Musee d’Orsay Paris  © PJ Croft 208, 2013

I badly need my toenails cut. I’ve been told by Silver Chain and a podiatrist, No! Don’t do it yourself (for a diabetic, too much risk of accidental wounds and infection).

There’s a podiatrist just across the road from me, walking distance. I’ve been there four times so far, and each time, the treatment room door is closed and I can’t talk to anyone. Today I made my fifth visit and finally found the lady. No, there is nothing available until mid next week. But it only takes 5 minutes, I said. Sorry, she said, we’re booked, double booked and triple booked.

Dammit, I’m going to do it myself as I’ve always done.

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We, the Reunion committee, checked out venues for our 2014 50th Anniversary Reunion yesterday. The choices are the Rugby Club in North Beach, a hotel in Bayswater, the Rose and Crown in Guildford and the High Road Hotel in Willeton.

All have plus points and minus points. North Beach scores for exclusive use but is very expensive and doesn’t have any accommodation within about 3Km. Bayswater scores for cheap food and having motel units, but it’s not fully private use (it’s a hotel on Saturday afternoon). The Rose and Crown has great character and good accommodation, but the function room is awful. And the High Road Hotel is good, but not exclusive and the food is a bit dear. We’re weighing things up. We’ve got until October next year, FGS.

Btw, we have over 150 (by some measures, nearer 200) former 1964 students on our list and nearly all of them have been contacted. Amazing. This is 50 years on!

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I finally got to see a report from a physician who examined me on 23 September. What a waste of time and money. He just regurgitated what I told him – there is no insight. I could have written a more comprehensive report.

But he included what I can only call a fabrication of something he says occurred in the late 1960s. I didn’t tell him! I wonder where this fairy story could have come from?

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At last my house is coming into a semblance of order and comfort. I’ve added cabinets to put things in, drawers – ditto, comfortable chairs, my TV and hi fi is now in place and each bedroom is fully usable. The bench tops are becoming cleared, the cooktop cleaned, the dishwasher is in full, efficient use, the garage is slowly being cleared and I have a list of relatively small things still needing doing. I have two fully usable spare (rentable?) bedrooms now. I finally got my car CD/DAB+/AM-FM radio into the dash in my car today. Fantastic. Junk pickup started today, so I got rid of an old bookcase that was not up to snuff and some other small items. I’ve replaced the corroded shower heads, am now planning my moves to strip and re-varnish my bathroom bench top and replace my awful tap-ware and get a grout specialist in to fix the old sealing grouting. Good stuff.