Bin day is sheep day in Hundon

We had our other two grandaughters overnight. Ann asked about one of their school friends. "Oh, she died..." they started to say, to great gasps of horror. "She dyed her hair," they added, completing the story. "She had red hair, but was bullied so much about it that she's dyed it brunette now." Yet another sad tale to add to the-tormented-life-of-gingers. One would think that schools ought to consider prejudice against hair colour every bit as demeaning as prejudice against skin colour, but they don't. For some reason, they seem to think it isn't real prejudice, or these children "can take it".

Putting the bins out

The behaviour of our neighbours has reminded me what sheep we all can be. Our dustbins are emptied on Tuesdays, so last night I put ours out, although no-one else in the road had, making me wonder if they would be collected a day late because of the Bank Holiday Monday. Later that evening, I noticed that everyone on the road had put theirs out too. This morning, everyone on the road still had full dustbins; clearly they had been right and I wrong, but they all copied me! More fool them.

My car is due its 80,000 miles service, so I thought I would treat it to the real deal and phoned Jaguar at Cambridge (our nearest dealer now) to book an appointment. You'd think just booking a service would be a sinch. I was put on hold, but gave up after 20 minutes. I then tried to book the appointment on line, as they boasted this was easy. It was not. The web site would not let me progress beyond entering my car reg, so I gave up on that too. Finally I booked with Suffolk Trade Centre up the road, who sold me the car. Charlotte, their super-efficient receptionist, answered the call on one ring and the car's booked in for next week.

On a lighter note, Sam told us about a plumber mate of his who regularly takes Friday afternoons off. A while ago, he had had a tattoo put on his arm, but the tattoo artist wasn't open at weekends so he went on Friday afternoon. Once he had the first one, he became addicted to them, and now has a body covered in tattoos, always taking Friday afternoon off from work then coming in on Monday to reveal his new addition. He used to go to a tattoo parlour on Mill Road in Cambridge, but Edwin told us it has recently burnt down - the second place there to do so. We immediately wondered if this was intentional arson; perhaps the Peaky Blinders have moved up market and started to practice their protection rackets in Cambridge.