It Never Rains But It Pours

We were looking forward to a relaxing three or four weeks in Framlingham for the first time since we moved here exactly a year ago. Although we've lived here a year we've hardly settled and haven't really had the chance to get into the swing of things. 

But the relaxation lasted for all of forty-eight four hours before I noticed a large damp patch above the bi-folding doors. The beautiful (and extremely expensive) wallpaper was ruined but that was the least of our worries as we didn't want rain coming in so I had to set about contacting the builder to try and discover the cause and how to put it right.

Being somewhat distracted by the leak I got into the car to take Marion for a hairdressing appointment and stupidly forgot that the gardener had parked at the end of the drive and even more stupidly I managed to clip his truck as I reversed out. 

Over £1,500 of damage just like that and with a couple of claims three years ago and a hefty excess on the insurance that's £1,500 that we'll have to fork out unless I risk losing all the discount from an insurer that covers two cars. Amazing that I've driven over twenty thousand miles in the last twelve months without so much as a chip and I do this backing out of the drive.

After dropping Marion at the hairdressers I drove on to the doctors as I had been asked to have a blood pressure check. You hardly need to ask what the outcome of that was and now I've got ongoing doctor's visits to look forward to.

In my dreams I imagine getting up on Thursday morning to a bright sunny day with not a trace of rain and not a sign of any damp. Which would have meant a relaxed couple of days, no ongoing doctor's appointments and £1,500 more in the bank.

Oh well, at least we had our weekly film visit to look forward to. The one that fitted in with our timings best was 12 Years A Slave - hardly recommend to perk us up. As it's so highly acclaimed we felt that we had to see it but, oh boy, it's grim. The cinematography is beautiful - evocative Southern swamps with vast skies and glorious colonial plantation houses, long lingering close ups of desperate faces but did we really have to suffer seeing the poor slaves brutalised, lynched, battered, thrashed, beaten, raped and lashed to within an inch of their lives for almost three hours? Great acting? Yes. Great direction? Yes. Entertainment? Only for sadists. I hope it doesn't win too many awards; it's not uplifting and worst of all for me has no redemption whatsoever - (spoiler alert)  I had at least hoped that the returning Solomon might have had a happy homecoming. I already knew that the slave trade was one of the most horrific atrocities carried out by man, this was preaching to the converted.