Well. The heating system is all finished, and working a treat. Ditto the solar panels. I’ve booked the decorator, I’ve touched up the paintwork where the new radiators didn’t match the spaces left by the old radiators, and am in the process of organising a guy to do the other odd jobs.

I’m less tired than I was, and feeling more positive.

Today we took a load of rubbish to the tip (recycling centre) which is always a good feeling. The guys there are very helpful and friendly. Then weeded the front garden and tidied up the horrid old leaves from the daffodils and the bluebells. Looks so much better.

We are also doing “No Mow May”. The grass is already quite long. The neighbourhood cats really like it, though, nice and soft on their paws. Our lovely gardener is fine with long grass, as is his little dog Winston, who is such a character. Winston and I really like each other. It’s so sweet, the gardener turns up in his big van with all his equipment, his assistant, and this small dog who wags his whole body with delight, and runs about just for sheer joy.

The mowed grass you can see is next door’s. The daisies are a delight, and the bluebells are just to show off a bit.

New TV system. Well, sort of. I’ve disconnected the Humax PVR and bought a Buffalo 1TB external hard drive. Then I attached the new box to the TV, formatted it, and found out how to record on to it. We stream a lot of stuff now, there’s BBC iPlayer, Amazon Prime and Netflix, but if we stream stuff from ITV, or Channel 4 or 5, that means we have to sit through adverts. We hate adverts. So I wanted to be able to record the commercial channels so that we can whizz past them.

It also means that we just have one “source” now – the TV. Humax don’t support Netflix, so we were having to switch from Humax to TV, which was a pain because the sound didn’t always work through the hi-fi. It does now.

There is no longer any juddering either – it was infrequent and fleeting but so damned annoying. Clearly the Humax was interfering somehow. Anyway it works better without. And I’ve managed to set programmes up to record – just need to see if you can set it up to record a series. Hmm.

The genealogy is inching along. Hubby has started on his family tree too, and solved a mystery that has long been bugging him. I think he expected to just log on, put in the information he had, and that it would all magically become clear. Frustrated doesn’t begin to cover it, but he has calmed down now, stopped threatening to cancel the whole thing, and is delighted that the mystery is solved. Further research required, though, as although we understand some stuff, there is more to be found. There is always more to be found, I guess, as I am discovering with my Scottish forebears. Who, frustratingly, seem to be called William more often than not. Not Catholics, clearly . . . .!

Granny and Grandad on their golden (50th) wedding anniversary (May 1979), photo taken by the local newspaper. The globe is to show how much they had travelled. Grandad went to the US in 1929 because of the depression, and when he had found work Granny went over too. She almost died of sea-sickness because the voyage was just so dreadful. Grandad ran a speak-easy for a while. He also was a butler while Granny looked after the children. They were just lovely.