This morning Meg and I had company for breakfast as our Hampshire friend had stayed with us overnight after a very pleasant time yesterday evening with general chat about family matters and some of our reminiscencies from when we were work colleagues together. Because our friend had a drive and quite a long day in front of him, I cooked a breakfast of ham and eggs followed by some toasted fruit loaf, all of which was very satisfying. Then we had a brief session on our computer where I managed to show him the photographic evidence that some of my forebears on my father’s side of the family were bicycle manufacturers located in Wolverhampton. A distant family cousin in Australia has devoted years of work to trace some of our common ancestry as far back as he can and he has actually traced back to an ancestor whose dates are 1531-1601 and then the trail runs cold! However, to get back to the best part of 700 years is a considerable achievement but before that date will take no doubt massive amounts of investigation with no guarantee of eventual success. So our friend left us on his way to a Quaker Meeting House and associated cemetory in Leek, Staffs where he had enlisted the help of a local historian who might be able to fill in some of the gaps in his own researches so far.
After our friend was on his way, Meg and I went down by car to collect our newspapers but we parked the car in such a place that I could a lightning visit to Poundland – here I managed to purchase some of the extra plastic storage baskets with a handle which will almost exactly accommodate some CDs that I intend to store in our recently acquired little music cabinet. I now have five of these incredibly useful little baskets but as each holds 20, then I have enough for 100 CDs which gives me some excellent room for expansion. After our errands, we decided to do a quick tour of the park although we did not have any prepared elevenses with us. Nonetheless, we were delighted to just about meet up with our University of Birmingham friend and we spent a very pleasant 20 minutes discussing a recent TV programme which had given our friend considerable food for thought (particularly as some of it was relevant to his own life-story) As it happened our views on the subject were almost completely aligned – perhaps that’s why we are friends in the first place and like to discuss this and similar issues with each other. Then we popped home to have a lunch of sea-bass which we cooked with ‘normal’ vegetables rather than salad as we felt the need for some hot food on a day which proved bright and clear but quite cold.
I spent a little time this afternoon putting some little circular felt ‘feet’ on my boxes as otherwise being quite a hard plastic they could scratch whatever surface they were located upon without some modification. I was expecting to take delivery some time of the recently ordered antenna for my new music system, only to be informed by Amazon that the item was ‘undeliverable’ whatever that means and I would get a refund for the cost. So then I tried to hunt round to find this exact Panasonic spare part and did manage to locate a source at a reasonable price which I have ordered but it will tke about two weeks to arrive which is rather frustating. I then spent some time trying to get the exact manual for the system I have recently acquired as the documentation I have downloaded is for the version without DAB which is the one I actually need. I have tried to view some of the relevant sections of the documentation on line (or even downloaded) but the sections on DAB are not susceptible to being copied from a protected pdf file. So I needed to take the downloaded pdf and use an online facility I found to unprotect the pdf so that I could copy just the section that I needed. This is both somewhat complicated and frustrating but eventually I have found a solution that gives me – more or less – what I require.
In the World Cup today, Wales put on a lack-lustre performance here they were well beaten by Iran. The Iram team had a goal disallowed, hit the bar on two occasions and were judged to be worthy winners even if one of their goals was in the dying seconds of the game. Incidentally, I was amazed that all of the schoolchildren in Wales were given the morning off schoool so that they could stay at home and watch the match. But the real contest this evening is between England and the USA and I think it is correct to say that England has never won a match against USA in the World Cup. I must say that my money is on the USA but both teams are quite ‘young’ sides so the difference between the sides may turn out to be a single misplaced tackle which produces a freekick that in the event will prove decisive.