| Sat 1 |
It’s literary society subs time, so I spent half the day wrangling renewal payments. But why is it that to do job A, you first have to do H, and to finish that do T, and that means also first doing Q. By which time you’ve lost the thread of where you’d got to with A. It does my head, even when I’m running at full power, which is like never! |
| Sun 2 |
Isn’t it great when you have a good day! I think I managed everything I set out to do, barring a couple of odd jobs. And wedged in a couple of things I’d not planned to do. With luck that’ll have freed me up some time tomorrow. |
| Mon 3 |
A lovely sunny day which encouraged me to have a short while in the garden; mostly to feed the fish and fettle their filter. The hellebore now has about half a dozen flowers on it; there are little clumps of celandines and violets popping up and flowering everywhere; and a lot of things are beginning to wake up. |
| Tue 4 |
It isn’t full moon for another two days – it looks so full this evening that I’m surprised we have to wait that long. But then I’m not a connoisseur of celestial moons, full or otherwise. Calliope on the other hand … |
| Wed 5 |
Had a phone call this afternoon from one of our GP’s patient group members who doesn’t do online (by his own admission he’s not bright, severely dyslexic and over 80 – so why should he). I mail him our monthly newsletter and he calls me occasionally to keep in touch. He’s a lovely guy who always remains cheerful, but once you get him on the phone you can be there all day. Today I needed to be patient and listen as he obviously needed to talk. He’s been unwell and in and out of hospital over the month or so; and fighting with the District Nurses (lack of) organisation. Against that he had nothing but praise for the hospital medical staff and our GPs. |
| Thu 6 |
It’s a long time since I facilitated (and took part in) a project definition workshop/kick-off meeting. But with a big project on the horizon for the literary society I got everyone to agree this was necessary. Having done the homework we achieved a lot in just over an hour. Now we need another meeting to properly define the requirements. |
| Fri 7 |
‘Tis the day when for some totally inexplicable reason the western world celebrates the murder 2000-ish years ago of a little known Galilean prophet by a paranoid, fascist Roman Provincial authority. Beats the living daylights out of my brain. Still we get a holiday out of it. |
| Sat 8 |
An afternoon spent in the kitchen resulted in a large Pork Pie with proper hot water pastry; a mixed fruit galette (use up some fruit from the freezer!); and then for dinner pan-friend hot smoked scallops, with pan-fried asparagus and mushrooms, baguette, and champagne. |
| Sun 9 |
Another lovely sunny day, before several days of predicted biblical rain. So we spent half an hour in the garden, much of it just sitting, when we were joined by the Rosie cat (the other two were sleeping hard on our bed!). It was surprisingly quiet apart from the occasional passing metal bird.  |
| Mon 10 |
Well that was a British Standard Bank Holiday: peeing with rain and windy, but with a bit of sun too late in the day to do any good. |
| Tue 11 |
You never know what you’ve got until you look. Somehow we’d built up a surfeit of tomatoes. Rather than let them go to waste we decided to make tomato soup. Having cooked down the tomatoes etc. it needed sieving to get the skins out. This turned out to be a tedious job, which would be better done with a centrifuge – which we don’t have. Do we really not have such an attachment for the (hardly ever used) food processor? Well there’s this centrifugal juicer. Will it work? Yes, sort of. It wasn’t brilliant or ideal, but better than the alternative slog. So we found a use for something we didn’t know we had, because we decided to excavate the back of the cupboard in desperation. |
| Wed 12 |
Went for my annual diabetic eye screening this afternoon – the appointment which got screwed up a couple of weeks ago. Yet again I got away with not having to have my eyes dilated, which is a definite result: less invasive for me, saves time for the tester, and saves the NHS the cost of the drug. But in terms of Covid, people really have given up; of the about 40 people I saw while waiting (patients & staff; majority over 60) I think at most five were wearing masks. Afterwards I sat outside at the bus stop (sans mask, avec fresh air & drizzle) while my minicab arrived, whereupon I masked up again. |
| Thu 13 |
Why is it that people who use Apple machines never seem to know how to make them work properly with things like Zoom? But then why can’t a large percentage of the population not get to grips with any computing? Answer: because they’re frightened of it. Many years ago (like late 80s/early 90s) at work (remember large IT company) one big location actually ran courses for IT illiterates (viz non-techies like secretaries & admin people) called “Computing for the Terrified”. Given the ubiquity of computing now, at least 50% of the whole population could do with that training. |
| Fri 14 |
Yes, they’re extremely annoying, but I can’t properly function without them these days. |
| Sat 15 |
Well I suppose it happened, but today has been a completely nothing day, despite a literary society online talk. |
| Sun 16 |
The gardener decided not to come today. Which is a pity because it was a nice day. At last the pond fish are out and feeding eagerly. And there are all sorts wild flowers springing up in the lawn – which means it won’t be cut until July; treat it like a hayfield. |
| Mon 17 |
It’s beginning to feel like Spring is here. Our small ornamental crab apple has been in flower for a week. The Ballerina crab apple is suddenly full of bright pink flowers. The young eating apples are just beginning to look like flowering. Suddenly today the silver birch catkins are beginning to open. The buds on the oak tree are just beginning to break. In the last two days we’ve had a couple of queen wasps find their way into the study, and out the fanlight again. We need a lot more of this! |
| Tue 18 |
So today I finally got to go to audiology at the local hospital for a hearing test – well I’ve had my current hearing aids for 5 years and I think my hearing has deteriorated further in that time. But there’s no test as there’s too much wax in my ears. So soften the wax and go back in two weeks to have my ears vacuum cleaned; and then a test, we hope. It’s so seldom easy, and it’s a continual round of appointments. Yep, it’s called getting old! |
| Wed 19 |
At last! The gardener cometh. Having been given some instruction as to what we want doing (or rather not doing) he spent a few hours tidying up, eating our lunch and cake, and having a good moan about the state of the world. |
| Thu 20 |
Not just a good day, an excellent day. Lovely and sunny morning and early afternoon, but with a chilly northerly wind. Just after lunch, the first Holly Blue; and then the first Brimstone Butterfly ♀ which latter was fluttering around the Alder Buckthorn, despite it not yet being in leaf. So far so good, but then a first for me: a Hairy Footed Flower Bee (Anthophora plumipes) ♀ (all black) feeding on the newly opened lilac. Also a queen wasp or two around, quite a few small (probably solitary) bees, and lots of flies of various types. Which all bodes well for having the apples pollinated. |
| Fri 21 |
Squirrels! Not one, not two, but four squirrels in the garden at lunchtime. No wonder the peanuts get emptied so fast from the bird feeders. But I like seeing them, and their acrobatics – as do the cats! |
| Sat 22 |
Australian comedian Barry Humphries has died at the age of 89. The creator of the uncomfortable charicatures Dame Edna Everage and Sir Les Patterson he was extremely knowledgeable about literature and art, especially dadaism. He was an expert on the artist Charles Conder, an interest he shared with author Anthony Powell, whose work he also enjoyed. On several occasions we tried to get him to talk to the literary society, but he was elusive, especially as he always seemed to be touring. |
| Sun 23 |
Today yet another stupid foot race through the streets of London. I wonder how many runners it’s managed to kill this year? [As at 26/04: only one that I’ve seen mentioned.] |
| Mon 24 |
Flame red and yellow tulips! |
| Tue 25 |
The gardener cometh, so nothing much got done. Just having him here is so disruptive; somehow one can never settle to doing anything which requires concentration. Which is quite mad really, because the Rosie Cat does any supervising required. |
| Wed 26 |
I really must pot on some seedlings that are growing on the study windowsill. A few small chilli seedlings don’t seem to be growing much, but the lemons (from pips) and coleus are growing well. And the endive is going to need harvesting as a small portion of micro-greens. No sign of my lottery mix cacti yet though. |
| Thu 27 |
A day of buggering around doing odd jobs, which is just as well as I slept badly. N’s study chair has finally given up after 30+ years, and mine (much younger) is aiming to join it, so spent some time looking for replacements. And a phone call with my GP to follow up on the vascular appointment of over a month ago; we agreed on conservative management – ie. do nothing for now. |
| Fri 28 |
Well, no, today was actually Friday. At least that’s what they’re trying to convince me. |
| Sat 29 |
So we had to bite the bullet and order new office chairs for both of us – but they’re horribly expensive. To make up for it we also ordered a large bouquet of flowers for next week. Well it’s only money! |
| Sun 30 |
I was awake just before 04:00. Coming from outside there were 3 or 4 barks. Clearly not dog but fox. By the time I’d exited my warm bed and looked out the window there was, naturally, no sign of anything. However here’s a trail camera image from about 3 hours later of one of our local foxes investigating about 5 metres from the back door. |
