Friday 24 January 2020

An ambulance next door

Following Ann's haircut yesterday, we agreed to meet in the Swan. I was delayed by a slow customer in the post office, so she entered alone, and asked the barman, "Nick, have you seen my husband?"

One of the drinkers asked, "is there a reward for him? We'll all go looking for him if there is."
Ann disappointed him, saying there was no reward.

Then another said, "I lost my wife twenty years ago." Ann said she was sorry. "No, I was glad to see her go. I didn't offer a reward either."

A third added, "I lost my wife twenty years ago too. It cost me half a million."

Finally, another said from his bar stool, "I can see him coming now!" so when I entered, everyone was looking at me and laughing, and one said, "well that's the first time I've seen a man come into a pub looking for his wife!"

Getting up this morning, I saw an ambulance drawing away down the road. The curtains are still closed next door, so I suspect our neighbour David has had another stroke, or an episode of fainting again. Happily, it turned out to be another minor episode of cerebral anoxia, probably from turning his head too sharply, and he returned home this afternoon.

Edwin was back for a couple of nights while his partner Andre is away, so drove directly to UEA in Norwich to deliver his lectures. He is getting more and more work, to the point where his supervisor is wondering if he will finish his PhD, but Edwin is a very hard worker, and continues to chip away at it.

Ann is planning a Burns Night binge for tomorrow, with vegetarian haggis and neeps. She has bought a bottle of whisky called Wee Timorous Beastie, to offer as a prize for a Burns Night quiz she intends to organise. Lucy said she wants to enter it by Skype, to win the whisky. Ben said he hopes I win, so he can taste it when he next visits. It is clearly going to be a popular prize.


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