Friday Night:

I bailed out of work after talking telescopes with Glenn for half an hour; he’d just got one for his 15 year service award, and wanted to know what he could see.

Dinner was at the Bel And The Dragon in Godalming with Grim & Holly, Steve, Birthday Boy Jon, Nobby, and a firebrand of a girl named Lorraine who is Nobby’s new girlfriend. After some initial fencing and trading a few well-specified insults we were getting on like a house on fire – with all of the associated panic, screaming, people trying to escape, and people wanting to hose us down. That said, I suspect that Nobby’s line – something like all a true geek really needs, sexually, is a hoover and IM was probably the best comment of the night.

Food: roasted garlic, oil and rough bread; king scallops in mashed potato on the shell; superb corn-fed posh chicken and chips. There was no room for dessert.

I returned home late to find a copy of Apple iLife’04 on the kitchen table, deposited there by my kindly neighbours; I set it to install and patch overnight and went to bed.

Saturday Morning:

Up early, poking around with iLife’04; iPhoto is really much much more pleasant to use in the new incarnation, and I can actually manipulate an album of 10,000 images almost never having to wait for it to copy files around. A big improvement, although some of the editing tools now seem a little flaky.

I stopped in on Eileen & Peter to say hello, and then set off for B&Q (cf: Home Depot) to buy aluminium tubing to act as spacer rods on the bike. Ran into an ex-colleague (Ken) for a chat, prior to losing myself amongst the stacks of doormats.

Thence a trip westward to meet and sync with C. I found a note on her door redirecting me to her local watering-hole, farm shop and social hangout – always a bad place for my wallet.

I was reintroduced to the locals: one lovely chap who’d just got back from a vasectomy – his girlfriend in gentle attendance; then the landlord and lady and their insane and friendly lurcher who greeted every new visitor with a hairy paw and a victory lap of the dining room.

Then there was K, who was in the process of being dumped by her boyfriend.

Literally so, in fact.

Specifically, he turned up whilst I was there, had a massive row with K, got thrown out and barred, and so went home to load her possessions into black garbage bags and ship them back to the pub in a taxi without even having the grace to pay the driver.

The best way to describe what happened next was is probably to say that drama ensued; it was not at all pleasant, but as C quoted Burgess most accurately all human life is here although we were hardly in a church. By all accounts K had apparently murdered her previous husband but had gotten off on medical grounds, which added something of an extra edge to the situation.

Everyone rallied round.

The situation certainly made something of a change from those friends of mine who do nothing but angst about their mothers. Making our excuses I bought some wine – the bottles of Cowslip, Birch and Dandelion wine that they have on the shelves are just too much temptation – plus 2 litres of real ale and we headed back to C’s place to drink road-tar, help change the wheels on her DRZ and talk tyre-sealant and long-distance touring.

Sunday:

A lie in, a long bath, an Alistair Cooke rerun on Radio 4; washing-up, laundry, and drive into Camberley to visit Jessops to spy-out their negative-scanner hardware. Regrettably WHSmith had nothing in the way of magazines with scanner reviews, so I shall stick to the Web and do some more research.

Stopped by Graham & Rachel’s en-route back; Rack was entertaining the grand poobah of the Mothers’ Union for some reason, but they booked to come over Chez Muffett. I laid-in brioche, clotted cream and fruitcake, and we had a quite reasonably high tea around 4ish.

I cut my hair, went out for an evening walk, and stopped in on an arthritic neighbour who has recently relocated to sheltered accommodation in the village.

Counted my blessings, and thence to bed.