| Wed 1 | Admin all the way to the bottom today – except for cooking prawns & pasta for tea. |
| Thu 2 | It’s ER jubilee weekend. And a nice warm sunny day on which nothing much was done except the supermarket delivery. |
| Fri 3 | Having despatched a juvenile robin the other day, today Rosie cat accounted for a juvenile blue tit. Most unusual for our cats; over the years we’ve had hardly any birds caught, but plenty of rodents. |
| Sat 4 | Almond croissants. Especially good with strawberries and cream. |
| Sun 5 | A typically English damp, grey and chilly bank holiday Sunday, which I made the most of by having a long lie-in. |
| Mon 6 | Against all the odds (like big vet bills and restocking the wine rack) we remain solvent again this month. |
| Tue 7 | ODTAA. Now the electrics are playing up. Downstairs circuits dropped twice in 12 hours. Electrician has been as I couldn’t restore it the first time, but he’ll need to come again and do some more diagnostics – and likely some expensive work! |
| Wed 8 | Telecomms reconfiguration day. Broadband switched by 08:00; easy, but a fiddle to house the new hardware. Awaiting phone port to VoIP – hopefully tomorrow. |
| Thu 9 | “Some days seem to fit together like a stained glass window. A hundred little pieces of different color and mood that, when combined, create a complete picture.” [Maggie Stiefvater, Shiver] Then again, most days don’t. |
| Fri 10 | What a chaotic day. A collision of supermarket delivery, the electrician, courier delivery, two gangs of bin men, migrating the phone line to VoIP, multiple phone calls & messages … Fortunately pretty much all over in time for late lunch and an afternoon trying to catch up. |
| Sat 11 | The gardener comes. The gardener stays all day. Why is this so disruptive that it’s impossible to concentrate on doing anything else? |
| Sun 12 | Up early and managed to get a lot of work-ish things done before the gardener came hither again. Still the garden is now looking a lot less like a jungle. |
| Mon 13 | A swift! At last. I thought there were none this year. When we came here 41 years ago there were dozens of swifts. They’ve gradually declined and last year there were only 3. So I thought we may have none this year. Delighted they’re still around, however few. |
| Tue 14 | What a lovely day. Shame about my hayfever, which was being a nuisance even indoors and spoiling enjoyment of doing anything outside. And that’s even with taking daily antihistamines since early April. Eye drops & nasal spray helped. |
| Wed 15 | Another very successful AP Soc. conference talk over Zoom. An absolutely super presentation from a young PhD student: professional presentation and excellent content. |
| Thu 16 | Hot, hot weather creates poor water conditions for our remaining (still temporarily housed) goldfish. Looks like we’ve lost all four. Bugger. Sorry, fishes. Mea culpa! |
| Fri 17 | Incapable. Just too hot. |
| Sat 18 | Oh! One of our little fishes survived. Hope we can keep him going while we get the pond refurbished. |
| Sun 19 | Oh f**k! We’re not having a lot of luck at the moment. This evening a heavy le Creuset casserole lid slipped from the worktop, onto the open oven door, smashing the inner glass panel. Luckily only the glass panel appears damaged. What chance we can get a replacement panel? Don’t fancy the hassle or cost of (another) new oven. |
| Mon 20 | It’s tax return time. Afternoon spent making sure I have all the documents I need for both my and N’s tax return. Boring – but then I should be able to fill in the forms quickly. |
| Tue 21 | New oven door arrived. Go to fit it. What? Wrong size?! No? Yes! Stupid bugger here ordered the wrong part. F-U-C-K. (Hopefully right size now on the way.) |
| Wed 22 | A guy came this morning to look at the pond, work out what to do, and give us a quote. Awaiting the quote but is sounds like it won’t be quite as ouchy as I feared – but they can’t do the work until late August at best. Oh and the oven worketh once more. New glass panel arrived and it took longer to unpack than fit. |
| Thu 23 | An enervating hot and humid day. The predicted thunderstorms didn’t materialise when we needed them, although apparently it was weeing down only 2 miles away. |
| Fri 24 | Why can I not stay awake today? It was even worse than yesterday. I thought I had a reasonably good night, but ended up forcibly sleeping all afternoon – and then waking up depressed. But partly restored by hot baguette and steak. |
| Sat 25 | Another successful AP Soc. Zoom social call. Only 10 of us, majority Americans, but lots of good literary discussion. |
| Sun 26 | Spent a large chunk of the day sitting outside watching the gardener work. ☺ |
| Mon 27 | Phew! Got that horrible job done: completed and submitted both our tax returns in under 2 hours. Now we just have to pay the bills! |
| Tue 28 | Our scruffy small lemon tree, which has lived outside for the last 3 years or more, is a mass of bloom. We’ve had 3 fruit from last year and there are still 2 on the bush, already loads of little fruit set this year, and still it flowers. |
| Wed 29 | Why are NHS meetings so awful; and why do people have no clue how to make a point, ask a concise question, listen, and generally behave on a Zoom meeting? I had to give up halfway through tonight’s call as I couldn’t stand any more. |
| Thu 30 | Annual diabetes check-up this morning. To my surprise the nurse isn’t unhappy and we had a long discussion about depression. She thinks I do a lot more than most people and shouldn’t be worrying about the depression and feeling guilty. But I know it could be so much better. |
