My dear family & friends, 18 August
It’s just six days to go until we’re off to Portugal for two glorious weeks. We’re checking the Algarve weather everyday on the Internet and we are greatly heartened by the little sun icons day after day with temperatures in the high 20s. I think I might be quite miffed if we were to find overcast skies when we land in Faro on Sunday. Here in Warwick, it’s raining again as I sit here and write this. Summer seems to be the sunny spells between showers. It’s quite an adjustment.
Edgar was the source of some drama last week when he developed a lump in his neck. Rhodesian Ridgebacks are susceptible to problems related to the dermoid sinus tract which can get blocked and form a cyst in the neck. This is the second time Edgar has had to have an operation to have such a cyst removed. What caught us off guard this time was how fast the lump developed. We first felt a bit of a bump last weekend which then grew to the size of a golf ball by Wednesday evening. I took him to the vet on Thursday morning, and he had the cyst removed on Friday. The vet’s bill of £601 stunned me into momentary silence, but I just handed my credit card over and smiled. What else can you do? Professional services here in the UK are exorbitantly expensive. I have a theory about this which involves class expectations and bitter envy but is dressed up as fairness which just results in inflation and insurmountable debt.
I had my own wars with some little insects which seemed to fly up out of the grass in the park and bite me while I was walking the dogs. The little buggers keep on getting me whenever I wear shorts. They look like midges (or a miggie as we call them in SA), but their bites caused angry, itchy and painful welts to swell up on my legs, and which took days to go away. It was even painful to walk at one point.
It was just as well then that I had a job which kept me at home for a whole day. The partner of one of Lucia’s colleagues is a publisher who is always looking for proof readers. Lucia told her I was a journalist in SA which then raised the possibility that I could do some proof reading. The first book, which I had to read last week, was a test – a book that has already been published this year. It was a crime thriller called “The Blood Detective” by Dan Waddell. I found lots of typing and type-setting errors, but I still don’t know whether I passed the test or not. Proof readers get paid £75 per book.
Edgar’s operation meant that we couldn’t really do much this weekend. He stayed wobbly all the way through to Saturday night after the anaesthetic. We did, however, go to dinner on Friday evening at the Portuguese restaurant with one of Lucia’s colleagues, Rebecca, and her partner, David. We had a really pleasant evening. Although Rebecca is Australian born, she spent all her school life here in the UK. I think she’s more Australian though despite her English accent.
On Saturday morning, we left Edgar at home and sought out a village fair at Leek Wootton which I had seen advertised on the side of the road. Leek Wootton lies between Warwick and Kenilworth. When we got there we discovered that the fair, which was to be held on the on the village green, only started after lunch so we went to Kenilworth to kill some time. There isn’t really that much to see or do in Kenilworth. We strolled up the high street giving Lucia the opportunity to visit all the charity shops looking for interesting clothes which might fit her. I waited outside with Hazel who just loved having all Lucia’s and my attention to herself. Later we left her in the car while Lucia and I perused the goods on offer in the new Waitrose store and Lucia cast her researcher’s eye over the customers. I wonder how suspicious we looked to the store detectives.
The new soccer season also got under way this weekend – not that I got to see much of it. It is, in fact, rather ironic, that South Africans with DsTV see more English soccer than the Brits do. DsTV’s advertising slogan for its coverage of English soccer was “Every second of every game” – and one was, indeed, able to watch every single game in the Premier league if one was so inclined. Coverage in the UK, however, is far more limited by the need to get fans into the stadiums to watch the games. Fair trading and business competition rules also mean that all television services which want to show soccer must get their fair share so long as they can pay for it. (It is regarded as grossly unfair and a breach of monopoly regulations that any one television service should be allowed to buy up all the television rights even if they have the money to do so.) Sky did show two games on Sunday afternoon, but I forgot and watched a movie that I downloaded instead so I missed Chelsea thrashing Portsmouth 4-1. Bugger.
That’s it for another week.
Love, light & peace
Llewellyn
