| Tue 1 | Why do banks have to make internet banking so byzantine? Liberating a small amount today from a savings account into daylight, took two transfers (via an intermediate account), and I lost count of how many authorisations, texted security codes etc. Even then it will still take overnight to be rescued. |
| Wed 2 | Boy Cat to the vet for repeat x-rays. Sounds like they’re clear. More ouch of the wallet though; hope the insurance coughs up. |
| Thu 3 | Joyful annual trip to the opticians – they’re always a helpful and friendly bunch. Eyesight (mainly distance vision) has improved a bit, as it tends to with ageing – and improved enough that new glasses are advised, which I was going to do anyway. But yet more ouch of the wallet: almost £1000 for specs, and that’s after a 20% discount: good rimless frames are not cheap (there’s no room for any error as they have to be drilled) and neither are varifocals; Nikon have stopped the lenses I had in favour of their more expensive ones; and the various coatings have also been “improved” at a cost – all round that’s £300 more than last year. But blimey, £3 a day to be able to see! |
| Fri 4 | Yet again, I’ve been convinced since lunchtime that it’s Saturday. Why I just cannot fathom. |
| Sat 5 | Dear God! What a dismal day all round. Not very warm. Peeing with rain all day. Stygian darkness, so we have to have the lights on in the middle of the day in August! And we’re both feeling meh – in N’s case due to poor sleep; dunno why for me. Gawdelpus! |
| Sun 6 | Today’s the day for putting out the wasp traps for week 1 of this year’s Big Wasp Survey (now in its 7th year). As usual I have 2 traps, one up near the house, the other by the pond. They’re made from the usual plastic water bottles and spiked with a bottle of Newcastle Brown divided between them – I never know what’s the best inducement to use. Also today I finally managed to get a (not very brilliant) photo of a speckled wood in the garden.  |
| Mon 7 | Comes the gardener, complaining about the lack of Piccadilly line trains on our branch. He did do some gardening, but also fixed the shower door and decreed the dishwasher beyond economic repair. Yet more money going out, this time for a new dishwasher. |
| Tue 8 | Quoth N, on Sunday midday foresooth, “‘Ere there’s three geezers digging up the road outside”. And lo, they were. Electricity board navvies; ripping up a large chunk of the pavement; right outside our house. In the process they’ve chopped into some big roots of our street tree; hopefully it will recover. They appear to have made some major repair to a cable (happily not the one which feeds us). They went away leaving their hole and piles of dirt etc. exposed to the elements and yobbos, and surrounded by virulent green plastic hurdles. It’s all still there today, two days on. I’m contemplating opening a book on how long the hole stays there before it’s filled in. One is irredeemably reminded of Bernard Cribbins. |
| Wed 9 | An Alice Through the Looking-Glass day: having to run fast to stay in the same place and ever faster to get anywhere. |
| Thu 10 | The hole is no more. Noisy truck and geezers filling it in at 07:30 this morning, and taking away the debris. 10 ton truck parked right in the middle of the road. All we need now is the paviers to put the paving slabs down. Mind the men have left several of their hurdles standing on our neighbour’s paved front – he’ll be wanting to charge them rent; he’s that sort of guy. |
| Fri 11 | Yet again, according to my brain it’s Saturday. |
| Sat 12 | What are these guys on? When ordered, new dishwasher scheduled for delivery today 07:00-17:00. Refined yesterday (as promised to a 2 hour slot: 07:00-09:00. Up at 06:00. Guys ring at 06:14 to say they’ll arrive in the next half hour! New machine installed & old taken away; job done by 06:50. Well we are only 3 miles from their warehouse! |
| Sun 13 | It was really nice sitting in the sun, but out of the worse of the stiff breeze, this afternoon. Just sitting, accompanied by a sun-warmed cat or two. |
| Mon 14 | 10 o’clock on an August morning in London, and it’s so gloomy you (again) have to have lights on to be able to see what you’re doing. Mind it doesn’t help when half the study windows are swathed in chilli plants! |
| Tue 15 | Good evening wood pigeon! And your point is? |
| Wed 16 | Yet another of those days with too much to do and then more, even more urgent, piled on top. Consequently quite a bit didn’t get done. |
| Thu 17 | A successful hunt of the 1921 census for relations of my godparents. Well why not? Godmother needed only few details and it seems daft to shell out £200 to look up 4 records, especially when I already have access. One pleased godmother. PS. My godparents are both younger than me! Yes, really! Work that one out! |
| Fri 18 | I seemed to spend all day in the kitchen. First up the supermarket delivery. Then we had loads of surplus tomatoes (I always buy too many) so they were turned into tomato sauce. A blitz clean. And then cook spaghetti bolognaise (using some of the tomato sauce), which went down well for dinner with a bottle of red (some bolognaise left to freeze). That was followed by summer fruit salad with ice cream and a blackberry sauce I did earlier in the week. We’re both now stuffed and knackered. |
| Sat 19 | A morning spent asleep. An afternoon spent sending Postcrossing postcards. |
| Sun 20 | Having made tomato sauce a couple of days ago, and having 2/3rd left … tonight it was turned into a hearty tomato soup, with 3 leftover small potatoes and a small piece of pork chop from last night plus some fried onion and some mushrooms. Hearty it certainly was, served with grated cheese, hunks of bread and a bottle of Rioja. |
| Mon 21 | Hot baguettes and brie for tea reminded me of one of the things my father (when I would have been in my 20s) liked for tea: hot buttered crumpets, camembert and a couple of glasses of hock. It worked surprisingly well – as did G&T with fish & chips. |
| Tue 22 | I do wish I understood why there are some days (weeks even) when I’m depressed and unable to bootstrap myself to do anything. Most of the last week has been like that; just going through the (minimal) motions. Really no clue why. |
| Wed 23 | Damn. Go to collect my new glasses. I refuse them. Something has gone awry with them. The left lens is useless; everything is totally fuzzy – worse than my (weaker) right eye with no correction. It was like that time when you try on someone else’s glasses and everything is totally out of focus and misty. I know the prescription did change but not that much – I’d expect the usual short (hours?) adjustment period but not a totally fuzzy lens. And the lens is said to be what was ordered. Have to go back for a second eye test in a couple of weeks time. We’ll see what transpires. |
| Thu 24 | Hot and sticky with yet more Windows updates. |
| Fri 25 | Another day, another week, another … something. |
| Sat 26 | Well that’s the first time in a long while we’ve had a decent thunderstorm. It really only lasted half an hour, although odd rumblings continued. But it did include 20 minutes of absolutely cascading rain – real waterfall stuff. |
| Sun 27 | You see these triffids, poking their lighter green heads above the passionflower covering the archway? I can just walk under that archway. Well they’re Jerusalem Artichoke plants. Here they are from the other side: one set in the middle, one at the left, and another leaning off the right edge. As you’ll see, they’re in a raised bed, so the plants are actually about 10 feet (3 meters) tall – maybe a bit more.We stuck a handful of (past their best) tubers in the ground in the Spring; and they’ve grown like … well … triffids. They’ll die back in the winter and it’ll then be interesting to see what sort of crop we get from them. When I was a kid we always had a few Jerusalem Artichoke plants; they grew in a small patch of poor soil and still got to six feet. These are in good soil, with regular watering, so no wonder they’ve taken off. And they’re still growing – by rights they should have sunflower-like flowers at the top, but no sign yet. |
| Mon 28 | They say today was a Bank Holiday; essentially the last of the year. But no-one around here seemed to notice or care. It was just another Non-day. |
| Tue 29 | This cat has definitely got the right idea. Apart from going out for about half an hour in the middle of the day, he’s been in this state all day. As I write it’s 19:40 and he hasn’t yet even bothered to stir himself to demand tea. Unlike the two girls who’ve taken it in turns all day to tell you they’re starving. |
| Wed 30 | Well who knew that foxes like digestive biscuits? Last evening N put out a plate of remains for the fox: bones and scraps from our lamb chops and a few digestive biscuits we don’t like from a box of biscuits for cheese. She reported that, bar half a biscuit, the plate had been cleared within 2 hours. Now I can believe a cat or two may have salvaged the lamb scraps, but unlikely all the bones or the biscuits. But as I observed, a digestive biscuit isn’t that far removed from a dog biscuit – and I’ve certainly seen of people whose foxes like custard creams. Cheese puffs anyone? |
| Thu 31 | I was watching the squirrels this lunchtime and being impressed by their industry. They were busying themselves burying acorns from our oak tree in a nice friable piece of soil. They were digging for Australia; disappearing up to their shoulders in the hole. Then very deftly, with lots of scrapes and patting down, filling in the hole. Each one took a matter of seconds from start to finish. Busy little tree-rats filling their larder of winter! |
