End production and had driven him crazy learning the songs. I told him he should have heard them with Australian accents…he may never have recovered. it is a VERY English musical.

We finished with a rousing rendition (if that’s even possible) of Edelweiss, which everyone joined in on. I felt like I was in Switzerland. At least it wasn’t Tomorrow Belongs to Me.

After the ‘entertainments’, I was approached by one of the office staff asking if I could come and meet one of our listeners who had specially asked to meet me. She was sat in the front row, with her guide dog (who stood up and wagged her tail every time we applauded the singer, clearly thinking the applause was for her). She told me she loved hearing an Australian voice in amongst all the very English ones.

I mentioned my sports reports and she said she always switched off before the sports report. Oh well.

We then all indulged in tea and cake and a chat before I trudged back across the rain drenched park to a warm and dry house.

Today I spent most of my time researching the wonderfully named Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge (SDUK). A lot of very high profile chaps were involved in it back in 1826. They were abolitionists, politicians, educationalists and a philosopher.

Their main aim was to bring education to the poor. One way to do this, was that they would publish cheap periodicals at regular intervals which contained articles written for the layman but about the latest scientific thinking. One of their publications, for instance, was the Library of Useful Knowledge which sold for a sixpence, was published biweekly and focused on scientific topics.

They hoped to reach as much of the working and middle classes as they could. While the publications sold extremely well, it seems that the working classes didn’t want to know anything because it was the wiser and more successful middles that saw the advantage of knowledge. Some things never change.

Anyway, the Society kept me pretty busy for almost the entire day but I did manage to pop over to the V&A for a prowl around the English [1500-1700] galleries. And that was where I met James Gibbs.

Don't you just love my powdered wig?

James [1682-1754] was the architect who designed St Martin’s-in-the-Fields in London. He was Scottish and was not part of the great Palladian movement of the time. He preferred his buildings rather Italian in design, look and feel. He was also secretly a catholic and a Tory. Given that the Palladian movement was populated by Whigs and Protestants, there was no way he could join!

To me, this is rather odd. OK, I’m living in 2012 and grew up in the wonderful, free-for-all world of the 1970s but even so, I’m really finding it hard to understand how the way an architect designs his buildings can in any way be influenced by his belief in a particular god(s) and political affiliations. People are seriously weird sometimes.

Anyway, enough of that, Gaz (although, today I told the barista in Starbucks my name was Trevor, when he asked for my name, and when I arrived at work, Nick read my cup and told everyone I was Trevor today)…the church is lovely. I think the inside looks like decorated wedding cake.

The interior of St Martins-in-the-Fields, London

I took the above photo back in 2009 when I went to a hear a pianist (I think) play.

Whatever people thought of Gibbs’ religious and political belief system, they didn’t let it bother them too much as he was very successful and became very wealthy. In fact, he was so wealthy that when St Bartholomew’s hospital asked him for a design to rebuild the it, he did it free of charge.

Sadly, poor old James was a bit fond of wine and food and was described at one stage as rather corpulent, a wonderfully onomatopoeic word. But these things always catch up with you and things for him took a turn for the worst. I’m not sure whether he had gout (it has to be a certainty if you ask a fellow sufferer) but he developed awful kidney stones which made his weight fall off till he was so thin he forced himself to go to France for a cure.

He died not long after the trip to France, leaving money and ‘stuff’ all over the place. He hadn’t married so there was just a long list of beneficiaries, each getting a little bit of James’ assets.

As well as St Martins, his other best known piece was the Radcliffe Camera in Oxford.

From way back in 2003

And just to add…I am fully recovered from this weeks bout of cold and the torture I had to endure yesterday.

A while ago, I had a strange pain in my lower abdomen. One of those pains normally associated with the result of eating something that would have preferred to stay on the outside of your body and is fighting to get out again. Generally, these sorts of pains tend to go away with normal evacuation and you just think yourself lucky you don’t live in the 15th century when I’m sure it happened a lot more often with far worse outcomes.

As I said, these pains usually go pretty quickly but in the case of this particular one, it hung around for a bit. I was a bit concerned as a result of watching too many stories on Breakfast about men of my age having strange abdominal things and doing nothing about it then finding out it was something horribly terminal. So, after three days, I made a appointment with my GP.

My GP (or rather the one that was available because I rarely see mine) had a poke around and, not finding anything, decided I needed to be referred to a higher authority. I was duly given an appointment for a few weeks hence. In the meanwhilst, the abdominal pain decided to up sticks and leave.

The day arrived for me to visit the Frimley outpost, downstairs in the medical place at Aldershot. What a joy! A short walk from the town centre and just a bus ride away. The hospital is even quite pleasant to visit even though where I had to go was down in the dungeons.

In Aldershot I saw the very nice Miss Taylor. She spent some time during her training in Adelaide so we discussed Australia for quite a bit, throwing Kath & Kim quotes liberally around her consulting room, leaving the nurse somewhat bemused.

Anyway, Fiona (for that is Miss Taylor’s name) had a more robust poke around and even used a small magnifying eyeglass thing to have a look just inside. She was satisfied that it looked ok but wanted to be sure, given my age, and so referred me to the authority above her – the endoscopy department at Frimley Park. She also gave me a box containing two sachets of very explosive powder, saying I had to take them in accordance to a leaflet she also gave me.

And so I was to have a colonoscopy. For those that don’t know, this is when they push a very small camera up into your colon to have a jolly good look. Naturally I was curious though it’s fair to say, I wasn’t exactly looking forward to it.

Well, today was the day so it was off to Frimley Park Hospital for the procedure. But first there were the two sachets to be taken.

The sachets contained a super laxative called Picolax. You have to take it in order to completely clear yourself out. You also have to go without food for about 24 hours. Fiona warned me to be in range of a toilet when I took it as the sudden desire to explode could come at any time with little warning and possibly disastrous results.

I had to start taking it yesterday afternoon so I stopped eating after breakfast and started drinking an awful lot of liquid. At 2pm I mixed the stuff up and drank it.

I was actually dreading the drinking as the leaflet suggests, for those finding it difficult to drink, that sipping it slowly with a straw may help. I assumed this meant it was going to taste foul. If this was the case, there was no way I was going to prolong it. I was chucking it down in one go, regardless of the taste. As it turned out, it was like an antacid with a faint lemon taste. It wasn’t that bad at all. And then I waited.

And waited.

And waited.

This stuff is lethal!

Eventually the wait ended. Fiona was right. The sudden urge, the sudden dash, and the equally sudden explosion. I am so glad there was no-one but poodles in the house. That makes it sound like I didn’t get to the toilet in time but I did…just.

I had taken the precaution of placing my book next to the downstairs loo, knowing I may be spending a bit of time in there. This was a stroke of genius. I managed to read quite a lot of Dirk Gently yesterday afternoon, evening and night.

As the night drew in without much let up of regular stirrings and subsequent readings, I was worried about when I’d be going to bed. I gave myself an hour after my last visit to the toilet as a safe cut-off. I was not at all sure I could make it to the loo from the bed if the stuff attacked in the night.

I eventually went to bed just before 11 and while I didn’t sleep very well, the toilet remained undisturbed. But then came the second sachet.

This one has to be taken on the morning of the afternoon procedure. I knocked it back at 7:30 and was on the toilet by 8. I was surprised there was anything left but there was (the body must keep a lot back for later deposition, I guess) and I read an awful lot more of Dirk Gently as I waited for the taxi to arrive to take me to the hospital.

One good thing about taking the Picolax is the fact that you can still drink coffee (as long as you don’t have milk in it) so I was at least awake.

I arrived and checked in at the endoscopy department and then settled down in the remarkably comfortable chairs of the waiting room. There was a lot of waiting involved in the entire time I was there and I won’t bore you with it all…it’s pretty reasonable to assume there was waiting between everything else I went through.

Obviously there was a lot of form filling and general health questions answered but eventually I found myself in a hospital gown lying on my side on a hospital gurney, surrounded by four doctors and nurses, all very nice and chatty and excellent at putting nervous patients at ease.

The equipment is, as you’d expect, very high tech and very impressive. The doctors took me through everything that was going to happen, stunned that I didn’t want sedation.

Way back with Fiona Taylor, I was offered sedation. Apparently you can have it if you want but it isn’t necessary if you can take a bit of discomfort. It makes it easier to get home without it. If you take the sedation option, you have to have someone there to help you home. Being me, I didn’t want the sedation.

I mean, how bad could it be? Pretty bloody bad, actually.

Apparently I have something called diverticulosis. This is quite common, particularly here in the affluent west, and isn’t cause for any alarm…unless you want to push a camera into someone’s colon who has it.

In simple terms, and borrowing an excellent analogy from the NHS, diverticulosis is when the inner lining of the colon bulges out of the outer layer similar to the way that an inner tube of a bicycle tyre would bulge out of holes in the rubber tyre. Scientists believe this is caused by a lack of fibre in western diets. You can read more about it here.

Anyway, the problem with diverticulosis is the fact that it creates lots of little dead ends along the colon, making it quite difficult to navigate through with the colonoscopy camera. This, in turn, makes it very unpleasant for the owner of the colon if they have refused sedation.

There was a time, during the insertion, when I was seriously preparing to tell them, in no uncertain and purely Anglo-Saxon terms, to stop immediately and give me some drugs. It was at this point that the second doctor (who had been navigating) pushed on my stomach, making the pain bearable.

“Is that better, Mr Cook?” She asked.
“Yes. And please call me Gary,” I replied with gratitude and repetition, given I’d asked her to do this on a number of occasions already.

After that, it was pretty much clear sailing, if you ignore the number of times I had to turn over, change sides and generally move around the camera rather than them move it around me.

Amazingly, you can watch it all on a big colour flat screen TV – blurry in my case as I didn’t have my glasses on. Though, after a while it all becomes a bit gross so I stopped watching.

And then, finally, it was over and I was wheeled into recovery where the previous patients were all lying down as if they were new residents of the mortuary. Clearly they’d all been smart and taken the sedation.

It was then just a case of getting dressed and getting home. Easy enough, given the amount of times I’ve travelled in and out of Frimley except for one thing that remained inside of me.

During the procedure, they blow little bursts of air inside you in order to open up the smaller places. I didn’t notice it at the time (though I’d been warned) but was told by the nurse who discharged me that I might feel a bit bloated but walking around should fix it. Well, bollocks to her!

It was like having really bad flatulence while suffering from diarrhoea. You really need to let it out but you’re afraid it’s not going to be just air when you do.

Of course, there’s no toilet at Frimley station so I had to wait 28 minutes for the train, suffering. It was with great relief that the toilet actually worked, had a seat and was clean. An amazing feeling of relief sweep through me. It lasted as far as Aldershot, as I waited for the bus back to Farnham.

I had originally intended to pop into the shops before going home but my stomach ruled against it. I went straight home to the loo instead. By about 9pm, I was starting to feel almost normal.

And so that was my adventure today (sorry it’s so long) and one I hope no-one else I know ever has to go through. But, if anyone I know does have to go through it, please, please, PLEASE, take the sedation!!!

Of course, the best thing is that they give you a verdict straight away afterwards and I’m very pleased to announce that I am perfectly fine. So the pain was just a bug after all and I’ll live to blog another day.

After talking myself hoarse with Mum and Dad, I was feeling a bit better this morning so I decided I could finally do something in the garden. This was made a lot easier by the fact that the rains stopped for a bit and the sun made an appearance.

A couple of weeks ago, we bought a standard fuchsia and it has sat, morosely wedged between two of the patio chairs, avoiding the wind but collecting water. I noticed on the weekend that it didn’t look too happy in its confinement and said as much to Mirinda who told me where it needed to go. This was on Sunday and, unusually, I remembered the location.

I’d prepared the bed already (the bed doesn’t have a name except it’s the closest to the patio) and it was just a matter of digging a hole, dropping in some chicken poo and then plonking the plant on top. While it’s quite tall, the fuchsia isn’t really that big so this wasn’t what you’d call in any way, hard work.

Almost immediately, the plant looked happier (that could have been my imagination – what is the floral version of anthropomorphism?*) and, spurred on by my success and feelings of continued well being, I decided to feed the birds.

We have a lot of feeding stations in our garden so this isn’t as simple as grabbing a handful of seed and tossing it on the grass. By the time I’d finished, I was exhausted and needed a jolly good lie down.

So, the net result of my labours (apart from a happy plant and well fed birds) was the knowledge that my cold was still clinging to my insides like a fox with a chicken. I felt like rubbish again.

So the rest of the day was devoted to snooker, medicine and dozing off during the more exciting moments of play (Mirinda would probably say that I clearly couldn’t have dozed much).

Late in the afternoon I did manage to put away the clean washing but even this wore me out and I needed a rest afterwards. Stupid cold!

A Nicktor Night was planned for tonight but, in a rare moment of wisdom and sense, I’d postponed it until next week. Nicktor was very understanding though obviously disappointed.

And my blips are getting a bit boring…

* I realise that anthropomorphic refers to giving ANYTHING human attributes and not just animals particularly given we do it all the time.

If you’re going to be sick, what better time than while the snooker is on. It’s the World Championship at the Crucible in Sheffield at the moment. BBC2 is literally awash with green baize and coloured balls.

The thing is, you can drift in and out of consciousness and nothing seems to have changed…until you look at the scoreline at the bottom of the screen. It’s like one very long game – awake for ten minutes, sleep for an hour, awake for five minutes, sleep for an hour, no change. Genius.

I did manage to see a bit of Ronnie O’Sullivan demolishing Peter Ebdon in their first session. Always good.

And that was about it for my day. I even took the unprecedented move of having chicken broth for lunch and dinner. And I had a lovely hot and steaming bath, thinking it might help…somehow. And an early night.

Mirinda has, quite generously passed her germs on to me. I am full of cold and feel lousy.

This will be a very short post.

Ever since we discovered the closure of St John’s at Odiham, we have been searching for a new celebration restaurant. Mirinda found Latymer at the Pennyhill Park Hotel, 13 miles up the road in Bagshot. We booked in to it a while ago but had to cancel. We then booked it for Mirinda’s birthday.

Pennyhill Park itself, dates back to 1609 when it was a field with a beacon in it. Building didn’t begin until 1849 and was completed in 1851. There followed a succession of owners until, in 1972, it became a hotel.

It is located in lovely secluded grounds which contains (along with the hotel, wedding venue, two restaurants and conference facilities) a golf course.

The only blot on this otherwise perfect landscape, is the constant traffic noise from the M3 which isn’t very far away. It would be totally Sylvan if one was deaf.

The Latymer restaurant inside the main building is run by head chef Michael Wignall, who has not just a Michelin star but also an impressive 5 AA rosettes! And it’s easy to see why.

The entire night is more an experience in luxury and being spoiled than just a meal out. And the food…fantastic!

A happy birthday celebration

Ever since we tried the chef’s table and taster menu in Prague, we’ve wanted to try it again and Latymer provided us with the perfect opportunity. Alongside the normal ala carte menu, they have a ten course taster. We didn’t hesitate.

Course after course was delivered to us, each one beautifully presented; a feast for the eyes as well as the tastebuds. The level of gourmet food can be measured by the fact that, as I mentioned to Mirinda, Dad wouldn’t have eaten anything. Not even the bread.

My favourite course was the first dessert – there were three. It’s probably quite difficult to imagine mixing fresh garden peas with strawberries and mint ice cream but it was FANTASTIC! The colours are the first things to impress. It was beautifully presented. And then the taste…sweet baby green peas and strawberry is a wonderful combination. Like a taster menu should, it left me wanting lots more.

At first glance, I thought I would enjoy the last item most (that’s it pictured) because of the combination of caramel, ice cream and dulce de leche, all big favourites in my mouth but the peas and strawberries beat it into a cocked hat! Genius.

Dessert number 3

Anyway, it was a lovely birthday for Mirinda (we’re so glad she’d recovered sufficiently to go) and a delight for my palate. We’ll definitely be returning.

Oh, dear! The fancy new electric opening overhead skylight windows in the basement have developed a leak. Poor Emma had a constant drip, drip, drip in a well positioned bucket next to her, as the heavens let rip with a massive downpour just after lunch today. It was a downpour I gratefully just missed, returning from lunch as I did ten minutes earlier.

Of course, Nick immediately called facilities to report the leak and, to give them their due, they arrived almost before he replaced the receiver of his phone. Two chaps arrived and looked up then down into the bucket. They then left to reappear a few minutes later above the windows, treading carefully between the panes of very toughened glass.

In the still falling rain, they applied vast quantities of some sort of silicone goo around the glass where the drip was flowing. The dripping stopped. For about two hours. And then it returned. It did occur to me that perhaps they would have been better off sealing the leak when the rain had stopped.

Mind you, I didn’t mind the drip. It was strangely comforting to know I was inside and dry. I felt a bit sorry for the hordes of tourists who I’d seen sitting outside between the museums at lunchtime but I expect they ran inside as soon as it started. At least I hoped they did. Otherwise their postcards would read something like “A lovely morning in London spoiled only by the torrential rain which ruined our sandwiches and drowned the children. Wish you were here.”

Of course, when I popped out for my usual Friday visit to the V&A, the sun was bright and there were few clouds blotting the otherwise blue sky.

Today I went upstairs to a part of the V&A I’d not found before. Honestly, the place throws up new places for me to discover like dandelions in the lawn. It always amazes me. It makes me think that, if I was living and working in Paris and the Louvre was close by, I’d never run out of things to visit.

Today I saw the earliest known photographic image of London. At first glance, it appears to be a small silver square and, from most angles, it resembles a mirror. You have to move in quiet close and suddenly a remarkably clear image of a London street scene almost magically appears. It’s a daguerreotype plate, taken by someone called Monsieur de St Croix. It was taken from Trafalgar Square looking at Parliament Street. Here’s a copy from the V&A website.

London in 1839

In the main sculpture gallery, I noticed this rather portly chap who I’d never seen before. Strange but true.

Joshua Ward - the great and generous - by Augustino Carlini

Josh was born in 1684 and decided to become a doctor. Not particularly keen on studying, he didn’t bother with getting any qualifications. He also decided to become very rich by selling potions and lotions to poor, unsuspecting sick people. In short, he was a quack.

Quack he may have been but, as far as his doctoring went, he was pretty good. Among his patients were George II and prime minister Horace Walpole. Because of his reputation, people tended to believe he knew what he was doing. So he would sell them his miracle drugs.

At one point he had to leave England (he was quite heavily involved in the Jacobin Rebellion) and lived in France where, over the next 16 years, he invented his famous Ward’s Pills and Ward’s Drops. They consisted of poisonous ingredients which would induce sweating and vomiting, the theory being they would cause the body to expel whatever ailed it. Obviously, this is not a good idea. I mean, they’re called poison for a reason.

He returned to England and set up shop, claiming he could cure all manner of things like gout, scurvy, syphilis and cancer. He grew very wealthy and, as you can tell by his statue, rather portly.

But here’s the twist (for twist there is). Joshua Ward was a great philanthropist. He set up shop in the poorer parts, dispensing cures to those that couldn’t afford it. He gave money away to charities and even went so far as to throw money from his coach as he drove by the poor.

The proper doctors of the time didn’t like Joshua Ward (presumably they thought he was bringing the medical profession into disrepute…or they didn’t like him curing the poor) and tried to pass laws preventing the sale of his medicine. They were unsuccessful and Joshua died with a modest fortune.

My favourite bit of Joshua lore is that he stood for and was elected MP for Marlborough in 1717. It was then discovered that no-one actually voted for him. On close examination, the mayor’s signature appeared to have been forged on the Return. Joshua was chained in pillory and then flung in jail for a bit. I have no idea whether this last bit is true or not but I seriously hope so.

And then, for the second Friday in a row, I managed to get drenched walking home. Damn this drought!