Tag Archives: memes

memes, personal

Unblogged October

Things from this month that I didn’t otherwise write about …

Tuesday 1
What can one say about today except “fucking hell!”? Last night the freezer went on the blink, so I ended up cutting our losses and and ordering a new one at midnight. We just hope enough of the freezer stays frozen until tomorrow – not that there is time to do anything with the new one tomorrow! So I slept badly and had to get up early as the beginning of the month is always busy with admin, of various types, not just ours. It went on all day; every job either had to have something else done beforehand, or caused a follow-on job. I was still at my desk at 8pm – tired, hungry an with a headache – when N arrived home very late from the hospital. Now I have to go and cook tea. Happy bunnies are not us!

Wednesday 2
Well our new freezer did finally arrive, late. So it had to be left cooling down for the afternoon while N and I did a session of talking to patients at the doctors. When we got home we had to heave to and move everything over from the old freezer; it was still playing up but everything had stayed frozen. The new freezer is slightly smaller, so a few oddments had to go – well most will be used as we needed to take out stuff for the next 2-3 days anyway, which will most likely include soup.

Thursday 3
Dear God, the cost of postage is just unreal – and it goes up again on Monday. Today I had to send two tote bags to USA; the package is just big enough that it has to go small packet, and it weighs just over 400gm – so it isn’t large, just annoyingly over size. This cost £15.80 in postage. How on Earth can Royal Mail justify this? By contrast sending a book, also a small packet but just over 500gm withing the UK was just over £3, which still feels too much, but is at least reasonable.

Friday 4
N’s birthday, and I gave her a special present – we went to get our Covid boosters and our flu jabs. But then I cooked a couple of very nice, decent size steaks for dinner – with a brandy, garlic & cream sauce, chips and a fennel slaw – followed by peaches in brandy; plus the obligatory bottle of champagne and a liqueur.

Saturday 5
Absolutely floored. I expect the flu jab to knock me down for 24 hours, but this year it’s also set off an attack of my vertigo/labyrinthitis – which always takes most of a week to resolve. Very unstable on my feet; spent the day in bed; just about OK if I lie flat and still.

Sunday 6
Still flattened, but a bit better.

Monday 7
Now only half flattened, but still struggling with vertical hold and brain fog. Had to cancel my diabetes check-up this morning, and will have to reschedule it. Sadly I also had to cancel lunch later in the week with friends visiting from Japan; really annoying but I’m far from sure my head will be able to travel into central London. That’s the trouble with this vertigo, once it arrives it takes a week to properly resolve.

Tuesday 8
Massive thunderstorms predicted for today, but they didn’t happen. There was some rain, and there was stygian gloom in late afternoon: some of the darkest cloud cover I think I’ve ever seen.

Wednesday 9
Great fun this morning. 06:30 awoke to blue flashing lights. Car wedged(?) diagonally across the road 100m away by a parked white van (I was later told the car had hit the van and done a lot of damage). Police car behind it (nearer us) and further away a fire truck, so it had been going on for a while. No ambulance. Copper and 2-3 firemen wandering about with no sense of urgency. So no clue what had happened. N said later that at 08:30 they were taking the car away. Then about 11:15 there’s a parking attendant putting a ticket on a car which is parked across the boundary between us and next door; whether because he’s parked on the hump, or because the front is encroaching over next door’s dropped kerb we may never know.

Thursday 10
We have some Virginia Creeper rooted at the bottom of our garden – not that we ever see it on our side. It rambles all along the fences at the back of us (the other side of the overgrown alley, and up the far side of next door’s fence – that’s over 30m in length. It’s currently absolutely gorgeous in its autumn red leaves. How can anyone ever want to remove it?

Friday 11
Last evening I rescued a small fruit fly from my apple juice – it was clearly alive, but not very good at doggy-paddle. I lifted it carefully, from below, onto my finger and encouraged it to walk onto a tissue to dry off. It was about 3mm long and clearly black and yellow striped. It sat on the tissue cleaning its legs, its wings, its head and its antennae for several minutes. It was quite an amazing performance to watch, especially as it was previously trying to drown. Then, suddenly – poof! – it was gone. It’s odd how you can feel attached to such a tiny creature in such a short time; I hope it survived for a normal fly lifespan; at least I gave it another chance.

Saturday 12
Why is household paperwork and admin so tedious and time-consuming? I have a routine of doing the not-immediately-urgent paperwork at a weekend, but not having done any last week, today it took me all afternoon rather than the usual hour or less. It wasn’t even interesting or exciting.

Sunday 13
A busy but interesting Sunday. (1) Unloading the last 2 weeks photos from the trail camera there were a number of occasions where Boy Cat was either carefully watching, or actually trailing, the fox as much as to say “I’m just keeping an eye on you to make sure you behave properly in my garden”. (2) I picked our apples. Not a huge crop from our 2 small trees: 20 or so from the Pinova, many small but a couple of a nice size for eating. And just one from the Falstaff which is a good size to eat. (3) We spent an hour or so choosing the photo for this years Christmas card, and getting them on order. Postcards as usual because they make writing cards so much easier: no envelope hassles and no worrying about which card to send Aunt Ethel; plus they’re ridiculously cheap from VistaPrint.

Monday 14
Mmmm. Those apples I picked yesterday are really lovely: crisp, juicy and slightly tart. Much better than anything you buy in the supermarket, and known to be organic too.

Tuesday 15
I actually managed to get done today pretty much everything I needed to. N heroically covered a session talking to patients at the doctors for me after one of the other volunteers dropped out last night. She then had to hot-foot it to the hospital. Meanwhile I sorted out all sorts of other tedious jobs, including taking my keyboard apart to clean it, and starting the grocery order. Why do I always end up falling asleep over the grocery order?

Wednesday 16
Did anything happen today? What day even is it? I’m totally lost. Still at least the council came and took the old freezer away. And N’s flowers arrived.Click the image for a larger viewvase of green & white flowers

Thursday 17
Well much to my surprise I not only had nothing much scheduled for today, and I got the afternoon off to do … nothing much except read – which is rare! Our Christmas cards arrived, and look lovely – but you’ll have to wait upon the day to see them. On the downside I had a panic attack about what’s happening at the weekend which necessitated a change of plans – I never understand why these things happen; it’s a real bummer!

Friday 18
A lovely foggy start to the day, and the first real fog of this autumn; although not really thick, just enough to block out the top end of the road. I always liked the fog as a kid, despite growing up in the 1950s with the tail end of London’s pea-soupers and not being able to see more than a couple of meters in front of your face. There was always an air of mystery with the fog (even better if there was fresh snow as well), partly down to the restricted vision, and partly the muffled sound.

Saturday 19
Yet again I missed the literary society AGM. I was intending to go, but everything recently has just turned out too difficult: I still have occasional remnants of the vertigo; the depression isn’t any better and triggers the odd panic attack; transport is a pain with the tube here off at weekends plus major roadworks everywhere; and then N isn’t always great when she gets back from hospital.

Sunday 20
A wet and windy day, so nothing doing outside. Instead we used the last of our apples plus a few strawberries and a dribble of peach liqueur to make an huge crumble – enough for breakfasts for most of the week – which turned out very tasty with cream. Managed to slice my thumb peeling the apples – idiot! Cooked some stuffed chicken thighs (with a drizzle of curry jus) in pastry for evening meal – not the greatest success ever, but very tasty and has potential.

Monday 21
Feeding the pond goldfish today I was struck that although it’s clearly autumn (but not yet that cold) they’re still feeding voraciously – and blimey are they getting big and chubby; seriously substantial fish considering they were tiny tiddlers 2 years ago. It’s said that for tropical fish (I don’t know how true this is of carp) that they can survive on 1% of their bodyweight of food a day, and with 3% they’ll grow rapidly.

Tuesday 22
Why do cut thumbs always spring a leak 24 hours (or more) after the event, when you think they’ve scabbed over OK?

Wednesday 23
Comes upon this day, the gardener. Amongst other things he gave the lawn it’s last cut of the year and top dressed it with home-made compost. It looks a mess at the moment, but if the weather stays mild the grass will soon grow through.

Thursday 24
Had a friendly annual diabetes check-up this morning with one of the Practice Nurses – the one I usually see and get on well with. As usual she knows she doesn’t have to read the riot act at me – unlike some of her colleagues – as I know what I ought to be doing and if I haven’t it’s because for whatever reason I can’t. Taking blood the nurse managed to spring a leak around the needle, so I lost a teaspoon more blood than planned – it’s all good fun! She had a young student nurse with her, who got some hands on practice. I also managed to get a message in, really aimed at the student, about not bullying patients but ensuring they have the information and letting them make their own decisions – with some quiet nudges, which is generally more effective. I also managed to make an appointment with the Practice’s physio, to see if I can get some exercises for my back.

Friday 25
Comes the window cleaner. Quick and efficient as always. And he offered that next time he comes he’ll get a ladder up and check some of the guttering.

Saturday 26
We seem to have very few sparrows around; I’ve hardly seen any in the last couple of years. But today, looking across the road, there were sparrows going everywhere – too many to count!

Sunday 27
So the clocks have gone back, and we’re now on GMT again. I wish we could stay on GMT; continually meddling with the clocks is a pain, and totally unnecessary. Unlike in wartime when every useful scrap of daylight mattered, it isn’t needed now and just causes confusion etc. Anyway GMT is our heritage, so as the country is a theme park we need to keep, and show off, our heritage!

Monday 28
Waking up: “Oh it must be 9 o’clock. What?! No, it’s only 8 o’clock.” Stupid brain hasn’t adjusted to the clock change.

Tuesday 29
Up betimes, only to find my morning meeting being moved to Thursday. So I spent half the morning trying to fix up one of our laptops to replace N’s desktop PC – I failed and gave up. Why is Windows so obtuse and obscure? It’s vaguely friendly for the dumb user, but totally byzantine if you know what you need to do under the bonnet: either you can’t or you have to guess the magic incantation. Gah!

Wednesday 30
One of those days where you get stuck in trying to prepare for unpredictable meetings and everything conspires to stop you – so you end up unreasonably knackered.

Thursday 31
After some unexpected preparatory work by a colleague we had a long, detailed and very forthright meeting this morning makes me hopeful that things might start to happen.

I’ll leave you with some suitably Halloween frosty-looking fir cones I perpetrated a few weeks ago!3 white photoshopped fir cones

memes, personal

Unblogged January

Mon 1 So … Happy New Year to everyone! I don’t want to alarm anyone, but having just been outside everything is the same. We really need something different. Maybe snow? Or sunshine?
Tue 2 At least three power blips late last evening. Literally off and on instantaneously. I think there was a bigger problem elsewhere locally, but I can’t find out. After the first couple of blips I made sure all the computers were OK and then powered them down until this morning. No damage done although one of the servers needed its disks scanning for errors. But curiously one of our neighbour’s lights came on. As she was away N went to investigate this morning and it turned out to be a side lamp which has a touch sensitive switch – presumably this was triggered by the power blip.
Wed 3 Cometh the gardener … to lift more artichokes, before the squirrels find any more of them!
Thu 4 Somehow this day has been like walking through a never-ending swamp of treacle. Made worse by the fact that I can’t wear my hearing aids due to a sore ear where the left one rubs where it meets my glasses.
Fri 5 I’m still doing Postcrossing, in fact today is one year since I joined (although I didn’t send my first card until mid-February), and today I sent off my 100th postcard to a guy in Finland. If I’m very lucky I might receive my 100th card by mid-February – I’m curious to see what it is and where it’s from.
Sat 6 The neighbours directly opposite us seem to have moved out, quite unobtrusively, over Christmas/New Year – having been here for 5 or 6 years. I saw a large van (nowhere near pantechnicon size) there one day but no other sign. But the house now looks empty and none of us saw the going of them.
Sun 7 When you’re awake for the best part of 2 hours in the middle of the night it’s no wonder you feel sub-par the following day. Not up for having to concentrate on a lot, so very glad I didn’t need to.
Mon 8 Snee. Not really any amount worth talking about. It started about lunchtime as some desultory drizzle of small flakes, and quite wet. There was a brief snow shower in early afternoon, when it started to lie, but it didn’t last at all. I’m not sure whether to be pleased or not.
Tue 9 So NASA’s latest shot at the moon isn’t going to get there. Peregrine 1, which was hoping to be the first commercial space probe to make a soft landing on the moon, lost propellant shortly after launch. Good! Now stop wasting money on unnecessary space missions; we’ve been to the moon, why do we need to do it again? There are much better uses for trillions of dollars.
Wed 10 This gets better. Now NASA have postponed the Artemis II and Artemis III lunar missions each by a year. Good. Keep going. Postpone them indefinitely (ie. cancel them). We (collectively as humanity) don’t need to do this and can’t afford it – financially or environmentally. As a scientist I’m all for discovery, but not at any cost, especially if the cost can be better used to rescue our planet.
Thu 11 At lunchtime today I completed my 73100rd circuit of our local star. How? It really doesn’t really feel like more than about 30. But how many more can I do? If my ancestry is anything to go by at least another 10 and maybe even more, but I’m not holding my breath.
Fri 12 Short of sleep again, so feeling fairly wrecked. I wish I understood what drives such variable sleep.
Sat 13 At lunchtime the garden seemed awash with squirrels, although I counted only four. But they were running around hither and yon like things demented.
Sun 14 The usual brain cock-up with knowing what day it is. By Friday afternoon I was, as always, convinced it was Saturday. Yesterday, being Saturday, I was absolutely convinced it was Friday. Today is Sunday and I’ve completely lost the plot. They tell me that tomorrow is Monday, and the gardener cometh.
Mon 15 As predicted, comes the gardener, and does lots of odd jobs – including changing the bathroom light switch, which has been on my agenda for months. But will the cord on the light pull thread through our existing toggle? Not a chance, it’s much too thick, so we have to rescue a thinner cord – but what a faff around.
Tue 16 A day of struggling to keep all the ducks in a row.
Wed 17 Good patient group meeting at lunchtime, with a very helpful presentation about asthma from one of the Practice Nurses. It’s surprisingly common, and like many conditions unless you or someone close has it you tend to not know a lot about it.
Thu 18 Someone please tell me what I did today and where the time went.
Fri 19 They do pick their times, don’t they! N had requested a phone call from her GP, and was told she’d be called between 13:00 and 18:00. Fair enough. Except that they then ring at 11:30 when we’re in the middle of dealing with the supermarket delivery. You just can’t get the staff these days!
Sat 20 There’s water running through our garden down by the pond. It doesn’t appear to be the pond leaking – at least I certainly hope it isn’t; will have to check again tomorrow. It seems to be running down from by the lilac bush which is a few inches higher than the path at pond level; and you can see it running in places. Also parts of next door’s garden are under half an inch of water, including their slightly (4-6 inches) raised area. Have they left their outside tap running again? Do we have the spring, which we think is there, in full flow? Or the backfilled field ditch, which we think runs across the garden at about this point, dammed and in flood? Or is it a problem further up the hill?
Sun 21 The mystery of the water is solved. It appears that next door’s wilful 6-year-old turned the outside tap on and left it. He had a habit of doing this a couple of years ago, but we all thought he’d been cured of it. Seemingly not, the little urchin. Anyway by this morning the flood had disappeared.
Mon 22 As regular readers will know, I’ve been taking part in Postcrossing for almost a year having mailed my first card on 12 February 2023. Having mailed my 100th card earlier this month (see above), today I received my 100th card. It was from a Postcrosser in Germany with a picture of the great Dr Albert Schweitzer (1875-1965) – Lutheran minister, theologian, organist, musicologist, writer, humanitarian, philosopher, and physician, who won the 1952 Nobel Peace Prize.Dr Albert SchweitzerAnd here’s the pinboard of postcards 51-100.Postcards on the noticeboard
Tue 23 For many reasons, not least the inability to dry laundry outside in this weather, we’re struggling to keep up with the laundry, especially the bigger stuff like bed linen and towels. So we’re experimenting with laundry services. We’re trying the apparent three front runners. A load off to each of two yesterday, and awaiting thee third to collect this evening. It’ll be interesting to see how they do when stuff starts coming back tomorrow.
[PS. No we don’t have a tumble dryer, and aren’t about to get one, if for no other reason that we have nowhere to put it.]
Wed 24 N to the hospital this afternoon, leaving me at home for the laundry deliveries. Finally the hospital did the ultrasound scans of her arms. It turns out she has particularly small veins, like her mother.
Thu 25 Wasting time this afternoon helping N to get her MedicAlert reconstituted online. You can’t join as there is an existing account with this email address: verify the account or login. Verify how? – no clues. We can’t login because we don’t know the password, so try to reset it. You can’t reset the password because the account doesn’t exist. Oh you can enter the membership number – N hunts existing tag – date of birth and postcode. No that account is archived; you have to phone us. And at 16:00 we’ve all gone home. Arrggghhhh!!!!!
Fri 26 N finally managed to talk to MedicAlert and get her membership reinstated. We then spent a happy(?) hour getting the online access sorted and all the details set up. But what a fight! Anyone would think they wanted to take our money.
Sat 27 This is just getting ridiculous! As usual, last evening I was sure it was Saturday. But I awoke in the middle of the night convinced that it was Monday. By teatime I was still convinced it was Monday, despite doing all the Saturday things. Guess I’ll be in the funny farm fairly soon.
Sun 28 Wandering round the garden at lunchtime, I noticed we had the first mauve crocus in flower, and the snowdrops starting to show.
Mon 29 Something must have happened today. Oh I know, I spent most of the day doing work for the patient group, putting together posters for the surgery’s waiting area noticeboards which we’re going to revamp.
Tue 30 I seem to be sleeping really well at the moment, although still struggling to wake up and get going in the morning. But what I have found is that I’m better if I make myself get up at a respectable hour, like 08:30-09:00 rather than allowing myself to sleep away the morning like a teenager.
Wed 31 I spoke too soon about sleeping well. As mentioned before, being awake for two hours in the middle of the night doesn’t do much for the following day. But we survived. And there’s nothing a good sleep tonight won’t fix – and that’s needed as the next two days are going to be busy.
memes, personal

Unblogged November

Wed 1 Whatever it was, I have no recollection of it.
Thu 2 So that storm. What happened to it? Yes there was quite a bit of wind, and some rain; and it wasn’t very warm. But nothing like what we were promised. But then London was in the eye of the storm for most of the daylight hours, which is possibly deceptive.
Fri 3 N’s new laptop was delivered today. That’s me occupied for the next week setting it up.
Sat 4 Blasted fireworks. Cats very unimpressed. Yes I know it’s Guy Fawkes weekend but … the people very close to me (I didn’t bother working out exactly who) spend half an hour early in the evening letting off a continual round of very loud cannons, with lots of quieter popping in the background. We could easily have been in a war zone, with mortar fire being returned by snipers. These things aren’t cheap; considering everyone is supposed to be struggling I don’t know where they get the money to send up in smoke.
Sun 5 Well much to my surprise, Guy Fawkes Night turned out to be relatively quiet with only a handful of short, somewhat muted salvos.
Mon 6 Phew! We’re solvent again this month despite almost hitting the credit limit on our main credit card – but then if you will go buying expensive PCs, not to mention all sorts of stuff in advance of Christmas! Although the money for the PCs has been siphoned from a savings account (one which still pays pathetic interest).
Tue 7 My new PC turned up today. But they can’t supply the screen I wanted (ETA is January!!) or my second choice. So a refund in order and I’ll buy the second choice from Amazon, saving all of 3p!
Wed 8 God what a miserable, dark, wet day. Anyone would think it was November.
Thu 9 It’s the story of my life at the moment … a large chunk of the day spent putting my new PC together and starting to install everything. Why, oh why, do Windows updates take so bloody long? And they don’t tell you what they’re doing but half the time just leave you with a blank screen for it seems like hours – so you think the whole thing is broken. At least put a little message there, and change it every 5 minutes. It drives me mad.
Fri 10 Another bloody miserable November day. It really is doing my head in this year.
Sat 11 And so we come to the awfulness of Remembrance weekend. As regulars here will know, I’m with Evelyn Waugh who described it in the 1930s as “a disgusting idea of artificial reverence and sentimentality”. I find it sickening.
Sun 12 There’s more noise here tonight, for Diwali, than there was last weekend for Guy Fawkes. The infidel are clearly burning off the money they tell us they don’t have.
Mon 13 After four weeks of buggering around with PCs and laptops I finally got my new PC installed yesterday, and pretty much working OK today, although still a few wrinkles to iron out. At last I can see some clear desk space, and I’m not working on top of two keyboards, two mice and a rats nest of cabling. I also picked the last of this year’s chillies – another 30! – and got most of the plants (some this year’s which weren’t great, and the very old ones which are now past it) off the study windowsill: the cats and I can now see daylight and birds!
Tue 14 A day spent trying to catch up on the stuff I’ve ignored for the last few weeks. And still having to fettle options and settings on half of the computer software.
Wed 15 Main meal number four from Sunday’s duck: roast on Sunday; cold with bubble & squeak on Monday; duck-herd’s pie on Tuesday; and today I cooked the carcass for stock and made duck, leek & lentil soup. Not my best ever soup, but a good feed nonetheless. Why do I always find soup so difficult; I’m missing a trick somewhere.
Thu 16 Most of the afternoon spent writing and scheduling regular blog posts for next year. Will I be around to see them all?
Fri 17 Well this is scary. I’ve now finished writing my scheduled in advance blog posts for next year – all except for 4, which I can do next week and need a bit more hand-crafting.
Sat 18 An interesting, and successful day. A good and useful doctors’ patient group meeting in the morning, thanks in part to a new member rattling some cages. And a good pasta, beef & tomato dish in the evening, washed down with a decent bottle of red, and followed by Christmas pudding (yes, really!) cream and Armagnac.
Sun 19 Up betimes. But why? I feel sure something must have happened today, but it surely passed me by. A singularly dull day. And so to bed.
Mon 20 Had a fit of the medicals today. First N to her consultant at Hillingdon Hospital – successful in that we’re getting things scheduled and can go back to consultations at Hammersmith Hospital (much nicer than Hillingdon). Then late this afternoon to Pinner to get the wax vacuumed out of my ears – a definite result, even if it did hurt the wallet.
Tue 21 Reaping the rewards of getting somewhat dehydrated on Saturday and yesterday. Woke up with sinus aching all round my face; and feeling completely lethargic.
Wed 22 Comes the gardener for the first time in weeks to do some tidying up. He lifted one of the (dozen or more) Jerusalem Artichoke plants; result half a bucket of the best looking, and enormous, tubers I’ve ever seen. As I’ve been saying, when I was a kid we grew artichokes in a small piece of poor soil and got a reasonable crop; these have been in good soil and well watered so no real wonder they’ve done well.Jerusalem artichokes complete with mudThat good selection is no more than a third of what we pulled today.
Thu 23 Head down all day doing website updates for the literary society; isn’t revising and updating web pages so incredibly tedious! Not helped later on by a fight with Windows which was insisting on using Bing when I tell it to use Google. Gah!
Fri 24 I just don’t know how to pull myself up and out of this depression. I’m really struggling to do anything at present. I know it is partly the winter. But over the years nothing I’ve tried seems to have done any good. Are the antidepressants helping? I don’t know but dare not try coming off them. Talking therapy (CBT, counselling, hypnotherapy) doesn’t work on me – partly because my brain is too active. SAD light therapy has been tried at least twice to no effect – might have to try it again, in desperation. Be active? How when the depression won’t let me? I’m still convinced there’s a magic switch somewhere in my head, but I’m buggered if I can find it. Oh, and now my brain thinks it’s Saturday.
Sat 25 Another super literary society talk, which I hosted. One day we will get the videos online!
Sun 26 I finally finished updating that one web page for the literary society site. It’s only taken me 5 years!
Mon 27 27 is an interesting number.
US President number 27 was William Howard Taft (1857-1930), president 1909-1913
27 is the cube of 3 (ie. 3x3x3) and it has a number of other mathematical curiosities
Element 27 is Cobalt whose compounds make blue pigments and give blue colours to glass etc.
There are 27 bones in the human hand
There are 27 books in the New Testament
There are 27 Nakṣatra or lunar mansions in Hindu astrology
Tue 28 Well that makes life easier. We rescheduled our dental checkups which were due tomorrow. Not only has our usual transport cried off (unwell) but I have a nasty wheezy little cough (not obviously Covid; negative test) which the dentists won’t want taken to them. So I ended up having a fairly quiet day for once.
Wed 29 A lovely bright sunny morning; a dull grey afternoon; dark before teatime; and not very warm. We’re promised much colder weather over the next few days, although the Weather People don’t really seem to know how far south it’ll get. But there’s a large Shepherd’s Pie in the oven (enough for today and tomorrow) so that’ll warm things up a bit. And I feel artichoke soup on the horizon for the weekend.
Thu 30 Another bright sunny morning but with a really stiff frost – the first of this winter, I think – which was really nice to see.