I'm still merely paddling in the shallows vis-a-vis the move - still only making phone calls to enquire about x/y/z - but despite jettisoning all manner of activities I haven't really time even for this! My life is dwindling: I weed, I write, I worry.

However, I did take last Saturday off - for the village Highland Games. It was gloriously hot and sunny, and by mid-afternoon the field was littered with spectators invarying states of intoxication having either availed themselves of the beertent or arrived with a rug and a bottle and, in many cases, wine glasses,napkins and bowls of crisps. I drifted from one hazy conversationalist to another. I was accompanied by Himself who availed himself of the beer tent, so by mid-afternoon I was drifting with my own hazy conversationalist in tow.

There were the usual hoards of young Highland dancers making very heavy weather of jigs, reels and sword dances; there were runners and cyclists andhammer throwers; the local pipe band put on a display. For the second year running the caber tossing was cancelled because the cabers were too long. We were astonished by the appearance, seemingly out of nowhere, of an enormous pipe-and-drums band, outlandishly embellished with a brass sectionwhich included two poor mites playing tuba; then astonished again, when welearnt that the band was from Oregon. Possible explanations for such alarge band from such a long way away pitching up at our small, homespun games preoccupied hazy conversationalists (my own included) for most of the rest of the day. In fact it was still being debated that evening, when we arrived at the pub at the bottom of the village, for a drink in the sun-drenched beer garden, on the way home from a dogwalk along the river path. Naturally, the day ended with a fish supper bought on the way back from the pub.

On Sunday, I went to the new house and measured things. Correction, we wentto the new house where Himself measured things and I wrung my hands. I found windows that don't open and learnt that the wall I need to be long enough for my piano, isn't. I discovered the kitchen won't accommodate my [tiny]chest freezer; and there's nowhere for a catflap; and I can't live with the lino in the bathroom; and my desk won't fit anywhere; and that Himself is amazing. Amazing because he allowed my rising panic to wash round him, making soothing noises when it threatened to drown him, but otherwise calling out lengths and widths like a sailor navigating by depth-soundings through a dangerously narrow, rocky channel. The fact that in the main, I had no idea what these measurements were for made it seem only more miraculous. (I learnt last night when Himself explained that he'd worked out how many tins of paint I'll need to buy. To someone who has always first assumed one tin will do and subsequently hared into the local DIY,paint-splattered, exasperated, and halfway down a wall, to buy a second, the fact that you can do this kind of sum was pure revelation - cravenly I didn't say so.)

This morning an estimator has been and gone - the twelfth and last.

This afternoon I am collecting hImself from work so we can attend a book launch Edinburgh this evening. I hope we'll arrive early enough to visit Plaisir du Chocolat http://www.restaurantdirectory.co.uk/Plaisir-du-Chocolat_564.html
for a cup of very, very, very good tea before joining the hooley - although since there was mention that I [which I trust in practice means Someone Else] price paint en route I might have to argue my case for this rather strongly.