Here follows the usual list of things what I did done but didn’t feel impelled to otherwise write about.
| Fri 1 | We shouldn’t wonder that everyone is depressed and fed up. February has been warm and wet: the warmest on record in the SE half of England, with up to twice the average rainfall (and the 4th highest total ever), and about 50% less sunshine. The long-term trend for our winters seems to be that they’re getting warmer but wetter. If the rest of this month follows the pattern of today we’re all going to drown: apart from a short time at lunchtime the rain has been lashing it down all day, and I’ve just been greeted by a half-drowned cat. Meanwhile it’s Leeky Daffodil Day, and our first daffodils are now out. |
| Sat 2 | Where the fuck did that come from? Woke in the middle of the night with a streaming nose. Yes, I’ve got a filthy cold: runny nose and eyes; can’t stop sneezing; can’t breathe; feel meh. Think I might go back to bed. |
| Sun 3 | Sunday; I think. Still got the cold but somewhat clearer than yesterday. A long sleep last night helped. But I didn’t do anything except beat my brains out over the postage rate increases coming in April and how to adjust literary society merchandise pricing. Postage rates, especially overseas, are making merchandise unaffordable. |
| Mon 4 | Things must be on the up. Not only is it a lovely sunny day … but the forsythia is suddenly a mass of yellow flowers. And the dark purple crocuses are out – they’re usually a bit later. |
| Tue 5 | Today has been a real struggle with this **** cold. Yesterday was better, but today we’ve gone backwards. It’s a bloody nuisance to say the least – and always when there is more than enough to do. Still I did make myself do about 75% of what I needed to before giving up for the day. I did a Covid test mid-afternoon, which was negative as I expected. But pissed off that a over a box of tests we had were expired; luckily we have others which are valid for some months yet. |
| Wed 6 | News today that one of our friends has lost their cat to a tumour. This is always hard, especially as the cat was only 5 years old and should have been in the prime of life. I know it is sad; that they are a loved and valued part of the family; and that one must grieve. But why does it always reduce me to tears, even when it’s not my cat and indeed not a cat I’ve ever met. I think I’m getting ever more soft-hearted in my senility. |
| Thu 7 | I do hope things really don’t come in threes! Two today has been quite enough, on top of everything else that’s piling up. First this morning I discovered we had no email – it just didn’t. Seems the provider have had a major hardware issue and are having to recover, and it’s taking a lot longer than expected – writing this at about 21:00 and it’s been down since before 07:30 this morning. Then I find the literary society website is down. It seems the security certificate renewal which I did on Friday didn’t go through properly, so it’s expired. Our ISP ask me to put it through again, whereupon they bill us twice! Oh no you don’t! |
| Fri 8 | I had a call today from a friend locally who I’ve not spoken to since before Christmas. He’s nudging 85 and been in the wars: what was thought to be a goitre turned out to be cancer – which they have apparently fully removed. However he had a stoke while on the operating table and is having to learn to talk well again, and remember all the words – at least he’s getting speech therapy. He can’t praise the senior medics and nurses highly enough; less impressed with the junior medics; and has no opinion of hospital admin – it sounded like everything admin touched got buggered up. But he’s up-beat, cheerful and still doing for himself, which is half the battle. |
| Sat 9 | So much for weekends; spent another day at the coalface. Much of the time taken up with testing some parts of the new literary society website (now well into development); overall it’s looking good but inevitably there are the usual few glitches. The rest of the day seems to have been taken over by paperwork and cats demanding krunch. I have a tin of mixed cat krunch on my desk, which they know, so they always come to me for a little something for the starving kitten. It’s no wonder I have to refill the tin every few days despite attempts at rationing! |
| Sun 10 | What an odd day. It was peeing with rain all night and all day; really dark and miserable. And I succeeded in doing absolutely bugger all apart from piddle around. Well actually not quite true as I did get the literary society subscription renewal notices sent out: already setup and mostly by email so it was quite quick. Oh and I bought a couple of art works on eBay, in between falling asleep all afternoon. Here, have some daffodils to cheer things up! |
| Mon 11 | The next couple of months are going to be pretty crazy. We have literary society year end and membership renewals, plus the new website in test with cutover planned for late April – so lots of setup and training to be done to get us all up to speed. There’s the usual GP patient group too, with an open meeting and a newsletter to finalise; plus some development work. On top of which we have all N’s hospital appointments to be supported. And of course everything will shut down over Easter. |
| Tue 12 | So I didn’t go to the hospital with N today, if only to avoid the stress of sitting about all day! Although N was there early and away earlier than expected, it sounds like I missed a fair amount of boredom – and some nasty weather too. Meanwhile I got quite a bit of fiddly work done which I’d otherwise be scrambling to catch up on. |
| Wed 13 | You do have to wonder about the medical professions at times. N is supposed to be on (I hate to call it) a special diet. The problem is that you look at various NHS sources (like different hospitals) and they cannot agree with what is/isn’t on the forbidden list. OK the bulk of the inclusions are the same, but there are so many differences between hospitals, as well as apparent inconsistencies on each list. Just as an example: nuts and seeds are forbidden, yet olive oil, sunflower oil and rapeseed oil are OK. It seems nonsensical; it probably isn’t but it’s never explained. |
| Thu 14 | Yesterday evening I found a cat whisker on the bedroom floor. The photo (below) doesn’t show it well but it is incredibly kinky and curly – so it must be a Boy Cat whisker. This is one reason we think he’s probably part Devon Rex: he still has good curly whiskers, and they were even better when he was young. Here’s the little tyke pictured by our vet when 10 weeks old: just look at those whiskers! |
| Fri 15 | Beware the Ides of March for it shall bring forth lions whelping in the streets and the bird of night hooting and shrieking at noonday, whence unicorns shall be betrayed by trees. Yet Caesar shall go forth. |
| Sat 16 | We’re living like the gentry again, as I’m sure our gg-grandparents would have thought! Yesterday we had the first English asparagus of the season – as part of a beef & noodle stir-fry. Today we had a second round, steamed, with roast chicken. OK, we know it’s grown in poly-tunnels, but mighty nice for all that; really sweet and succulent. And of course we had to toast the noble asparagus with a bottle of Champagne. We always eagerly anticipate the English asparagus season; it’s so much nicer and I object to having it shipped round the globe from places like Peru. |
| Sun 17 | So it’s Green Leprechaun Day. There’ll no doubt be quite a few sore heads, especially as Ireland won the 6-Nations Rugby yesterday. But I do get tired of all these celebrations in central London: New Year, Ramadan, Chinese New Year, St Patrick … and that’s just so far this year! Anyone would think the Mayor had loads of spare money to throw around. |
| Mon 18 | One of those days when we both felt totally without our rubber bands. But we still managed haircuts and showers, after which I reckoned we had negative stuffing left to spare. |
| Tue 19 | They tell me today happened. |
| Wed 20 | After a burst of activity a few days ago, the magpies seem to have given up working on their nest in our silver birch. There’s been no sign of construction work for several days, and no coming and going to suggest one of them is sitting on eggs. And I’ve seen only one magpie about in the last few days – hopefully that’s not a bad sign. |
| Thu 21 | Cometh the gardener, to do odd jobs and not gardening. Job the first was to fit a new loo seat, the current one having cracked apart yesterday. And a good job I enlisted him to do it, because the old one was an absolute pig to get off, especially as I’ve managed to lose the tool for it since I turned out the bathroom cupboard a couple of weeks ago. |
| Fri 22 | Why can people not get their life in order? Tomorrow at midday we have a literary society social call over Zoom. This was announced months ago, with an email reminder sent to members 10 days ago, both asking them to register with me. Yesterday I sent out the Zoom link to those who’ve registered. Today I’ve received four last minute requests, which means extra emails and work. And I almost guarantee I’ll get at least two more requests tomorrow in the hour before the call. Oh and at least one American who gets the time zone adjustment wrong. Clearly people don’t realise quite how disruptive all this is. |
| Sat 23 | A really excellent literary society social call at lunchtime. Several new faces, which is always good to see, and lots of thoughtful, interested and wide-ranging discussion. It was marred only by a couple of participants having computer issues and hence being able to contribute little. |
| Sun 24 | This morning in the space of 5 minutes watching the ash tree at the front (actually just in next door’s front garden) we had a great tit; coal tit (very pinky-buff underneath); and twice a blue tit with a beak-full of nesting material – in addition to the usual miscellaneous collection of pigeons. The blue tit(s) went off over the house, so is probably nesting somewhere at the back, but no idea where. |
| Mon 25 | A nasty, crap, stressful day; mainly because N is unwell and the kidney issues may be the cause. So several phone calls with various medics. However in good news I ignored the problems and did a couple of hours testing on the new literary society website. I found the usual few little silly things, but it’s basically looking very good. |
| Tue 26 | This morning in the bathroom I was looking at the forest of hairs on my forearm. They’ve never been dark, only ever light brown, and are now mostly grey, so they’re not especially visible. But there they are in luxurious growth. Some are even rather long – at least longer than I would expect – with a few making 6cm or more. Mind you, I have one hair in the small of my back which must be well over 10cm, possibly as much as 15cm. I’m sure they’ve all got longer with age; I don’t recall such long hairs when I was young. |
| Wed 27 | Out this afternoon to get my annual NHS Diabetic Eye Screening, and as the last few years the female doing it managed to get good enough pictures without having to put drops in my eyes to dilate them. Looking at all the trees, an signs of Spring, I was surprised to note that effectively no silver birch was yet showing any signs of catkin growth. However I did spot both a horse chestnut and an ash with buds just starting to open. |
| Thu 28 | Rain, rain, rain. Admittedly it didn’t start until mid-morning, but it then lashed it down for most of the rest of daylight hours, at least. And blowing a gale … I was sitting in the kitchen about 17:30 when N opened the back door, and I nearly got blown off my stool in the gale. It’s unusual for the gale to be felt quite like that indoors, so I wasn’t surprised that some weather forecast had said there was a (small) chance of tornados in London. |
| Fri 29 | It’s mad! It’s Good Friday and not even the end of March. We’ve had a warmer than usual winter, and a wetter than usual winter. Today is intermittently sunny, but with little bits of rain; it isn’t very warm. And yet the apple blossom is beginning to come out; which I reckon is four weeks earlier than usual; and it isn’t all apples trees (despite compatibility). Moreover there are few insect pollinators around yet. None of which bodes well for a good apple crop. |
| Sat 30 | Really lovely dinner this evening for Low Saturday. A very tasty salmon fillet (because on offer from the supermarket), steamed English early season asparagus, and new potatoes; with lemon & butter. Followed by some fresh raspberries. Accompanied by an excellent bottle of Greek white wine, and liqueurs. Plus daffodils on the table too. |
| Sun 31 | So we’re now on artificial time for the next seven months. What a pity no-one told the cosmos and my body clock. |
