Being a sort of journal of things I didn’t otherwise write about.

Thursday 1
Talk about confusing you! I looked out of the window this afternoon to see two large-ish, completely black, birds pecking around under the birdseed feeder. I had to look hard. Surely they’re not crows? Or Jackdaws? I can’t easily see their bills, so no, they’re not. A quick look through binoculars confirmed that they were in fact two very black feral pigeons. Both unusual and confusing!

Friday 2
It was wonderful to have an evening out to eat with long-time friends – the first for ages and ages, partly due to Covid and partly because of N’s kidney issues. We sat out in our friends’ garden all evening over some super pizza and a few glasses of alcoholic beverage. And it was pleasantly warm with no need for a sweater, even at gone 11. We could all do with more such evenings.

Saturday 3
A cooler day, although still nicely warm, with a fresh breeze. Much more comfortable. Spent the whole afternoon writing my monthly update for the GP’s patient group members – very tedious.

Sunday 4
This morning, a large-ish moth fluttering at the study window. It must have come in last night. Easily caught, photographed and released outside. Identified as a male Gypsy Moth (Lymantria dispar).Also comes the gardener and reports a Jersey Tiger moth in the front garden. Not unusual, we see one (or sometimes more) most years.

Monday 5
Today was the annual trip to the optician for eye tests. It’s always an enjoyable outing as the staff are friendly, helpful and very professional; and we always seem to spend far too long just chatting with at least one of them. N needs new reading glasses but I get out of jail free this year.
When we got home in the late afternoon, I put out the wasp traps for the first session of this year’s Big Wasp Survey. This is citizen science at its best: people across the country trap, identify and count wasps for the team at UCL who are studying our native wasps. It’s been going for 8 years, and I think I’ve been involved since the start (excepting their pilot year).

Tuesday 6
Today is one of N’s hospital days, and the cats have driven me mental this afternoon. Two of them started at lunchtime with demands for a share of my lunch – which they wouldn’t have eaten. Between them they continued on and off all afternoon, until it became persistent about 17:00. Since then I’ve had procession of starving kittens (they think); muttering and yowling; and weaving round my legs. “No you are not a starving kitten. You might think you’re hungry, but you are not staving. Tea when Mum comes in, as usual.”

Wednesday 7
A busy day! First comes the gardener and spends half the day sorting out some of the garden storage. We have potting compost coming out of our ears! As we say, in the style of Yogi Berra: “You never know what you’ve got until you look”. Then comes the guy to do some quick pond maintenance. He was supposed to coming next Wednesday but phoned as he was in the area; so we said yes, come this afternoon. We’ll probably see him next in November for a big autumn/winter clean.

Thursday 8
N’s mobile phone is falling apart, and is being held together with Sellotape. Basically the battery is blown and has disarticulated the back. It’s not surprising really as it is 5 years old. So after much thinking we decided to get me a new phone and cascade mine to N. New phone arrived today (direct from Samsung so I’m not locked to the current network), and we start the pain of getting it set up and working properly. Then I have to do a factory reset on my old phone and transfer all N’s stuff.

Friday 9
We have two, rather scruffy, chilli plants which I over-wintered from last year. They produce lovely yellow fruits which are moderately hot and slightly lemony. I’ve grown them on and off for some years. This year they’re doing brilliantly. I keep picking a handful of fruits: several batches of 5-8, and the last two have been 12 and today 16.I shall probably use one tonight and the rest will be frozen for later (although we have half a freezer full of chillies!). There are at least another 10 yet to ripen; and if they produces more flowers there will be yet more.

Saturday 10
So what did today bring? Apart, that is, from no clue what day it is, because as usual yesterday was Saturday and I woke in the early hours thinking it was somewhere mid-week, next week. Sad highlight of the day was the arrival of my new tablet, which I them spent too much time setting up in between the household paperwork and writing blog posts.

Sunday 11
What a horrible way to waste a Sunday … transferring everything from N’s mobile to my old one and trying to fettle it. A job that should have taken an hour, but took all day to get everything sorted and (I hope) useable. Likewise trying to finish setting up my tablet. Why are these things always so painful, even with apps which will (allegedly) do all the data transfer etc. – which in the case of N’s phone took two attempts. So of course nothing else that needed doing, got done. Gah!

Monday 12
The day started with one of those weird waking dreams. I dreamt I was catching a variety of odd ladybirds and keeping them in a sample tube. I was being quizzed by N as the idea seemed to be to release some, and those which were less viable to feed to the pond fish. They were on the floor in the bedroom and I was lying on the bed. There was one I wanted to catch, which must have been a pupa, but was a small spring, like you get in a biro. Whenever I tried to catch it, it sprung to somewhere out of sight. Another was a large 2-spot which insisted on flying off whenever I got near, much like a moth. I do wonder at times what the brain gets up to when asleep.

Tuesday 13
A day when absolutely nothing seemed to happen. It’s really quiet round here at the moment; so quiet you’d think it’s a winter Sunday. I guess some part of the population have taken their kids on holiday; the rest are probably lying low due to the heat – although today was much cooler, but still hot. Either that or everyone knows something we don’t! Yeah, let’s have a good conspiracy theory; they (the anonymous, mysterious, ghostly they) are just waiting to pounce.

Wednesday 14
A happy, if dirty, afternoon spent repotting most of the houseplants. With three of us we got quite a lot done, as I could concentrate on the actual repotting with the other two fetching from the nether corners of the house, washing pots, etc. But we can’t now have a shower as everything is in the shower being watered in, and bug sprayed (this is the only time I ever use an insecticide).

Thursday 15
It was one of those days when something must have happened, but if it did, it didn’t impinge on me – except for the wind.

Friday 16
Today was a struggle as I had mild vertigo, so apart from the supermarket delivery and the window cleaner, not a lot was achieved. Vertical hold just about survived so I was at least able to do stuff on the PC, if slowly.

Saturday 17
N found another parakeet feather last evening. At just shy of 15cm (6″) it is tail feather, R3. See the Feather Library if you want to understand their feather nomenclature.

Sunday 18
Checking the last week’s photos from the trail camera, we appear to have a new fox on the block. This one is very distinctive with a dark (almost black) tail with the usual white tip, very black ears and black bootees. It’s fully grown but it looks as if it may be a young one. It’s in good condition, albeit slightly scruffy but then it’ll be moulting. Oh and we do like these chicken bones.

Monday 19
I effectively had to write off the day today (and probably tomorrow too). I’ve been struggling for several days with one of my periodic attacks of vertigo/labyrinthitis. It seemed to be a bit better this morning, so I was hopeful; but this afternoon is definitely worse – so little got achieved.

Tuesday 20
So there I was this morning sitting at my desk by the window editing a document. I could hear a tappety-click, which wasn’t my keyboard. Looking up, there’s a squirrel’s tail immediately outside on the windowsill. I get up to look, whereupon the creature shins up the pebbledashed wall. Cheeky monkey, I think. A few minutes later I hear tappety-click again. This time the squirrel is running back along the outside windowsill. It stops, and has a good look in the window; it also clearly thinks about leaping up to the open fanlight, but decides against. After a good look in it scampers off to scale our neighbour’s pebbledash. I hope he didn’t see it; if he did he’ll have had apoplexy; he hates anything living.

Wednesday 21
Catching up on odd things today, so nothing very worth writing about. We had half an hour’s fun rehoming all the recently repotted houseplants. As expected we ran out of space, especially by the time I’d potted up the handful of germinated date seeds – hopefully these will do better than the last lot, which did nothing. We still have the other half of the houseplants to do, which will be even more fun as they’re the biggest ones and most need dividing.

Thursday 22
Another nice quiet day and a chance to think about various presents I need to buy, including Christmas, already.

Friday 23
The day started lovely and sunny, and it was really good sitting outside for a few minutes after lunch topping up the vitamin D. But it ended with the vertigo back – mainly because I spent 5-10 minutes resolutely looking upwards while we tried (and failed) to unjam the loft ladder. With luck the vertigo will clear again overnight.

Saturday 24
My vertigo from yesterday evening did lift overnight. But N reported late yesterday that the bathroom light pull had broken again. Turns out the knot on top toggle has failed. N can’t safely reach it to fix it, even on our good steps. And because of the vertigo I dare not try working above my head. So we’ll have to manage until we see Tom, as he’s that bit taller.

Sunday 25
Yum yum! Amongst a multitude of other cooking this afternoon I did a mixed fruit crumble. Several nectarines, a punnet of strawberries, and a couple of handfuls of home-grown blackberries; with a tablespoon of sugar, a teaspoon of almond essence, and a couple of shots of Amaretto liqueur; topped with N’s special oaty crumble topping. Blimey it was good; fragrant and fruity. It won’t last very long!

Monday 26
What is this I see before me? A bright, sunny, bank holiday Monday? It’ll never last. And in fact it clouded over as the day wore on; but did stay dry.
I had a joyous 20 minutes changing the tubes on my hearing aids. It’s such a fiddly awful job – especially getting the old tubes off; you know how plastic sticks to plastic! It certainly needed doing; I’m not sure how I was getting any benefit from the left hearing aid as the tube was almost solidly bunged with wax etc. But I won, and only managed to trash one tube in the process.

Tuesday 27
I don’t know why, but I didn’t sleep brilliantly well last night. I had trouble getting to sleep and woke up several times. All of which which is unusual for me these days. Consequently when I did manage to haul myself out of bed, I was dull and headachy. But I somehow managed to do most of what I wanted to during the day.

Wednesday 28
Comes Tom the gardener, to do odd jobs – he’s several inches taller than me, which is what was needed. He managed to free the stuck loft ladder and sort the bathroom light pull – both of which turned out to be quick jobs, as I hoped. He and I then spent ages installing a new light over the bathroom cabinet (the old one having died several years ago). This took for ever! We had to work out how & where to drill holes in the (steel) cabinet; and I had to work out the wiring, which was complicated by the fixed position of the switch and live supply and resulted in two little junction boxes. Getting the covering panel back on was then a right fiddle – small screws in inaccessible places. As this dragged on into the afternoon, and it was hot, repotting the second half of the houseplants was abandoned for today. But it’s good jobs done: especially the new light.

Thursday 29
Oh bugger … Autumn is definitely on the way. This morning the Gleditsia tree in the street outside has its first few yellow leaves. It always goes a magnificent golden yellow, but the downside is that it changes colour very early. As it doesn’t leaf up in the Spring until very late, its photosynthesis must be unusually efficient as it grows at least a foot every year.

Friday 30
“They brought us the best, a perfect and absolute blank.” Today was another “Oh, bugger!” day, and for a very annoying reason. Form reasons unknown, the Microsoft app I use to store all my notes – on just about everything – decided for no apparent reason to trash the lot. No warning, no nothing. Just a blank. YEs, of course it takes backups, but not often enough. And even so I could not divine how to recover them to working (note, working)folders. After about 3 hours, a load of fiddling about, plus redoing some of the latest changes, I managed to recover most of it; although I’m still unsure of what might still be missing. Oh well, the app needed a good clear out anyway, and anything still missing is unlikely to the life-or-death important.

Saturday 31
I’ll leave you this month with Caturday greetings from King Boy Cat.