Fill Your Boots

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Early this morning Jackie drove me to New Hall Hospital for a Pre-Admission Clinical appointment. This was a most thorough and efficient physical check involving all the usual blood tests, etc., including an ECG. I seem to have passed. There followed various questionnaires for which Jackie was invited to participate. Next, we were introduced to the Head Physiotherapist who explained what we were to expect before and after surgery. I was, incidentally told that I was “a lucky man” in my allocated surgeon.

The off-white tarpaulin covering the skies developed a leak in the afternoon, so I was fortunate in managing to produce a few photographs before lunch.

Rape fields

On the road through Salisbury’s Downton, fields of oil seed rape blazed in the murk.

Cattle

A cluster of white-faced cattle huddled in the corner of a field

Cattle

beribboned by tributaries of the River Avon near the mill at Woodgreen. (See Paol Soren’s comment below for important information about these creatures)

Thatched roof

Having been attracted by the recently patched thatched roof of

Thatched roof

Surma Valley Indian restaurant at Burgate,

Surma Valley restaurant

we just had to have lunch in this 16th century building set in 3/4 of an acre of grounds. We were not disappointed. Service was friendly and efficient and the food was first rate. Jackie enjoyed her sheek kebab starter followed by prawn buna and aromatic pilau rice; as I did my mulligatawny soup, lamb tikka gowchi, and special egg rice. We both drank Kingfisher.

Shoes

We have an expression, “fill your boots”, originating from early naval times, when a mug was called a boot and this was an encouragement to get quite drunk. Now we use it to mean eat so much that your boots are also full. We didn’t exactly do that, but Jackie brought some of hers home in a doggy bag for this evening. An earlier visitor to the restaurant avoided doing so by leaving his boots outside.

My laptop died some time ago. Later this afternoon we collected a replacement – a MacBook – from Peacock computers and I did my head in trying to load all my various accounts, like this one, onto it.

 

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