percussion!

This is a scene from the fabulous percussion concert that we saw - and very much heard - this evening. The kids are from the upper secondary school, studying the creative and performing arts - specialising in music and percussion. Their leader is our good friend Johan, and his daughter (our Goddaughter) Mira is in her second year on the programme. They are wonderfully brave and very tight. There's a lot of shifting of large quantities of metal and skin between pieces, which they practice many times so it all goes smoothly. All the musicians playing in the blip are young women - a big change from how things were 20 years ago. What a positive injection of wow!

SO that was the end of the day. The beginning was from about 6 onwards, Keith was camper-vanning overnight as he needed to be in town early to attend a course in pruning and propagating bushes. I di my usual brain work, prepared a bill to send off for the translation work and had a spot of breakfast. Interrupted by some political conversations with two of my favourite leftie women. We are all very concerned about the current situation - one of the official representatives had quit the party but will retain he place on the town council as a wild card. This is rubbish for us. She went to the papers and cited bullying, though not in so many words.

I was the only one of us who could toddle along to the office (open house, come in for a coffee) and I was not uplifted by the attitudes I was confronted with there. Prickly men, blaming the women who has jumped ship, saying things like we have to put this behind us and look forward. Something I am used to hearing management say, when they really need to enquire into the background but find it too uncomfortable. Apparently the blokes think this will work. Sigh. I got a rather aggressive reaction from  the main Mr Awkward and thought how unenlightened he is... even when the group is fairly well in the poo... I can't see how this can turn out well, but we three women plan to work this problem for a bit longer before giving up!

I spent a happy couple of hours at the big Lions flea market, partly outdoors in fabulous sunshine. I went to see people and to enjoy the variety of sights and sounds, it was lovely as it always is. I friendly and generous atmosphere. I spent about £10 in total and have come home with the following:
a flashy (but needed a deep clean) bronze necklace
a food processer very like my ancient yellowing one - the same make (Phillips Cusina) but better, unused as far as I can see - and with a liquidiser and fine filter for juicing things. Mine has nothing of that kind of thing.
A kneeling pad for the garden, we had two but one has gone off on its own somewhere. The new one is purple!
A cerise shaggy pile rug, exactly like the hall rug we have, but not flattened and not green.
A similar rug in red, which will be perfect at Christmas! 

I have already worked out what is being removed to make room for these! 
(a promise is a promise) 

The food processer is brilliant, but for one little thing. A screw lid for the liquidiser motor is missing and without it replacing the liquidiser jug the main bowl won't work, no power gets through. Shabby! We spent an interesting hour working out how it was supposed to function, if we could find a spare part (no, it's an old model) if we could at least find a photo of the inside of the screw lid to understand what it actually does - no luck there either. 

Eventually we sussed out what we needed to do, wedging a little grey catch in the open position and putting the liquidiser unit on will send the power to the bowl. Tomorrow I will fashion something that will do that without getting in the way of the liquidiser jug. A nice little challenge! I bet the missing piece is just lying around in the flea market somewhere so I will ask if I can go and see. Keith is a Lion himself and we have stuff to donate for the next flea market so it might even work. But if not, Heath Robinson to the rescue! (Mourão Mike would be proud of my efforts, and I would like him to help with his botching know how!)

Our friends from Dorset are booking a trip to come to us in March! Lovely to think about these things in the 2024 diary. They are using a voucher they gathered from some mess up when flying and had to book before the end of May or the voucher was lost. Forward planning.