Another day.

Today, I went to the dentist at Cripps Health Centre (I need a filling. I’m slowly replacing my cheap silver fillings with invisible white ones, so the new filling will let me replace an old one on the cheap. Bright side, eh?) While I was there, I got hygiened, too.

Into town for a meeting about our next Focus leaflet, which I have to lay out whilst in Harrogate this weekend ready to print next week.

On to D&A for an eye test. I went in determined to replace my current “transition” specs for a new plain pair and some sunglasses. I have had these glasses since before I could drive, and although they go dark fine in the open air, they don’t at all the far side of a windscreen.

Had a lovely time in D&A. After a slow start where all the staff ignored me, they eventually spent over an hour helping me choose new frames, with whizzy computers to show me what they will look like, and even to calculate just how thick the milk-bottle bottoms will be, to help me decide whether I need UltraUltraThinPlusUltra lenses, or can get away with just the UltraThinPlusUltra ones. Eyes have deteriorated slightly to -8.0 in one eye and -8.5 in the other. But apparently I could now have contact lenses if I fancied the idea of plunging a giant piece of plastic directly through my tiny eye holes first thing every afternoon. Which I certainly don’t. Not when I can have sexy “Blade” frames.Back into town to sign some letters I had typed while I was at the optician. I never got to grips with the dictation machine. When it comes to long letters, I much prefer to type them myself, because I can compose sentences better when I can edit them and shift words around to improve meaning. Normally, then, I type the texts of letters, then e-mail them to our wonderful admin support workers, who top and tail them, print them on headed paper, and log them through our system that is supposed to remind me to check whether I get the answers I want. Then all I have to do is sign it, and they get them into the post.

Back to Sherwood, where I get a hair-cut (scary short, not the best cut I’ve every had) and pop into an antique/junk shop to hunt for lamps.  Unsuccessfully.
From there back home, where the new breadmaker has arrived. Of course, I can’t wait to try it out, so set it going making a wholemeal loaf. Which takes over three hours!

In the meantime, quickly through the shower to rinse hair off me.  Start of trimming my beard, and slip, and take a huge great chunk out.  Hmmm.  Shave down to goatee.  Can’t get it even.  Shave the whole lot off.  OMG.  I don’t like my face.  The beard will return.

Heat up some pasta and the remains of a bolognaise sauce from a day or two ago, eat, then hurry back into town for a group meeting ahead of Full Council on Monday when, like councils up and down the country, Nottingham City Council will set its budget for the year. We will spend eight hours or so talking about it, and the outcome will be that Labour’s budget, with a council tax rise of 4.8%, will go through. They will spend a lot of time talking about how wonderful they are. We will spend less time disagreeing (because there are less of us) and putting forward our own suggestions. Eventually, they will vote us down.

Group meetings are never short, largely because we don’t stay on topic (and I’m as bad as anyone else when it comes to distracting ourselves and allowing myself to be distracted). So, it doesn’t finish til 10pm, at which point the poor staff are tapping their feet and ready to lock up the building and get home.

Back on the bus home (I’m really getting VFM out of my bus pass today) and I can taste the bread out of the breadmaker. The loaf is a deeply peculiar shape, practically cuboid, but it’s certainly tasty. I’m a bit disappointed that the device for putting in fruit/nuts/olives at the last minute is in fact just a beep to tell you to put the additives in yourself.

I should get my car back tomorrow, just in time to drive a few people to Harrogate for conference. First, though, I will be going to work in Chesterfield by train. When I got my job, almost a year ago now, I firmly told myself I would regularly commute by rail rather than driving over every working day. Tomorrow will be the first time I take the train.