A fragment.

Last weekend, I worked on Friday morning, and spent the afternoon dashing about a neighbouring town visiting shops and having the damage to my shoes from the recent lunch time escapade repaired.  The rush hour congestion on the journey home made me run too late to catch a train I was planning to take, and so I was an hour late for an evening out with friends.

T stayed at home looking after B, and I travelled (by train) to a town about twenty minutes' travel away and met one of my friends at the station.  We joined the other two at a pub in the town, and after a drink we headed off for pizza.

The pizza place was already full as we had got there late and none of us that thought to book ahead. And so we headed off deeper into the town to a restaurant that used to sell pizza, but is now a curry house.  Much curry eating ensued.  The order was messed up insofar as one of the vegetarians was served meat, but other than that, it was a good meal and we were all happy with it.  There was, I remarked to a fellow diner, a worrying profusion of things on the menu that had been shot.  Though, I commented, I don't see how much could possibly be left after shooting a quail - perhaps they are killed some other way. Such as by being steam-rollered?

Apparently, shooting is exactly what happens to the little things.  And presumably also to the hare, grouse, and venison that were on the menu.  I had okra, and very nice it was too.

Through dinner we chatted about old films, old friends, old enemies, and old times.  We all went on a trip to walk along part of Hadrian's Wall a couple of years ago and would dearly love to repeat the experience, or something like it.  It was one of those perfect trips that will, I fear,  never be matched.

After the meal, I missed my train and had a drink with the friend who waited with me.  It was a good chance to catch up since we hadn't seen each other in a while.

On Saturday, I did some work on the allotment.  This was quite a feat when you consider that someone had screwed our back gate shut.

When you have a toddler, any few minutes you can grab to do something like a past-time are very rare and precious things.  So when, after doing some housework and eating some breakfast, I grabbed my tools and gloves from the shed, chucked them into the wheelbarrow and marched down the garden intending to go out of our back gate and into the allotments, you might imagine that I was somewhat less than impressed to find that the back gate wouldn't open.  Upon closer inspection, I discovered that the shaft of a screw could be seen between the gate and the post.

Swearing a little (ok, quite a lot), I had to take the long way round to the allotments with my tool case to try to take the screw out of the gate so that it would open.  I did manage to get one of them out, but the second resisted me with all of its 3 1/2" and I had to get T to remove it.