Shiny red toes

Outside work there's been a little bit of activity, which on top of the week's work has exhausted me. I'm definitely not as young as I was.

On Friday we journeyed south to the Ealing Comedy Festival, to see Henning Wehn in particular and a bunch of other comedians in general. Unfortunately, Henning Wehn was one of the best acts on the bill, and he was only given about 10 minutes at the beginning of the show. One of the comedians was so poor that I felt no shame in leaving the tent to go to the toilet during his act - luckily, I was near the end of the row of seats. We also had some painfully noisy punters behind us, yelling incomprehensibly and deafeningly loudly. It wasn't anything like as good as I'd hoped, unlike the pre-show cocktail provided by Mr M, which was very fine indeed.

Saturday was Family Day. Lola II treated me to a pedicure, which I've never had before. I liked the bit where you put your feet into warm water, and the bit where the pedicurist massages oil into your feet, and the lovely shiny new red toes. I didn't like the cuticle-trimming bit, nor the bit where she buffed my nails before putting on the polish. Combined with the need to check every preparation for parabens and tocopherol (both of which bring me out in a rash), it was less luxurious and relaxing than I'd hoped.

So it was also a bit disappointing, but the lovely pedicure lady and Lola II and mum arriving to chat halfway through were some compensation. I was also able to give mum a present I'd been saving for her for a while - a biro with the ink nearly run out. She loves to finish off a biro and throw it away, so I always try to save mine for her when they get to that state.

We were scheduled for Good Deeds for the rest of Saturday morning at Lola II's house. Dad fitted fancy covers on the screws holding Lola II's bathroom mirror. Mr A was supposed to help dad with his computer, but failed to find the correct port to plug in the screen until brother-in-law (BiL) arrived. BiL swiftly started on the installation of a security light, Mr A worked on the software installation using his laptop for backup, while Lola II and I tried to schedule train tickets to Altrincham using a laptop each and cross-checking. Then the delivery van turned up with Lola II's bed which they constructed in her bedroom, Mr M and Mr A moved a dresser upstairs and a piano downstairs (!), we ordered Persian food for lunch from a takeaway menu, Mr M went to pick it up and sister D arrived. We had lunch (delicious), transferred a microwave from one car to another, loaded dad's computer back into his car, and set off home.

I had to let Mr A take over the driving when we were only halfway home, and I went to sleep for two hours when we arrived.

There is one other irrelevant yet vaguely interesting event to report. The way that our TV reports our viewing to the BARB panel was malfunctioning, so they got in touch and asked if we'd mind if they sent an engineer round to try and fix it. I am keen to accommodate them in every way, because they will soon be financing a new dishwasher in the same way as they contributed to my ipod.

Some time ago we acquired a Sky box, in the knowledge that when Digital Switchover comes to our area we'd need something to receive it. Our house came with a satellite dish that we never bothered to remove, so we plugged everything in. It seemed to work for a day or two, and then stopped, and we did nothing at all about it because we're really not very interested in most TV. When the BARB engineer came round he moved the card from one slot to another slot indistinguishable in every way from the first slot, and then when I came home from badminton Mr A was watching The Last Samurai on ITV2.

Last time we had temporary access to tens of channels instead of just four, we watched a couple of old episodes of The Sweeney and Starsky and Hutch and then went straight back to BBCs 1 and 2 like the middle class Radio 4 listeners that we are. I expect the same will happen this time.