I got up at 9am this morning to continue work on my diary and spent pretty much all day until 9pm processing photos and writing. I have neglected David (he minds) and the dogs (they don’t, they’ve spent the day sleeping) and been shut away.

I suddenly realised it was 8pm and I’d not even thought about dinner. I suggested popping down the road for a Ruby and David will never say no to one so I finished loading my new Cornwall gallery, fed the dogs, put on a loaf of bread and we set off down the road.

Several things struck me as wrong about this. Firstly, we had to chase off a bunch of local kids who were throwing stones at our house. Why were they doing that? Who knows, something to do I suppose. Little sods will know about something to do if I catch one of them!

Secondly the ten-minute walk to the local curry house was full of houses, traffic, light pollution and other urban stuff. It was a depressing contrast to the ten-minute walk to the Albion two nights earlier.

We did have a brilliant time when we got there, arguing about how many poppadoms we should have and people watching as usual. We decided we are creatures with simple needs – we always order the same food (we share onion bhajis and samosas then move on to a veggie dhansak – fiery, full of lentils and vegetables, matter paneer – peas and Indian cheese and a mushroom bhaji, all served with rice). We’ve refined our order down to this because we know we can just about do it justice – in the past we used to order so much food we would eat until we nearly burst and then feel miserable as they took away plates of uneaten food.

Again the conversation is about cottages, stone, renovations and work, especially as we now try to think of ways of dealing with practical problems like where we will sleep on day one. We don’t want to fully furnish the house while we are making huge amounts of mess with renovations but we can’t sleep there without some furnishings (a bed and something to cook on) at least. It’s decided that a camping stove will do….blimey – it seems like only a few moments since I was cooking on a camping stove last summer when we did the kitchen here. At the time, I swore ‘never again’.

For some reason (well of course we know why) the evening is sparkling and lively and we lark about on the walk home in high spirits. What an excellent evening.

The photo is a bottle of Cobra beer with some of its contents in the foreground, taken in the restaurant with David’s brilliant mini tripod that fits ever so nicely in my handbag!