On Kimbolton School ‘own clothes day’ a change from my diet as we went with Nigel and Lynne Smith for a meal out as the first climax to a day spent getting the Range Rover serviced, buying Debbie’s calculator and hunting for plants. Then the second followed with Diana!
Another late night and I was quite tired this morning. I think that the slimming "no-fat" diet that I am eating is also weakening as I have now got my body-weight down to 14st 1lb. I was slow to get going and then, with Diana taking the girls to the bus stop, I finished my breakfast quietly. It was "own-clothes" day at Kimbolton School today which meant that the pupils pay a fine to be able to wear civilian clothes for the day with the money collected to aid a charity - normally the London homeless.
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Then Diana and I drove to Bedford to put the Range Rover in for a service and MOT and also to try and buy Debbie the recommended type of calculator. This proved elusive and we gave up in Bedford but managed to find one at the Argos catalogue store in St Neots. On the way back, we stopped at three garden centres to get some things I needed and at Andersons, the Eaton Socon butchers, to get some of his best beef for our Sunday roast. I was weak and hungry before having some baked plaice for lunch and then, this afternoon, I updated this last few days' journal and had several telephone conversations with FOCUS colleagues. This afternoon, I managed to lay out the Offord/Buckden villages edition of FOCUS after a struggle and then just had a pot of tea and a couple of biscuits as we had dinner arrangements later on. I dropped off this FOCUS edition for Percy to proof-read and then Diana and I got ready for our evening date.
We collected Nigel and Lynne Smith from Hail Weston House and took them for a meal at the Mandarin Chinese Restaurant at Godmanchester. It was an enjoyable evening and an even more enjoyable meal as we had a succession of well prepared and presented Chinese dishes of the classical kind served without fuss or formality. Nigel introduced me to "Seaweed" which was fun if a bit messy to eat with chopsticks, tasting similar to whitebait. We had all of the normal dishes and washed them down with "Great Wall of China" wine which was very novel if not so nice as the European appellations. Home quite late and to sleep on what was a cold and clear night but we had our full stomachs to keep us warm. After a while, I had enough alcohol still in me to overpower Diana's initial reluctance and spend some time in her half of the bed!