Small excitements

It says much about how quietly we live that these were the excitements of the weekend, the things that made we want to record them, and share them.

Excitement at breakfast time

It's not unusual for the phone to ring at breakfast time, but it's almost always a spam call. On Saturday, though, it was my cheesemonger. They had delivered to us the previous afternoon, and at the same time had made a delivery across the road - but the door had been locked, and now A. was not answering the phone, and they were worried. So while I finished making toast and coffee, durham_rambler went across the road and told A. that people were worried about her. Needlessly, it seems: she had been out, had returned just as her shopping was being delivered, had seen them and assumed they had seen her...I liked this example of community mediated by shopping, even if the shopping is carried out by telephone and the shop is half a county away.

Excitement in the post

Saturday's post brought me a client's new book. A book in the post is a pleasure that never gets old, and this one was inscribed with a very kind message.

Building excitement

The Bears have builders: serious builders, with scaffolding and all. This is less fun, but it's certainly exciting.

Shopping excitement

More of a disruption than an excitement. I had, almost accidentally, secured a Waitrose delivery (the Ocado website was not responding, so I had idly checked Waitrose, and found a few slots, including this one, just when I would be preparing dinner) and taken the opportunity to add some favourite Waitrose products to my list (walnut oil, tinned tuna, talcum powder...). I had somehow managed not to ask for delivery in carrier bags: since Waitrose don't take back their bags for reuse, there are reasons why this is the right decision, but it did mean some hasty transferring of purchases into bags so we could carry them downstairs.

Musical excitements (1)

I was flustered by this awkward delivery, because we wanted to finish dinner in time for a Live to Your Living Room concert with Nancy Kerr and James Fagan. To our living room, it turned out, but not from theirs: they were coming to us from Nancy's mother's house in Northumberland (that's Sandra Kerr, of course), so we had some fine Northumbrian tunes, alongside the Leon Rosselson and the Australian songs and Nancy's own songs...

Anniversary excitements

Sunday, being February 13th, is a day we observe as an anniversary. We no longer get excited about anniversaries, if we ever did: or, if you prefer, we are excited about every day. Certainly it never occurred to us to go out to dinner, and I hadn't even planned an elaborate meal: but there were parsnips, of which durham_rambler is particularly fond, and we opened a bottle of fizz.

Musical excitements (2)

We spent Sunday Night at the Shoreham Palladium - that is, watching a Robb Johnson gig over Facebook. I love the immediacy of these performances, and thought Sunday's a particularly good one. Here's a song I hadn't heard before, topical when he played it on Sunday and even more topical today:

Watch on YouTube