Friday, April 14, 2006

Needle in a haystack or toy in a container?

We’ve had our Maundy Thursday service at the church. It was a lovely service, Nick preached on Gethsemane. Nick and I sang a duet, which I think went well.

Last night’s dinner with Svetlana was very nice. She will be staying with us from tomorrow until she leaves on Tuesday. I cleaned out the single spare room today, even emptying some cupboard space. It was a good thing to do because it needed a tidy-up anyway!

Had to go to the docks today to see if we could get hold of the package Scilla arranged for us, with the Transformers for Caleb. Now imagine this: there are seven or eight very large containers (each the size of a single garage), each one filled to the top with boxes, furniture, bicycle tyres, etc. You have to try look at every parcel in every container to see if it’s yours! Quite a nightmare? They have a list of everything that is in the containers, with the container number next to it, so you at least have an idea of where to start looking. However, our item wasn’t listed, we couldn’t find it anywhere on their documentation. So I had as much of a look as I could but didn’t spot it. The customs officials and other people are all very sympathetic, and I explained that I needed this package urgently because of Caleb having his birthday on Tuesday, and it being Easter weekend and so on…eventually went to have a look in another place, and the chap there said there was a box for the Baptist Church, which turned out to be one of the boxes of books we were expecting. Nick was thrilled about that! They didn’t charge me any import or wharfage duties on the box, saying that since it’s for the church it’s free. Well, well. Anyway, so then I had the box of books but no birthday present. Had to get some shopping done for the weekend, and pay the telephone bill, and buy a small present for Caleb from Aaron, so I did all that. It started raining, quite hard, while I was in Spar, so I waited a while and then ran for it when it eased a bit. It was quite fun, really, some people were just walking at their normal pace, others were standing in phone booths for cover…and everyone laughing about the rain. Did I tell you that we’ve had enough rain now? The reservoirs are full to overflowing, and we are very thankful to the Lord who sends rain. Had a busy afternoon cleaning the house, and typing out songs and orders of service and things like that for Nick. The boys played outside in the blow-up pool which was FULL of rain water, caught from the gutter. By this time the sun was shining again. I was just about to phone the hospital, wondering if perhaps my package hadn’t gotten mixed up with Scilla’s ophthalmic consignment, when the phone rang and it was one of the chaps from the docks who runs the catalogue shop, who said he’d found my parcel. Can you believe it! We quickly went and collected it, and are so relieved to have it in hand now. That’s one of the lovely things of living in a small place and everyone knowing everyone. He phoned me purely out of the goodness of his heart, and I hadn’t even left my phone number with him or anything. Nick and I had to open both transformers just to be sure that they work, you know, and they do. Very complicated. We’ll give only one to him on Tuesday, and then if I can keep Nick from bursting, we’ll save the other one for his birthday next year, because it’s so tricky.

Oh oh, I bought hot cross buns today, so now it can really be Easter. I was so pleased to find some at Spar. I went there at about 11 and needed enough bread for the weekend, because they probably won’t bake on Saturday, but of course by then it had all sold out already, so all I got was one miserable loaf of Turkestan bread (brown) for 90p. Not bad tasting, but quite dense and expensive! Potatoes have already come and gone in Spar, and eggs are a rare find. Maureen gave me six this evening, yippee, which she had sourced from a special secret agent. They were intended for Jean, but she accidentally dropped them and three broke, so she asked if I wouldn’t mind just doing something with them. The three brokens are in a container in the fridge now waiting to be scrambled or omeletted.

I made a little advent calendar today to stick on the fridge, which has a countdown to Caleb’s birthday and then to my parents’ arrival on 2 May. Every day we’ll cross of a day. I might make little messages on there for myself too, like “uh oh, better start dusting!” and “yikes, haven’t taken the kite off the top of the cupboard yet, best attend to that today…”. Hee hee.

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