The Wii small hours

It has been almost three weeks since my last post, which is not intended to imply that nothing exciting has been happening in Wigmore. (It hasn't, I just wanted to defer the disappointment for a few extra seconds.) Wii have in fact been very busy, sometimes until way past the time Wii should have gone to bed.

Occasions when Sarah considers my time spent on the computer to have been profitable are, it must be said, few and far between, but a couple of weeks ago Wii benefited from some idle surfing on my part. Starting out to see what I could get for the shedload of Nectar points that our expensive groceries have generated, I followed a few links across cyberspace as you do, and found myself on the site of a well-known catalogue-based shopping emporium who happened to have taken delivery of some consoles, sans unwanted game bundles. And all of a sudden Wii were the prospective owners of a joint birthday present of which Sarah had given up hope - all it needed was a 15-mile round trip to collect it. Seeing as I had also booked our favourite restaurant fully a month ahead to avoid the usual problems with getting a table for around Valentine's Day, my delivery on a promise that I would find the console did not look like a fluke. Even though it was, entirely.

I had hoped by now that Adam would be an enthusiastic ice skater but reflection upon his debut turned into rejection of a reprise. Sarah and I had a near-miss with skating on a rare date night as well: Wednesday is disco evening and she didn't fancy reacquainting herself with dozens of whizzing blades in near darkness. I am though intending to have lessons and the possibility has also arisen of me learning the piano. That is always assuming we can afford it, or the instrument itself.

Which brings me onto the extension. I have now added Mr Vague, Mr Non-committal and Mr Thorough to the retinue of visitors, and ruled out Mr Chatty. A site visit last weekend confirmed that even if he included a bargepole in the quotation I should not request him to work on our house. A bright idea about financing and some clever design cheats have come to light along the way, but there's no denying it's frustrating to have such a long lead time. Wii're still waiting for three quotes, planning permission, building regs approval and a means to design the kitchen, none of which is guaranteed to fall into place. It could be that the work won't quite be finished before the summer holiday.

And on that cheerful note, I shall return to my pursuit of Pro status on some energetic electronic sport.