April 04 (Fri)

Only one lesson today. It's no good relyng on LDC to keep me in biz, I shall have to be more proactive, as withou their input things are looking a bit thin. Need to get a website sorted out as well as some simpler things such as business cards and get some cards up in local newsagents.

I finally take to the woods. It's too lovely a morning not to. I am welcomed back by the woodpecker from my last foray, and all is right in the world. For a while. I try to take a slightly different path in Hughenden and get myself lost, and start heading up hill. The lungs are aching and the heart punding. It is not a comfortable feeling. I think of the way I have slid back on to butter with such eas reularity. How my weight has crept back up, and I hear Dr Annapurna's warnings ringing in my ears once more.

It's a truncated walk, cutting off a large chunk, but even so the climb up the back of Cryer's Hill almost crucifies me. Back on the diet. More, regular exercise. Get the bike out.

It's a day for good intentions again. Ring Gavin about the website, try to get World of Names bringing in some supplementary income, I am sure that can be achieved, sort out my credit card balance transfers, and get the bloody Berlingo sold. A Meta shaped skeleton rattles in my cupboard. I must give him £500 from the sale and try to gt him to take his bloody stock back.

I faff around, going in 20 directions at once and predictably achieving nothing.

I pick up S, her lesson overruns by half an hour, and then decide to go house hunting. One of the options with Emma's schooling is an outright move to Beaconsfield. A propsectus has arrived for a hous priced at £375k. It's an immense price for the property in question, but needs must, and this is Beaconsfield. I stop en route for a glass of Leffe, which leaves me with that pleasant all's well with the world buzz that I miss so much with alcohol these days. The house looks largish, extended, three bedrooms, but with another room which coud be turned to this purpse, and plenty of space in the garden.Generally in fact plenty of space. I am quite encouraged. When I find it though I am aghast. Yes the bricks and mortar look fine, but it is on the very edge of the busy, and I do mean very busy, main road to Amersham, and is on the corner of an estate that wouldput Spearing Road to shame. Shit I am sounding like Penelope Keith, but I don't want to live on that road. And for £375k for fuck's sake!!!!! I leave thoroughly depressed.

Dan is off on a Duke of Edinburgh hike tomorrow. Alll week H has been berating him and tell him to get organised.when Sophie did the same thing a couple of years ago she head a checklist and a week beforehand she'd procured everything she needed. Dan hasn't got a clue!

I go down to the Falcon and force my way through the sea of uncouth yobbery to the bar, behind which more of their number, albeit under pressure, fail to come anywhere near me for ten minutes.

Enough. It's late, too late for the Goblin without paying, so in a moment of inspiraton I head for Frogmoor and enter the Bell for the first time in about 10 years. It is lovely. None of the grime of the Goblin, none of the Falcon's chavery, just a nice cozy,well appointed pub, with a wonderful hubub of Friday night bonhomie. I have a delicious (if hideously expensive) pint of mild, and generally feel a bit better about things. I text Sophie who is in Wycombe for dinner, and am more pleased than I thought I'd be when she accepts my offer of a lift home.

Stop for a takeaway (naturally) on the way home, and am further pleased to see four tables fully occupied, certainly a record in my experience. The staff there are a very friendly bunch, and it is a shame to see such a well thought out restaurant struggling so dismally to attract the punters. On a purely selfish note, it would be a disaster to see the town's only purveyor of the wonderful Bombay Duck go under, having waited so long for the reappearance of this delicacy.