I shipped my shamisen body over to Santa Cruz, California, to be reskinned by Kyle at Bachido. It’s very handy that they come apart, so I only need to send a small and easy-to-package part rather than a long and fragile instrument.

I bought the postage through an aggregator, Parcel2Go, and ended up paying £36.45 for a two-day service from FedEx, quite a lot less than it would have been if purchased directly. It almost made it in one day, but arrived at the local depot a few km away from the destination just after the delivery round had left. I know that some postal services are a bit chaotic at the moment due to the lack of passenger flights, so I was very pleased with that.

The house purchase is still stuck in unresolved enquiry limbo:

There’s some back-and-forth over three enquiries - we’ll resolve these as soon as we can

I still need to drink 119 pints to save the pubs.