They moved our gas tank today.

It has sat in the same position for longer than we have lived here (21 years) without causing any trouble. Actually, I'm telling a bit of a fib because Calor replaced it about ten years ago, but in the same place that it had always been. Then, before Christmas, they told us that because you cannot walk all round it to inspect it the tank could no longer be passed as safe. We pointed out that you can walk all round it, you just have to go up the steps onto the back lawn in order to look down at the back, but apparently that wasn't good enough. What they wanted to do was to put it (at our expense) up on the lawn bang in the middle of the view. I negotiated - my father who was at a council meeting at the time might have been a bit surprised at my pleading on behalf of my poor old pensioner father - and the result was that they agreed simply to turn the tank around, taking it out of its neat little niche and bringing it forward so that some jack-in-office can stand in the niche instead to admire its back which was formerly the front, and that they would pay for the move as long as we provided the concrete plinth on which it would stand. So we did that by their deadline which was January 23rd, and today they came to turn it round, and here they are doing that.
Gas Tank0004

That accomplished, I hung the washing out. Then I typed up no.2 nephew's college assignment called "The Structure and Function of the Endocrine System in Relation to Homeostasis" which was full of words that I had to copy out letter by letter as I had never heard of them before, which is a much longer process than typing something you understand - particularly when you remember than Jacob is dyslexic and his mother who had helped write up his notes may be a nurse, but has handwriting which clearly suggests ambitions to be a doctor.

I once decided that Hell would be spending eternity shopping in an unknown supermarket arranged by a very tall man with no sense of order or logic with a shopping list written by a dyslexic doctor while the tannoy system plays highly amplified jingly versions of sacred music by Handel and Bach.

This, at times, came close. I am a WONDERFUL aunt, though I says it as shouldn't.

This evening it was our Reading Club. Highest attendance ever, and unanimous approval of the book The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time by Mark Haddon. Four members of the group had experience of autism through working with special needs children, I have both a nephew and a godson who are 'on the autism spectrum' though thankfully only just, and two or three others had dealt with autistic children in the normal course of classroom teaching, so we had a quite a lively discussion - including Joe's contribution about what it is like from the inside.