Poser

A hectic day. I got early calls which led to meetings in town before and after lunch. Between times I had an hour or so to myself and did some blipping. It was a difficult choice, but I finally settled on this as being the best of the bunch. I don't really get these living statue things, and never make a donation to them, but I liked this guy's sandy look, and even more the way his pose is echoed by the mannequin in the shop window behind.

Back home I tried in vain to get to the bottom of why I'd suddenly lost all my satellite TV channels. I don't like not being able to resolve things like this, so went back in to town feeling a bit unsettled. I was meeting a guy who'd stumbled on our info page on the web for the Music Group, and had arranged to meet him for a chat and to answer any queries he might have. He seems genuinely interested, but isn't free to come along to my place tomorrow. Hopefully he'll make an appearance the following week.

I had a nice meal afterwards in an Indian restaurant on South William Street where I'd previously been disappointed. I'm glad I gave it anther try. They're one of those places which add 'twists' to traditional dishes, and they certainly did that with the starter, which looked for all the world like a black pudding sandwich but tasted surprisingly good. The main course was a no-nonsense chicken Madras which was excellent and contained a really generous amount of perfectly cooked, chunky chicken pieces. A couple of bottle of Cobra beer finished things off nicely. Good value too:16.95 euro for two courses, and they didn't charge for the extra portion of paddadams I asked for.

Back home again, the first thing I did was figure out the satellite problem. All it took was a quick glance up at the roof to establish that the dish had come away from its mounting brackets and was lying forlornly on the roof rather than fixed to the chimney as it should be. Friend Derek gave me the contact details for the guy who supplied his new FreeSat system, and I sent him an email asking for help. I'll survive without TV over the weekend anyway, but I can't help wondering what happened. Perhaps the satellite dish fell victim to the strong winds we've had during the week.