An afternoon in Louth

I was woken early this morning by the contractors dumping broken-up road surface hardcore into a lorry only about 10 yards away from my new car! Dust was flying everywhere and my car looked as though it had been rallying in Iceland during a volcanic explosion! Needless to say, I moved it promptly into Miller Avenue; later sponging the windscreen which had become opaque. After a breakfast of a bacon butty I read the papers from the new client which I had been given shortly before I left Winterslow last week. I seem to have been away ages already! Mum went out shopping this morning leaving me to make a few phone calls (to Auntie Mim and Sara) and emails and to fix her bathroom shower unit which was coming away from the wall. It proved to be a relatively simple task requiring me to drill out the old rawl plug and an insert a new one – tightening up the unit with a stronger screw. This afternoon I drove to Louth to see David Kaye, my friend and the famous transport author who, aged 81, is suffering from Parkinson’s disease and now cancer. His brain is as sharp and witty as ever but he is a shadow of his former self. We spent a pleasant 2 hours or more chatting about buses and family and I showed him the photos I had taken at Sandtoft the previous day. We reviewed the material I had put together at the end of his book and he authorised me to send it off to the publisher – which I shall do on my return to Wiltshire. After leaving David in Louth, I drove to Tetney (via Conisholme, where I indulged myself with one of Appleby’s “famous ices”) to pick up my old school chum, Tim, and drive back to Louth for a dinner at the Halel Indian Restaurant. We had an excellent(though too large to eat it all) meal and a lovely chat to bring each other up to date with our situations and those of our family. I dropped Tim back home where we had a coffee before returning back to Mum’s at 10 p.m.