| Thu 1 | Blimey! What a day! It’s surprising how much work a new credit card makes, what with activation, PINs, update all the finance apps, insurance etc. – and that’s before you start updating all the places you use a card online. That was just one part of a never ending stream of emails and things needing to be done NOW! How did I manage to do this every day at work? |
| Fri 2 | Poorly pussycat. Not eating; being sick. V.E.T. tomorrow morning. |
| Sat 3 | N takes Boy Cat to the V.E.T. who thinks he has an infection especially as the other 2 also off their food at bit. I stay home because the gardener is coming – but he doesn’t! |
| Sun 4 | A day of deep depression; weepy and struggling to do even the minimum. Even a really nice chicken curry not restorative. |
| Mon 5 | We’re getting a new treasurer for the literary society. So, as I’m the one who brings in most of the money (memberships & shop), I had to dust off and update my finance processes. It’s surprising how much it had changed in only 3 years – so much more being done online. |
| Tue 6 | Rain! We have rain! It absolutely poured down for a large part of the afternoon. But it had stopped by 19:00 when I went to feed the pond fish, and it was actually a nice, warm and fresh evening. |
| Wed 7 | It was another of those instances where you need to do a job, but find you don’t have the necessary materials to hand. In this case, flash drives. Fortunately Mr Amazon came to the rescue with same day delivery. |
| Thu 8 | It’s raining again. For at least the third day in a row. This is most unusual for the first week of September, which is usually dry, sunny, and warm – so much so that we have often taken holiday at this time. Today is our umpty-n-th wedding anniversary; this day in 1979 was indeed dry, sunny, and rather warm, as were the preceding and following few days. |
| Fri 9 | Well what should one do on the day after the death of the Queen? I don’t know, but basically we did bugger all apart from jellivate and studiously ignore the continual morbidness on TV and radio. |
| Sat 10 | Picked an enormous quantity of runner beans. The gardener took half, and we gave some to a neighbour and still have enough for us for tomorrow. That’ll not be the last of them, but they’re beginning to wind down, so maybe only one more picking. Not bad for last year’s plants – yes they’re perennials, not annuals as we always treat them. |
| Sun 11 | Afternoon cookathon. Bread pudding. Salmon (for cold tomorrow). Marinated pork slices for dinner (with jacket potatoes & veg). Alcoholic summer fruit salad for dinner. |
| Mon 12 | Well that certainly needed doing … Comes the gardener to relay half the front path which was in a dangerous state with several lifted slabs due to the encroachment of roots etc. |
| Tue 13 | I really struggle to understand why people are so disorganised. You send out an invitation to a (free) talk, followed by a reminder two weeks beforehand. But at least 20% won’t book until the day before, after you’ve sent out the Zoom link to those who’ve already booked, thus causing extra work. |
| Wed 14 | Guy next door gets a so-called tree surgeon in to cut back my trees on his side of our mutual boundary – which he’s entitled to. But he doesn’t have the courtesy to bother to tell me. Have to get out of pram with said tree surgeon who is straying over our side; and working unsafely; with the wrong tools. And because all the trimmings are technically mine they get thrown over the fence, onto my lawn, for me to clear up, without any “by your leave”. Very not impressed. |
| Thu 15 | I can’t believe* that the queue to walk past a flag covering a box (even if it does contain the mortal remains of the Queen) in Westminster is almost 5 miles long, stretching along the South Bank back to Southwark Park; and that if you join the queue now (about 20:00) you might just get through by sunrise – or is that sunrise on Saturday? [* Well actually I can believe this because the British people are sufficiently stupid and gullible.] |
| Fri 16 | Day totally disrupted by a supermarket delivery which was 90 minutes after the booked slot. How can they send a driver out with paperwork not having the crate numbers for every delivery? And then apparently do nothing until I ring up to find out what’s happening. We eventually got to have lunch around 14:15, so basically ended up writing off the afternoon as well as the morning. |
| Sat 17 | At last, and sooner than expected … we got our 4th Covid jabs this morning at our local chemist. We were a bit early so had to join a short queue – 5 chairs rather than 5 miles long. They really are good; well organised and efficient; and they automatically deliver our prescriptions at no charge. |
| Sun 18 | Eddie Butler, rugby player and commentator, died a couple of days ago. I bumped into him once, almost literally, maybe 20 years ago on Reading station. I’m a pretty big bloke, but he absolutely dwarfed me. |
| Mon 19 | I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised at it being a weird day, what with ER funeral and all … but I felt really out of sorts all day: cold, miserable, depressed, and totally unable to settle to do anything at all. I am though in awe of the logistics which have gone into the whole of the last 10 days; I know it is all planned out in advance, but there’s so much that can’t be fixed until the time comes – like selecting and training guardsmen to carry the coffin, naval ratings to pull a gun carriage, transport & detailed orders of precedence for dignitaries, rehearsal and final timings. And that bearer party were (at least in what I saw) nigh on faultless – at least two were still teenagers! – and commanded by a young Second Lieutenant, the most junior of junior officers – what responsibility, and deserving of something more that just kudos. Equilibrium partly restored later with cold chicken, sauté potatoes and champagne. |
| Tue 20 | Oh God! Spent the day horizontal and cancelled everything. Vertical hold totally buggered by vertigo. Effectively motion sickness; dizzy and nauseous. |
| Wed 21 | Still flattened, though slightly better. Very annoying, especially as I have a couple of things which I needed to do urgently yesterday. |
| Thu 22 | Managed to be semi-upright. Trying to catch up on that which should have been done in the last few days. Doctor she say want to see me when it happens again; may need ENT referral. |
| Fri 23 | Slowly improving, but still in catch-up and rest mode. |
| Sat 24 | Nice literary society zoom meet at lunchtime with fun discussions about Dornford Yates, George Orwell, Tolkien and others; plus totalitarianism, healthcare, fishing and Scotland. Never let it be said our meetings are dull! |
| Sun 25 | What’s happening? Has everyone died? It is just so quiet around here; even our usually noisy neighbours are pretty quiet. Mind you they can’t say the same for us today; the gardener has been here shredding, mowing and strimming all day! |
| Mon 26 | After a dull, wet and miserable day, some glorious evening sunshine on the top of the silver birch tree. The wild rose has climbed right to the top of the tree and is a riot of bright glowing red hips in the sun. No photo can really do it justice, but here’s a shot! |
| Tue 27 | How computers waste time! Spent 2½ hours this morning while N was at the hospital trying to fix several (mostly minor) glitches on her PC. Failed at all but one; and even that took some wrangling. |
| Wed 28 | Well that wasn’t quite as scheduled. I missed Jupiter’s close approach on Monday night, because as usual it was cloudy. But at 04:15 this morning it was an unmissable bright light in the SW sky. I was too asleep to go get binoculars, but impressive all the same. |
| Thu 29 | I’ve had so little alcohol recently that this evening’s half bottle of red left me feeling distinctly unsteady. |
| Fri 30 | It’s flu jab day! I wonder if it’s going to knock me out for 24 hours like it usually does? Luckily I’ve managed to keep the weekend free. |
