Fixing stuff

More cooling wind and cloud from the west, reducing the temperature to a pleasant 22C. There was even a brief rain shower at midday. No housework today. With guests still settling in after jet-lag domestic routine is disrupted. Yesterday's blackberry harvest needed stewing and filtering to turn into a liquor ready to turn into jelly. I let them get on with it, and spent the morning preparing next Wednesday's Morning Prayer and Reflection before having a bowl of salmon soup for lunch. Then I took Clare to the School of Optometry in Cathays to collect a new pair of glasses. Jasmine came as well, and while we waited for Clare we went to nearby Lidl's for grocery shopping. When we got back, Jasmine took Louie out to the park to enjoy the cooler weather with a picnic lunch. 

I had a go at repairing an ornate hand-bell of Asian origin, whose clapper had become detached. The interior was roughly cast and it wasn't clear how the clapper had been attached since it looked as if a small piece might have broken off. Probing inside the bell with an unwound paper clip, led me to a hidden hole in the spot where I thought an attachment point might have been. I was able to thread the wire through it, twist it into a loop with a pliers and reattach the clapper. 

Lucky maybe, but requiring a lot less patience and time than setting up the new wireless mesh network with its useless instruction leaflet, and equally vague installation advice from an AI web search. When I tried using a wi-fi dongle attached to my Linux desktop to access the internet I ran into problems simply because I didn't have enough detailed information about how the mesh system works, but succeeded in the end by trial and error. More wasted time.

I had to go out shopping again as we'd forgotten to get sugar for jelly making. We had supper together for the first time around the table and chatted about familiar places in Europe. Louie's mother is French. Then 

I walked for an hour in the park and chatted to Rachel for a while. The air was pleasantly cool, but out of the blue came a five minute shower. Fortunately I was walking down the tree lined Spine road at the time, and avoided the rain. The sun had set by the time I reached home and I felt tired enough to go to bed, but wrote for an hour instead.