Saturday 30th December 2017

And here we are, supping on the dregs of another year, waiting for the new year beaujolais. We hope. The first nine months, give or take a week, we fabulous, but since then it has been a grind, and if I'm honest, we will be glad just to put a new calendar up.

We had two appointments in the morning; one with the vet for Mulder, and the other at the bank. So, no time for messing about, indeed, up when the heating switches on, and get a coffee inside us. All was going well, we sipped our coffee, checked the interwebs, and in short, the morning got away from us. Before we knew what was happening, it was half eight, we had eaten no breakfast, we had to leave for the vets and there was no Mulder.

We had no choice but to call the vet to see if we could book a new appointment, it was quarter to nine and even if we had Mulder in the basket at that moment, we would only just make it.

But at that moment, the cat flap went, and in he sauntered, I swept him up, popped him in the waiting box, and Jools too him to the vet.

I am ready to go, because as soon as Jools comes back, we will have to leave for town to be at the bank.

Jools returns, all is well, other than we have not had the results of the biopsy yet, but the growth has gone, and he is bouncing healthy as far as the vet could see. We let him out and we go into town, parking near the old Market Square and walking round to the bank in the driving rain. Our hope is to pay of the mortgage as soon as possible, and maybe retire, and the meeting was to look at our options. Two hours of talking about options, interest rates, and all the such, very grown up stuff, and important too. There is a chance we could pay off the mortgage in less than 100 months, if we tighten our belts; no more business travel, more time for orchids and churches. Sounds peachy to me.

Anyway, two hours had passed, and we were darned hungry and thirsty. We had stuff back at the house, so drive home for cold sausage rolls and the rest of the mince pies. And fresh brews. I mean, lunch of champions.

And then there was the review of the year blog to write, photos to edit, football to listen to. So as you can guess, the afternoon passed by quickly as I wrote, or typed, and edited. That took some 5 hours, with some sitting on the sofa with Scully and trying to stay awake. Norwich became the first team in 9 months not to score at Burton, drawing 0-0. Bah.

I made pasta sauce to go with the ravioli and garlic bread we had, eating that as Man Utd slumped to another dull 0-0 draw this time with Southampton. But I followed that via text, as two games on the radio was enough for Jools.

We watched some QI on TV, but found that we had worn our poor selves out, so went to bed at half nine, me not even being able to see the end of the Championship on the tellybox.