Tag Archives: unblogged

amusements, personal

Unblogged April

Being my usual round up of things what I done this month but didn’t previously write about.

Tuesday 1
It’s literary society year end. As I do the memberships, I bring in most of the money, so my finances have to be reconciled. And all the subscriptions are due, so there’s a mountain of that to process. It’s going to be manic for the rest of this week, at least.

Thursday 3
N has now been going to the hospital 3 times a week for almost a year, and today was the first time that her hospital transport got royally buggered up. Apparently someone cancelled it; they hadn’t; there was a name confusion. The upshot was that instead of being picked up about 12:00 for a 13:00 clinic, she finally left home just before 15:00. This well screwed everything for both of us.

Friday 4
This evening, a variant on our infinitely adaptable “all in one” salad; and even more variable as I did us separate bowls of salad because N is having to be more careful about diet. We had the end of last weekend’s roast chicken: not a lot; and it needed recooking. So I chucked the pieces in a frying pan and sizzled them until crisp. Put together with some steamed early English asparagus, croutons, cherry tomatoes and red chiccory. A tasty quick dinner.salad in a bowl

Sunday 6
I don’t believe it! We already have a few flowers on one of our small (eating) apple trees; it shouldn’t really be out for another 3-4 weeks! There’s also flowers on the ornamental crab, but that’s less surprising as it is always early. And the columnar crab isn’t very far behind.

Monday 7
Why are ears such a pain? Not content with having wax in my right ear, I woke this morning with both ears bunged solid and unable to hear anything. It cleared a bit after a hot shower, but it was even so just not worth wearing my hearing aids, partly due to the discomfort and partly as they weren’t going to do a lot of good. And of course, it’s miserable. It’s not as if I don’t put olive oil in my ears regularly to keep the wax soft, as medically advised.

Wednesday 9
It’s all good fun. So they tell me anyway. I finally got fed up with trying to clear my ears and, after much searching, found a sensible place to get them vacuumed. Private, of course; trying to get it done on the NHS with any speed is a lost cause. So I book for tomorrow, although inconvenient. And afterwards find I’ve booked the same young lady that did my ears about 18 months ago, somewhere totally different.
No sooner had I done that than my most nuisanceful crown came off! So I now also have a dentist appointment on Friday morning. If this doesn’t end up with an extraction I’ll be very lucky – we know here’s not a lot of tooth left to fix a crown to. Well that buggered up any plans for the rest of the week. It never rains but there’s a flood.

Thursday 10
Blimey! Talk about efficient. I went for my ear hoovering this morning. 11:30 appointment. I arrived at 11:10. Seen straight away and out in 10 minutes. Job done. Home by midday having waited 20 minutes to be picked up. It isn’t half nice to be able to hear properly again, and not have uncomfortable ears.
And it’s been a lovely sunny day; all the trees are bursting into leaf, so everywhere is splodges of bright green new leaves – and apple blossom.

Friday 11
Trip to the dentist to see about my crown. And exactly as expected, young miss dentist says there’s nothing more she can do with it as there’s not enough tooth left to fix a crown to. So the tooth has to come out. And that means a referral to a specialist as (apart from being an awkward back tooth) it has at least one curved root which could cause problems. That’ll be a lot more ouch of the wallet, unless we can swing it as surgical and claim it on the medical insurance. Fun here, innit!

Saturday 12
And now all our apple trees are in full bloom, all at the same time which is most unusual (but what should happen). However there’s not a pollinator in sight; they should be buzzing with bees, flies, wasps. So it looks like it’s going to be a bad year. It’s not really surprising there are few insects around after last year’s poor summer and a very wet winter.

Sunday 13
During last week the guy next door to me had the fence between us replaced, which is fine as the deeds say it’s his fence. They were said to be putting in concrete posts and gravel-boards and it would take 2½ days. Knowing his propensity for employing cheap cowboy workmen I wasn’t hopeful. They started on Thursday morning and broke the back of the job by mid-afternoon; it was finished before lunch on Friday. They appeared to know what they were doing, and I know my neighbour is as well aware of the law on boundaries as I am. So I decided to leave them alone, not interfere, and trust them. This seems to have paid off. They look to have done a good job and respected the boundary line. Very pleasing.

Tuesday 15
Over the last two days council contractors have been resurfacing our road. So, I’m sure much to the annoyance of our neighbours, the road has been closed during the day. It’s been intermittently noisy, of course. I’m not knowledgeable enough to know how good a job they’ve done, but they do seem to have done the right things. When we were told this was going to happen, I was sceptical. I thought: “the council will do it cheaply and they’ll just have the contractor put 2cm of black-top on what’s already there, despite that the kerbs, manhole covers etc. will need resetting”. But no, they spent all of yesterday taking the top (maybe 4-5cm) layer of old tarmac off; and today they’ve laid the new. I don’t know if they’ve finished it all – apart from they’ll have to come back to replace the speed bumps and road marking. I wonder how long that will take?

Wednesday 16
The surreal sight of a small flatbed truck proceeding up the road with 8 stands of temporary traffic lights (upright) on the back. What a shame they weren’t also working!

Thursday 17
Lo and behold! The guys have finished the road. Bumps and white lines all replaced. Unexpectedly speedy!

Friday 18
As yesterday was Saturday, is today Saturday, Sunday or Noneday?

Wednesday 23
St George’s Day and we should all be out celebrating – not that we English do that. Instead of which it’s wet most of the day, although there were a couple of bits of sunshine. But the good news is that we have our first roses out: on Lady Hillingdon, of course.

Thursday 24
N appears by me this morning and says: “By the way I just found a large dead rat on the hall floor; I put it out by the gate so the fox can retrieve it”. Judging by the size she indicated it was getting on for 20cm in the body; certainly a decent size. Curiously none of the cats confessed to owning said rodent.

Friday 25
Last weekend I got the renewal for the house insurance. Bloody Hell! How can they justify raising the annual premium from £535 to £912? So during the week I’ve had a quick look around and found quotes in the £700 region – but it is impossible to compare like for like as every policy is (not so) subtly different. So I called my current insurers. Yes, says the young lady, the underwriters have increased all the premiums and everyone is complaining! What can we do to reduce the premium? Not a lot except increase the excess we pay if we claim (which to be honest is much lower than I thought it was). We do that and at least get the premium down to £776 – which is better, even if not good. The alternative is to start a new policy, probably with less good terms, and frankly I can’t be bothered to go through all the hassle. So this afternoon I paid up. At least it will get us a good dollop of points on the credit card which will get turned into gift vouchers.

Saturday 26
The Pope died last Monday, and his funeral was this morning. So, as much as any are, he’s an important world leader, but is that really an excuse for showing hours of the funeral live on prime TV? It’s not as if we’re a Catholic country. Will the BBC do the same for the Dalai Lama? I bet they don’t.

Monday 28
Three cats to the V-E-T this morning for their annual check-up and jabs. Luckily our black cabbie friend was available as that’s the easiest way to carry all three cats in their individual carriers; they’ll all stand on the floor – it’s almost impossible in a saloon car. Anyway …

  • Boy is good and has put back the weight he lost last year; he’s now back to 5.5kg.
  • Rosie is also good but is now 6.2kg and getting decidedly rotund, although the vet is unconcerned. However she does needs her teeth cleaning.
  • Tilly has lost weight and is down to 3.9kg from her previous 4.55kg 2 years ago. So the vet took some blood; results this afternoon indicate elevated liver function, so the tests need repeating in a couple of weeks.

All that made a nice big dent in the credit card, with more to come! And we’re totally exhausted!

Tuesday 29
The buggers! Someone has knocked the nestbox out of the oak tree this afternoon; it’s on the garden path. Very annoying as I know the blue tits were using it. It was on the trunk and quite high up, so almost certainly out of the reach of cats. So one suspects either magpie or squirrel; although parakeet is just possible – or I suppose crow (unlikely with the magpies always around in the adjacent silver birch) or woodpecker (even less likely as I rarely see one). Nothing one can do, alas!

Wednesday 30
Yes, confirming that the magpies do have a nest in the silver birch. It is well hidden from our view by all the ivy and rose cambering through the tree. But at lunchtime I saw one go into the nest, and apparently settle down; then a couple of minutes later the second came along. What was interesting is that they have their own private track through the boscage; they both used exactly the same hops from branch to branch over the last metre or so to the nest.

amusements, personal

Unblogged March

Being, as usual, some various things from this month about what I never wrote before.

Saturday 1
St David’s Day. And I’ve heard nothing about it at all this year. So have some Spring sunshine …daffodils

Sunday 2
In the alley, at the back of next-door-but-one’s garden, is a reasonably sized, bare, tree. Every evening when it’s sunny the local pair of magpies sit in the top of the tree getting the last of evening sun and getting warm for the night. And doubtless keeping a beady eye open for stray snacks. Who blames them.

Tuesday 4
This evening, 18:30, it’s pitch dark. And the robin is singing away somewhere in the garden. Mind it’s been a lovely sunny day; it almost feels like Spring, especially as I’ve had the window open.

Sunday 9
Very annoying. We have a pile of stuff to get rid of: like dead PC printers and a couple of boxes of miscellaneous metal/electronic recycling; 6 items in all. Just after lunch today we put it all together on the front path, I photographed it and booked the council to collect it on Wednesday – cost £48. Within 2 hours 4 of the 6 items had been magicked away by some slithy toves, leaving just 2 boxes of crap. Just to run salt in the wound, not only will the council not let me cancel the request, nor provide a refund, but I can’t even email them to say “don’t bother”. So they’re now going to have a rather wasted trip; and we’ve wasted £48.

In better news, it was a lovely sunny day, so I decided to feed the pond fish. At first we’re not interested. Then one realises there’s something floating to investigate. Oh, Fred, did you say something about food? Another joins, and another … until most were having at least a snack.

Friday 14
It’s been a deadly week, absolutely swamped with work, mostly for the literary society. In the words of Marvin, the Paranoid Android: “Life. Don’t talk to me about life.”

Saturday 15
Last evening, in bed, something unusual happened. Boy Cat came along. Instead of settling down on top of N, as usual, he snuggled, sausage-like, between us, head at chest level. He then spent 5-10 minutes purring and kneading my armpit. I think in almost 8 years it’s the first time he’s done this; kneading is normally reserved for N.

Sunday 16
A few surprises walking round the garden today. I knew the small bush flowering cherry was in bloom. But I’d not spotted that we had a couple of blue hyacinths out, nor that the flowering currants (Ribes) were just coming into bloom. Lots of leaves breaking on the roses, but none of the trees are yet showing any signs of life.

Monday 17
The gardener came. So did the central heating guy – to look at a radiator which needed bleeding and I couldn’t shift the valve. It needed a completely new valve fitting; which in turn needed a load of stuff moving. Job done. Whereupon the gardener and the heating man had a long talk; they’re old friends and haven’t seen each other for several years. You try getting an Irishman and an Albanian to stop talking!

Friday 21
So Heathrow Airport is out of power and closed – because of a fire at an electricity substation. (I’ve been past that substation hundreds of times, and it is huge! It’s also an open target from the nearby road bridge.) Why do they not have twin-tailed power supplies? They should have at least two connections, on opposite sides of the airport. Both should be supplying power 24/7; and each should be able to automatically pick up the slack if the other fails. That’s normal resilient business operation for critical systems. Not having it is either negligence or a political decision not to spend the money. Whichever it is, someone needs their dangly bits feeling. Having contingency backup that takes time to kick in is not acceptable. I wonder if they’ll be made to pay all the airports who took diverted flights – and, of course, passenger compensation?

Saturday 22
It’s just relentless at present; a continual stream of work on every front; so there’s much that isn’t getting done. Still we had a really good social call for the literary society at lunchtime; only 9 of us but that included one from each of US, Japan, Ireland and France; with an hour or so of interesting discussion. We started with one person in Putney and I (so 8 miles apart as the crow flies) sharing that it wasn’t raining; we ended with the news that it had just started raining in Putney, but not here. Minutes later we started a good thunderstorm!

Sunday 23
The forsythia is in flower. This seems early; I always associate it with May not March.

Wednesday 26
What a wonderful warm sunny Spring day – it really does make one feel much better! Several of the local trees are beginning to burst their buds: ash, silver birch, hawthorn, horse chestnut. The cherry bush in the front garden is an absolute mass of flower; I don’t think I’ve ever seen it with so much blossom. Oh and something obviously had a woodpigeon last night: three significant piles of feathers on the lawn, so it was well plucked. Two of the three below; the third was quite widely scattered.plucked woodpigeon feathers on grassplucked woodpigeon feathers on grass

Friday 28
For the first time since before Covid I had a check-up at the Brompton Hospital for my sleep apnoea. I didn’t need it, but they’re trying to make sure they’ve seen everyone who got postponed. Overall result: Excellent. Modern machines record all the data, so they can download it (I can also get most of it) and the data is good; mostly over 90%. The young lady (Registrar I guess) was fairly delighted. So they’ve put me on the Patient Initiated Follow-up pathway: this means they’ll not call me in for another 5 years, but in the meantime if I feel I need a check-up (or technical support) then I have only to ask. This is a new NHS process which saves a lot of pointless appointments, patient inconvenience, and consultant time; so they can clear the backlogs and get to see those in urgent need much sooner. It has to be win-win all round.

Saturday 29
It’s being one of those days! Even before I’d got down to doing anything this morning, three things had SNAFUed on me. Then the Waitrose delivery was over an hour early! Why do these things happen?
And did anyone notice that we had a partial solar eclipse this morning? I knew it was going to happen, but it was so low-key that it had gone before I noticed! I always seem to miss these things.

Sunday 30
What a glorious, warm Spring day. The pond fish are hungry. The catkins on the silver birch are just starting to break. And the garden is awash with gorgeous sun-yellow celandines – I knew we had some, but didn’t realise quite how much they’d spread themselves around; there are little clumps everywhere, as well as a couple of large patches.yellow celandine flower amongst green leavespatch of celandines: small yellow flower and green leaves

Monday 31
So here we are at the end of March, and in terms of months a quarter of the way through the year already. Although we need another day or two to get to 25% in terms of the number of days. Still, at least, it’s beginning to look and feel like Spring.

amusements, personal

Unblogged February

Diary-type thoughts on what occurred around here which weren’t otherwise written about

Saturday 1
Today I was reminded that the traditional Korean equivalent of “once upon a time” is “back when tigers used to smoke”. I’ve always puzzled as to why?

Sunday 2
Spring is on the way. There’s a nice, but small, drift of pale lilac crocuses in the lawn.[Later in the month the lawn was just a mass of crocuses.]

Monday 3
Excellent Zoom meeting this evening for a reading group for Anthony Powell’s 12 novel series A Dance to the Music of Time (one book a month). This was the first meeting so we were discussing A Question of Upbringing. It’s being run by an American literarist, so it’s not an AP Society event, although we’re supporting it and about a third of those present were Society members. Of the rest quite a few were newcomers to Powell. It’s good because it is making many of us old lags reread the books, again!book cover

Wednesday 5
I was woken this morning by the Rosie cat lying between us purring like a Harley-Davidson. I stretched out an arm to stroke her, whereupon she decided I needed a wash. She started at my left armpit and over 10-15 minutes worked her way down to the inside of my left elbow. She spent so long on my elbow that her wonderful raspy tongue made it quite sore and has left a rather red abrasion!sore arm

Thursday 6
We gave in and ordered pizza!

Saturday 8
Making coffee in the kitchen this afternoon when through the catdoor comes Rosie. She leaves several trails of superb wet and muddy pawprints, very neatly formed, across the floor. Back at my desk, it is covered in muddy pawmarks; not Rosie as she had followed me, so I suspect Tilly. And that’ll be the second time today I’ve had to wipe down my desk.

Sunday 9
Checking the pond today. Lots of big chubby goldfish. But the ground was like a marsh.

Monday 10
Trip to the dentist for the four predicted fillings. Remarkably she managed to do all four in the one (long) appointment, so I don’t have to go again in a couple of weeks time – result! The credit card is still smarting a bit though – although when you think about what the cost has to pay for it’s not that unreasonable.

Tuesday 11
What an incredibly useful session this morning meeting patients at the doctors, where we do twice monthly “Meet the Patients” sessions. First up a very sensible conversation with couple of black guys, one who’d been in the police for 20 years. Then an old boy of 90 who had walked up the hill to find he was there the wrong day; we listened to him grumble about the NHS for half an hour – after which my colleague very nicely gave him a lift home. And finally a very nice lady taxi driver to run me home who also turned out to be a relatively new patient at our surgery, so we compared notes about the doctors. Overall it felt like a good outreach session.

Thursday 13
Well I was warned. At the hospital today for some blood tests in the new, purpose built, centre. And it’s dreadful. It’s an absolute rabbit warren of corridors, corners and doors. With almost no signage, and half of what there is consists of sheets of paper blu-tacked to the wall. And when you get to the right place the décor is a sunny-ish yellow and sick green. Worse the green area (an alcove) is decorated in four slightly different shades of sick green: floor, wall below the dado, wall above the dado and the seating; none is a nice colour. This is juxtaposed with the yellow area and a plum red area. GOK how anyone can work in it.

Friday 14
Valentines Day, and I got told off because I’d bought her a present when she hadn’t bought me one. It’s a tough life!

Saturday 15
Late this evening I was reading an article in New Scientist about when babies brains develop an integrated consciousness of the world. [https://rb.gy/puso5n] And I suddenly had a memory which I’d totally forgotten. I remembered having a “rattle” consisting of several hard plastic shapes on a string; pieces of different sizes and colours. Now this must have been quite early, as I have no later memory of this toy. I’d completely forgotten it. The memory was just a single still photographic image and fairly indistinct. I don’t think my brain was making up the memory, but durable coloured plastic in the early 1950s seems somewhat unlikely (though not impossible). Unfortunately I no longer have my mother to ask.

Sunday 16
Following on from yesterday’s entry … isn’t the mind strange. So I was minding nothing while washing a houseplant saucer this afternoon and my mind suddenly reminded me about a girl I knew over 45 years ago. She was a colleague; never even close to being a girlfriend – although I think we all fancied her. She sat next to me on our final qualifying sales course, wearing a pale blue, floaty, low cut, summer frock and no bra. But why does she suddenly pop into my mind now, and for no reason, when I’ve not thought about her in ages and ages? I always wonder where these people are now.

Tuesday 18
My dendrobium is in full flower. It’s clearly thriving on benign neglect, although it’s been on the study windowsill getting whatever sun there is, occasional water, and over a radiator. I caught a grumpy-looking Tilly cat was sitting in front of it.tilly cat with dendrobium

Saturday 22
Absolutely snowed with work. Loads for both literary society (mostly website related) and the doctor’s patient group. Not a chance to do anything else this week or next, and probably the one after.

Sunday 23
Who would have guessed that foxes like pickled herrings and also cream cheese? Earlier in the week they demolished the remains of the duck (mostly just bone and fat) we had last weekend too – except for the orange we’d cooked with it!
In other news we seem to have this one, lone, dark grey feral pigeon; and only very occasionally a second – very odd because there are many others around.

Monday 24
Came the gardener (aka. odd job man) today. Despite the marsh which is the garden he went an filled the bird feeders just before lunch. By teatime one of the peanut feeders was already half empty! Oh and we agreed on a count of 22 goldfish.

Tuesday 25
And it rained again all night and most of the morning. Our garden is just a swamp, with a large area of casual water – larger, I think, than I’ve ever seen it before. The photo gives you an idea: the area outlined in yellow largely under water, despite us having raised the ground a couple of inches.garden under waterIt’s not really surprising as we think there was probably an old field ditch running across the gardens about where the blue line is. There seems to be a little spring next door to the left. There is definitely water there as we’ve dowsed it, and it runs left to right (downhill) in the photo. The houses were built in 1930 on what was fields, and I bet the builders just bulldozed their rubble in to fill the field ditch and dumped a bit of topsoil on it. If the area where the ditch probably is wasn’t a mass of tree roots, I’d play archaeologist and dig a test pit to find out.

Thursday 27
I was hoping to receive my 300th Postcrossing card before the end of the month, and the three which arrived today hit the target. So here is the board of cards 251 to 300.cork board with 50 postcards

Friday 28
So here endeth February, and somehow we’re already 16% of the way through the year. On 14 March there’ll be 20% of the year gone. How?

amusements, personal

Unblogged January

1 Comment

Diary-type thoughts on what occurred around here which weren’t otherwise written about.

Wednesday 1
I find it mysterious that I awoke this morning to find an empty champagne bottle in the bedroom wastepaper bin. Such decadence! Happy New Year!

Thursday 2
So the weather people have issued a weather warning for snow and ice (maybe someone needs to explain to them that snow is ice!) over the weekend – and for some much colder days and nights. What are the odds of us getting snow here in suburban west London? In my estimation approximately zero ± a gnat’s testicle. We’ll see; I could be wrong.

Friday 3
It was a nice sunny day, but they weren’t wrong about the cold. Bright sunshine and good light even at 15:30; pitch dark by 16:30.

Sunday 5
The squirrels are cheeky little monkeys; you can quite see why they’re so successful. Over the months they’ve created large holes in the mesh at the bottom of the peanut feeder outside the dining room window; I’m surprised the bottom hasn’t fallen out! Lunchtime today the feeder was almost empty and there was our chubby squirrel raiding it. There’s so little wire that said squirrel was getting a paw in the feeder to retrieve whole nuts – a bit like a cat feeling under the bed for their lost mouse.
Oh and we got a bit of snow last evening: rain turned to ice and then came snow; just enough to make things white. It had gone by morning to be replaced by rain and fog; the former continued persistently all day so by dark-fall we had half the garden under casual water.

Monday 6
I gave in and had my annual pre-birthday haircut and shower.

Friday 10
This week from the supermarket we have tangerines from Tangier … possibly. They’re certainly from Morocco. They’re rays of sunshine at the end of a cold, dull week. Today has only just crept above freezing having been around -6°C last night – and early this evening it is already around -4°C so we’re going to get another cold night. Indeed apart from roughly midday Sunday to sunrise Monday when it was relatively warm and wet, no day in the last week has got up to 5°C. And this is in the relative warmth of suburban west London!

Saturday 11
So that was a birthday, was it? N was at the hospital. I spent the day in the study doing paperwork & admin for various projects, and getting cold because I was resisting putting the heating back on. I work on the basis that it’s known that if you’re too hot you burn extra calories to keep cool, so it stands to reason that if you’re cold you’ll burn extra calories to keep warm – and after all I have plenty of calories to burn!

Sunday 12
Birthday part 2. Again, apart from 15 minutes doing bits outside, I spent the day mostly working on various projects, although I did have a good lay-in. Finished off with cold smoked chicken, new potatoes & fennel slaw, followed by strawberries & cream; all washed down with a bottle of champagne and a liqueur. End result = fairly incapable! Hic!

Wednesday 15
So I look out of the study window this morning and the trees in the garden are full of green parakeets. Count 16. 2 minutes later, count 18. Another 2 minutes, count 21. The final count got to 23! I think that’s a record for us. It’s no wonder N is having to refill the feeders every other day – what with the parakeets, tits, and at least 3 squirrels.

Thursday 16
Somewhere in the house the cats have lost a dead mouse. I can smell it, but not trace it. Gah!

Friday 17
They’re Moroccan and they’re whoppers! Most girls would be proud of them. [Spoiler: see a week ago.]

Saturday 18
Does anyone else have weird, byzantine, waking dreams? This morning my dream was a mixture of travel by taxi or given a lift by a colleague from two adjacent work locations, through a mixture of (London) suburbs, some rebuilt some not; to a big hospital where I was having regular bits of minor (but internal, abdominal) surgery. I think the consultant was one I’ve seen before who has done a couple of colonoscopies for me. And … I was also having dental treatment with my actual dentist in some rather dilapidated Edwardian rooms which were part of the same hospital. I was having to scuttle from one to the other, and trying to arrange appointments. The culmination was this complex dental work on a Saturday (my real dentist is Jewish so doesn’t work on a Saturday!), which involved not just my dentist, but also another dental consultant and an anaesthetist, all together. GOK what it was all about – other than anxiety!

Sunday 19
David the Pond Man came to do a much delayed late autumn overhaul. Blimey he drained the whole pond (the fish were put in a holding tank) and said he removed 2 inches of muck from the bottom. The saved water from two holding tanks went back in; and by dark-fall the hose had refilled the pond about ⅓ – quite enough for the fish and putting the pumps back on (we’ll refill the rest tomorrow, but God help the water bill!). But lo-and-behold, we still have 21 goldfish, which means we’ve not lost any in 2½ years; and they’re now big chunky goldfish which started out as tiny fingerlings.

Monday 20
Make that 22 goldfish.

Wednesday 22
It’s been one of those days where everything either conspires to be difficult, or actually goes tits up. In fact it was one of those days before I even got out of bed this morning. But I take consolation in that I’m not the only one suffering this today.

Friday 24
I still haven’t finished refilling the pond. It’s ⅔ full and filter running so should be OK. But I’ve declined to brave the rain, the lake on the path, and the mud to venture forth. This weather is driving us all up the wall. Can we actually manage to go a week without a major storm? So we consoled ourselves this evening with sausage and chips.

Saturday 25
There must be something wrong! I actually spent most of the afternoon reading.

Sunday 26
Cometh the gardener. He thinks he’s going to finish refilling the pond for me. Why bother? It is pissing with rain. And within an hour the garden is awash with casual water, again. Oh and the gardener thinks we have 23 goldfish – so one of us can’t count!

Monday 27
This afternoon, the usual twice yearly dental check-up etc. And as I was warned last time I need a raft of work done: at least 4 fillings, mostly because the existing fillings are beginning to fail. Well one of those fillings is old amalgam, so it must be 25+ years old. That’s going to hurt the wallet! I might have to have a replacement crown too, but at least for the moment that can has been kicked down the road, so even more cost postponed. It’s all surprisingly draining, even though I don’t actually mind going to the dentist.

Tuesday 28
Well if I pissed him off, it’s just too bad. Tell me on Monday evening that I have a meeting on Tuesday afternoon, and that I’m supposed to know about it, when this is the first I’ve heard? Don’t be surprised if I say “no”, followed by “and not this week”. A lack of planning (or attention to detail) on your part does not constitute a crisis on mine.

Wednesday 29
I had to chuckle this afternoon when we at the doctors doing outreach work. One of the young lady clinicians (not one of the doctors or nurses) was wearing black patent, very pointed, slightly upturned shoes, which reminded me of medieval poulaines – although not as exaggerated; more akin to 1960s winkle-pickers. I said to her that I liked her medieval shoes; she said she called them her Pied Piper shoes!

poulaines1960s winkle-pickers
Medieval poulaines (top) and 1960s winkle-pickers (bottom)

Friday 31
I’ve just tried some seaweed crisps. My advice: don’t!

amusements, personal

Unblogged December

Being some of the things that happened, but which I didn’t otherwise write about. Not every day, as foretold last month.

Sunday 1
Just what is it that screws up the universe? Both N and I have had one of those days, where everything has gone wrong, not worked, fallen on the floor, got tangled, or otherwise buggered up. Apart from wasting time and stuff, it is not good for the blood pressure. Why is it like this?

Monday 2
More garden bird fun today. While we were eating lunch a jay appeared on the peanut feeder a few feet outside the dining room window; I wasn’t too surprised as I had seen it fly across the garden a few minutes earlier. It had a good feed, went away, came back … Of course the green parakeets were around as well, and took exception to the jay. On one occasion a parakeet saw the jay off the feeder; the jay having flown into the top of the ballerina crab apple, was then bombed, quite deliberately, by another parakeet and displaced again. The parakeets were defending their feeder against this jay, and despite the jay being a bit bigger they were winning. This went on for a good 15-20 minutes, interspersed with visits from the squirrel and at least one great tit. Meanwhile another two squirrels were chasing each other, nose to tail, to and again across the middle of the garden. All highly amusing to watch.

Friday 6
I got some tangerines in this week’s supermarket order. Real tangerines. None of this satsuma rubbish. They’re absolutely wonderful: sweet, flavourful and not a mouthful of membrane. They’re a good size too. Just as they should be. It is a real change to find some citrus which is worth eating these days.
And while we were eating lunch there were squirrels running about the garden as if they’re on speed or something. One is quite podgy, so I guess could be pregnant although it’s not showing any signs of nipples and it’s a bit too early as they generally don’t start giving birth until late-February after a gestation of 45-ish days. So maybe we just have a Billy Bunter squirrel.

Saturday 7
With hey, ho, the wind and the rain … For the rain it raineth every day.

Monday 9
Blimey creatures! Yesterday afternoon the seed and peanut bird feeders were refilled, to the brim. A combination of mostly squirrels and parakeets have emptied the peanut feeder outside the dining room window, within 24 hours. While we ate lunch there was our podgy squirrel almost continually eating the peanuts: it would extract a nut and sit there nibbling away, rinse and repeat. In the time it took us to eat lunch this squirrel got through about an inch of peanuts!

Tuesday 10
16 green parakeets sitting in a tree.

Friday 13
Today I received my 250th Postcrossing card – which is rather sooner than I had initially expected. Here are cards 201-250 on our corkboard.

Saturday 14
And today my 250th Postcrossing card arrived at it’s destination in Switzerland. And another 3 cards in my letterbox, so we’re off to a flying start on series 251-300.

Monday 16
Tom came and brought us a couple of very nice fillet steaks – he knows somewhere he can get them at a sensible price (we don’t ask!). So we had steak (pan-fried, medium-rare) and chips for evening meal, and very good they were too.

Tuesday 17
What an awful dull, grey day, which seems to have fitted everyone’s mood. I started wrapping Christmas presents while N was at the hospital, and didn’t make a lot of progress. I’ll have to finish them on Thursday afternoon.

Thursday 19
Our friend Sue dropped by for a coffee this morning, having disgorged her husband at the hospital for a minor op. It was about the best time we could muster between us; fixing our Christmas pressie swap is always fraught. Sue originally suggested we go to them for food on 23rd or 24th, but N is being extra cautious about too much mixing at the moment, especially with the amount of flu there is around – and it’s looking as if this year’s flu jab is not very efficient.

Friday 20
Don’t you just love the NHS’s ability with communications! Late today N was told she has an appointment with the renal consultant on 7th January (not before time!), exactly at the time she is supposed to turn up for her dialysis session – although, for a wonder, it’s the same area of the same hospital! Moreover it is clearly expected that I go with her – which I want to anyway, as it’s time to harass the consultant. But of course this means I have to rearrange, for the third time, the meeting scheduled for that afternoon.

Sunday 22
Who knew that foxes like garlic bread? We had the crusts left over from the end of a loaf we’d made into garlic bread. So N put them out along with some chicken remains. Looking at the trail camera images, the chicken of course vanished first, but the foxes came back for the garlic bread. It’s all easy calories, so useful for them at this time of year.

Monday 23
Working in food retail is a pig of a job at this time of year; I know because I did it in the early days of UK supermarkets in late 1960s. So I wasn’t surprised when today’s grocery delivery turned up with only 3 crates out of 4 – luckily nothing missing that would have been a tragedy. The delivery guy said that the fourth crate would be delivered “this afternoon”. But at 19:30, no sign. I rang Customer Services who promised to give the Fulfilment Centre a prod. Sure enough, as soon as we sit down to eat the missing crate appears. Phew! I do have great sympathy for the guys at this time of year; both those working in retail and on the post, having done both.

Tuesday 24
As usual there’s just the two of us for Christmas, so we did what we traditionally do and bought a small bronze free-range turkey and a pork joint (leg, boned & rolled). I butchered the turkey: remove spine, legs and wings. That leaves us the crown for tomorrow; the rest is in the freezer for later. The pork came up 25% larger than we expected, so I removed a third which is now also in the freezer and the larger piece will be roast tonight. Result: we have a good amount of meat frozen for the future, and after roast for two days we’ll have lots for cold/pie/meat loaf/etc. over the next week. No doubt the cats will help too; in fact Rosie was wanting raw turkey (no chance).

Wednesday 25
A pretty normal Christmas Day here. Just the two of us; very quiet. Roast dinner in the evening with a bottle of champagne. A mountain of washing-up.

Monday 30
It’s that disconcerting time between Christmas and New Year when nothing is happening, little is working, you don’t know what day it is, or even what year it is. For some reason this year seems to have been more disjointed than usual. I wonder if that is because Christmas, and then New Year, are midweek so there’s no run of “normal” days from which to get one’s bearings. Of course N’s hospital trips don’t help, especially as the schedule has been juggled to avoid holiday days, so even that isn’t stable. Hopefully thinks will become more reliable next week when everything opens up and we’re no longer subject to Christmas TV.

Tuesday 31
So the old year ends, much as it started, grey and miserable, with little bits of rain. It’s scheduled to be a wet, warm and very windy start to the new year, but after tomorrow it gets much colder for at least a couple of weeks, although there is little sign of snow at least here in outer London. But we’ll keep warm, if only because we have a full wine rack! And, of course, we have a bottle of champagne in the fridge up for later: a glass just before midnight to say good riddance to the horrors of 2024, and a glass or two at/after midnight to welcome in 2025 with a wish that it is a much better year for everyone.

HAPPY NEW YEAR, EVERYONE

personal

Unblogged November

Being a record of some miscellaneous things and thoughts during the month.

From here on, I don’t guarantee to write something every day, mainly because life is dull and there isn’t always something interesting to record – and I doubt you all want to hear a continual tail of my woes and the weather. However the interesting, curious, strange, and just downright stupid will continue to be noted down. See also the entry for Sunday 17th.

So here are this month’s observations …

Friday 1
What an awful, dull, dismal day. Anyone would think it was November. Oh, wait a minute …

Saturday 2
A really good and positive GP patient group meeting this morning which left me with lots to do and much food for thought.

Sunday 3
We’re surrounded by the Paraffinians! Last night the locals were even returning fire. Why do people have fireworks which do little except sound like artillery fire? Actually why do people have fireworks at all? How can they afford it?

Monday 4
The gardener was here and he filled up the bird feeders. Within minutes there were 7 green parakeets having a party. Meanwhile I spotted a solitary redwing sitting in the ash tree a couple of gardens away.

Tuesday 5
What shall we do today? Oh, I know, let’s have our annual celebration of terrorism.

Wednesday 6
I’m not sure which is the worse example of shooting oneself in the foot: Brexit or another Trump US Presidency. Just never under estimate the power of stupid people in large numbers. Buckle up guys, it’s going to be a bumpy ride, and we may not see you on the other side. 😟😟😟

Thursday 7
I found an odd screw on the study floor. It must be the one I lost out of my ear the other day. It would explain a lot!

Friday 8
Overnight, someone took all my elastic bands out. Very depressed, achy, energy-less and sleepy all day, but somehow I managed to make myself cook dinner. Roll on April.

Saturday 9
I’m completely confused. I have no idea what day it is, and I never have these days. It’s not just that once retired all the days are alike, because it wasn’t always like this. Everything has been thrown asunder by N going to the hospital three times a week – and as one of the days is a Saturday it means that weekends almost don’t exist any more, which throws everything out. This, plus the grey winter weather, is one of the current causes of my depression. It’s enough to drive you insane!

Sunday 10
Oh dear God! It’s bloody Remembrance Day again. Can’t we do away with it? I blogged about my views back in 2015 and 2010 so I won’t bore you all at length again.

Monday 11
Spend some time this morning doing maintenance on the pond, which I’ve been putting off, partly due to the cold and wet, because cleaning the filter and pumps is a wet, dirty job. It was quite pleasant out; dry and not even too cold – although it didn’t help that, as always, I got wet and dirty. Soon sorted with a good scrub up and some clean togs.

Tuesday 12
I seemed to have spent at least half the day trying to sort out and order Christmas presents. I think I almost suceeded, at vast expense, as always.

Wednesday 13
I slept so late this morning that I was woken up by the Rosie Cat coming along to see if I was OK.

Thursday 14
Trying, in vain this morning, to finish the supermarket order but completely stymied because the supermarket website is all over the floor – some bits work; some don’t; and for some it depends on which route you take to what you want. Aaarrrrgggghhhhhh!

Friday 15
What is it that creates “one of those days” when everything conspires, gets in the way, or just destroys itself? There seems no rhyme nor reason, especially when it is happening to both of us at the same time.

Saturday 16
Talk about dereliction of duty. We have an intruder (entire male) cat; he’s a pest and has been around for a long time, although I’m not sure if he’s still the alpha male. Can our three not see it off? Not a chance. Boy and Rosie are each twice his weight and could make mincemeat of him; but none of them work together. No, we do nothing, even when we have him trapped in the kitchen between me one end and Boy Cat guarding the exit through the catdoor. Provost Sergeant would not be impressed.

Sunday 17
This is silly, and I fear getting slightly pointless. There’s so little happening, that there’s nothing much worth writing about. The depression doesn’t help, but it’s more than that. The world’s gone to the dogs in a wheelbarrow and trying to make any sense of anything is only going to make the depression worse. So I might take a break; perhaps write sporadically when there’s something worth writing about – or not if there isn’t. After all you don’t all want to hear of nothing but my misery!

Tuesday 19
Awoke this morning to really large chunks of snow falling from the sky. We weren’t expecting this, it wasn’t supposed to get south of Leicester! It didn’t last and had turned to rain within an hour; but it was quite pretty while it was falling. Snow this early in November is I think fairly unusual. But then everything’s fairly unusual at the moment.

Wednesday 20
Blimey it was cold last night; cold like we’re not used to these days. So this morning a very heavy frost; all the roofs were white. It’s the sort of frost that when I was at school we wouldn’t have been allowed to play rugby as the ground was dangerously hard.

Thursday 21
Yes, it’s Beaujolais Nouveau Day – the 3rd Thursday in November – when we get to taste the first fruits of this year’s vendage. I’ve not bought Beaujolais Nouveau for many years, after a few bad years, but as the Wine Society are stocking it this year (which they don’t normally) I figured it would be worth a try. So a box of 6 arrived this morning; and was sampled this evening. It’s clearly nouveau, but not a bad bit of “blackberry juice” for all that: slightly acid and slightly yeasty as one would expect, but with some flavour too. So with luck this year’s vintage may well be reasonable.

Saturday 23
A wild, wet and windy morning. And the first thing I see: a red kite drifting in the wind across from the west. I then went down the garden to check on the pond; there was an almighty scattering of parakeets and squirrels. And there are fallen leaves everywhere!

Monday 25
A relatively calm, although still breezy, and intermittently sunny day, after a very wild, wet and woolly weekend due to Storm Bert. We must have had a deluge last night as there was standing water down by the pond this morning – the cats weren’t impressed; Boy Cat was seen walking past on the railway sleeper edging of the border.

Wednesday 27
Today a number of amusements …

  • Our wild rose grows vigorously well across (but above head height) the garden next door to the north. Stuck in the middle of it there is a football!
  • Again we must have had a deluge last night because there is standing water the size of Lake Tanganyika along the path between the silver birch and the far end of the pond – that’s actually an area about 2×20 feet!
  • The rose-ringed parakeets are having a conference! Looking out mid-morning I counted 13 of them (there may have been more) around the bird feeders. They were being assisted by two woodpigeons, one feral pigeon, a magpie and a squirrel.
  • And as is traditional, the Boy Cat has the right idea: stay in bed.

    • white and tabby cat asleep

Friday 29
Up betimes this morning to see a glorious deep pink an gold sunrise which was impossible to photograph from here. This was shortly followed by seven green vultures sitting on a branch (well that’s what the parakeets looked like!).

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

amusements, memes, personal

Unblogged September

Things I didn’t write abut in the last month …

Sunday 1
Well that got the second half of the houseplants re-potted – apart from two large (tall) cacti which are probably best left alone. This was mostly the larger plants: aloe vera and sansevieria, all of which needed dividing so lots of bits discarded including an enormous jade plant which was harvested for cuttings. But who knows how much of the offshoots etc. will take, and heaven knows where we’re going to find space for them all.

Monday 2
After a lovely warm, even hot, sunny day yesterday, today was dull, dismal and not very warm. Autumn is definitely on the way; the silver birch has started to change colour. It all left one thoroughly demoralised.

Tuesday 3
Today my 200th Postcrossing card arrived here. As usual I’ve just managed to get the last 50 on the corkboard, although it’s always a bit of a challenge to fit in the last 2 or 3. Anyway here are numbers 151 through 200.noticeboard covered with postcardsI wonder how soon my 200th card sent will arrive at its destination? [Actually just 2 days later on 5 September.] I have a full complement in the mail (and a few which have expired) but outgoing post seems to be generally much slower than incoming. (Although today’s 200th card has taken 2 months from Canada!)

Wednesday 4
A fun afternoon, which N and I spent at the doctors, supposedly meeting the patients as part of our patient group activity. We didn’t do a lot of that! But we did reorganise the noticeboards (which we supposedly manage) and then discovered that the contents of “our cupboard” hadn’t been touched since Covid closed everything down – despite that we had been told the Practice had cleared it out. It was crammed with books (the spares from the defunct book exchange) and 3 boxes of out of date leaflets. We brought about half the non-book material away (basically as much as we could carry); it all has to be sorted through but most of it is destined for recycling. Such unexpected fun.

Thursday 5
It’s been so dark today, I had to have the lights on all day – which I don’t expect in September. Moreover it absolutely threw it down with rain for about 15 minutes this afternoon. Real white water. It was so heavy I couldn’t see the hill a mile away.

Friday 6
Why is it that some weeks, like this week, the grocery order is so much more than usual? It’s not as if there was any more meat on it and no alcohol, which are the two things which bump up the price, although fruit and veg isn’t cheap these days.
And talking of prices, how can Royal Mail get away with yet another hike in the cost of postage. From early October first class postage goes up 30p to £1.65 (although second remains the same at 85p) and the cost of a postcard or minimal letter abroad goes from £2.50 to £2.80 – it was £2.20 in the first months of the year.

Saturday 7
It’s a bit early really, but somehow I’m already working on all my regular blog posts for next year – well the ones I can do in advance, like quiz questions and historical events; whereas posts like monthly links, monthly collected quotes etc. have to be one at the time. So the afternoon was spent finding information – in between falling asleep!

Sunday 8
As mentioned elsewhere today was our 45th wedding anniversary, and we still don’t know how we’ve managed it! Anyway we celebrated quietly this evening with a very nice piece of flatiron steak, garlic roast potatoes & mangetout (cooked by me), followed by peaches in brandy with cream, and washed down with a very nice bottle of Champagne and a liqueur. It was, as N said, restaurant quality. My cooking was always pretty good, but is getting better over the last year or so – well one of the things we said when Covid struck was that, whatever else happens, we’re determined to continue to eat as well as we possibly can; and we do, but without spending ridiculous money; we still always look for the bargains.

Monday 9
Well the week’s hardly started and it’s already gone to the dogs in a handcart. I woke up even more depressed than usual. I wish I understood it! Comes the gardener? No, comes not the gardener as he’s unwell. And I needed to move my diabetes check-up from Wednesday to the first full week of October; at least I can probably get my flu jab at the same time, though I just hope it doesn’t knock me out for days as we’re due to meet up with friends from Japan two days later (bad planning on my part; I really wasn’t awake!). As a result, nothing got done apart from a few odds & sods admin jobs.

Tuesday 10
I caught the beginning of Escape to the Country this afternoon. Parents, 2 daughters & a boy wanting to move to North Norfolk. Never have I seen such a set of gawd-blimey Essex (I assumed) chavs in my life. They all looked alike: pale podgy puddings, who survive on a mix of Big Macs, KFC, chips, milkshakes and pop; and giving the appearance of wood between the ears. But of course, everyone’s greatest desire is to be on the TV; it was probably the highlight of their lives.

Wednesday 11
At last! Cometh the man to service the boiler. We finally managed to get our diaries together a couple of weeks back, and today was the day. An excellent job as always, which took about an hour, including standing and chatting! Good job done for another year. We now just have to put the contents of the airing cupboard back.

Thursday 12
As usual I’m trying to buy something sensible, but which doesn’t exist. It seems that whatever you try buying and want options A, B, C, D, but don’t want E and F, either you have to have E but not C, or F and not B & D, or all 6 options at double the price. And every manufacturer makes essentially exactly the same two products, in the same format, but with a subtly different shape and/or colour casing. You’d think there was only one supply of the innards – there probably is, in China. It does my head in. As my father was once told “There’s no demand, Sir, you’re the fourth person who’s asked for that this morning”.

Friday 13
So what have we got available to concoct dinner from? We need to clear some space in the freezer. Ah … noodles, frozen turkey strips, a few runner beans, yellow pepper … OK so I did a stir-fry with a slightly sweet and sour sauce (brandy, lemon, light soy, HP sauce, ketchup, tomato paste, ginger, chilli …). Not my finest achievement, but it worked OK. Especially when followed by summer fruit salad (dressed with a little cherry brandy) and cream.

Saturday 14
It’s Saturday, just like it was yesterday! So of course I spent the day working; I’m inundated at the moment, having just had three extra pieces of literary society work dumped on me at no notice and without a by your leave. Some people never seem to learn that a lack of planning on your part does not constitute a crisis on mine. But then N was at the hospital, so I needed something to keep me occupied.

Sunday 15
Here beginneth a new regime. Our house is something approaching a tip; after 40+ years it’s silted up to the point of there being no navigable water. So I’ve instituted a rule: we do some clearing up every day. 15 minutes on days when N is at the hospital; 1 hour on days she isn’t. We started with an hour this morning, and it’s surprising how much you can get done, together, in that time. But you have to be a bit ruthless, although not necessarily Marie Kendo ruthless – if only because I wouldn’t get away with it! Let’s see how long it lasts.

Monday 16
I quite accidentally ended up going down a curious rabbit hole in my family history. My 2x great-grandparents (Henry Williams & Catherine Nowers) had 7 children; my great-grandmother was the youngest. I came upon my 2x great-grandparents (both dead before 1900) on the 1915 naturalisation papers as the parents of a Susannah Margaret Mann, born 1848 in Dover, but given as German and living in Eastbourne. What?! This doesn’t make sense. I go looking. There is no such Susannah Margaret Mann. And Henry & Catherine don’t have a child Susannah Margaret. Ah, but they do have Margaret Susannah, born 1847 (their second child). Right. And yes, when you follow through Margaret Susannah Williams marries a guy called Jacob Ferdinand Mann, in Dover in 1871. He’s obviously a German, and a bootmaker, as later censuses confirm. Jacob Mann dies in 1893 having fathered five children (all born in Eastbourne). So despite having been born in Dover, of parents also born in Dover, and never obviously lived anywhere other than Dover, Hastings and Eastbourne, Susannah Margaret is legally a German because she married an ex-pat German, now deceased. And thus in 1915 she needs naturalisation papers to make her British again. I shouldn’t have been surprised; this whole family is full of oddities.

Tuesday 17
A quiet morning talking to patients at the doctors – something we’ve started doing again a couple of times a month. It was so quiet that once I got home and had lunch I fell asleep for a large chunk of the afternoon – quite without wanting to. Why does this always seem to happen as we get older?

Wednesday 18
A happy half-hour this afternoon getting dust everywhere going through our 5 solander boxes of maps. As trips around are now getting difficult, we’ve kept only about 25% of what we have; the rest will go to our nearest Oxfam bookshop along with at least a couple of boxes of books.

Thursday 19
Another day. The same coalface.

Friday 20
This afternoon, as another part of our grand sort out & tidy up we went through several solander boxes of guide books. Only about 70% were kept, re-boxed and rehomed in a different shelf. End result we have the unprecedented luxury of 2 feet of empty bookshelf space!

Saturday 21
A good social call for the literary society at lunchtime. As usual only about 8 of us, but some good discussion and good to see a couple of our American friends. It always surprises me that, when you scratch the surface, how many disparate things people know, and the connections they can make.

Sunday 22
One of our neighbours hates trees; the leaves make a mess and they’re untidy. He’s probably had apoplexy as the Gleditsia in the pavement outside is shedding it’s thousands of tiny golden yellow leaves everywhere, including on his hard-standing. And because it’s wet, they’re sticking and resistant to being cleared up. In Buddhist terms “Your fate is the sum total of your stupidity”; to reduce that sum, stop doing stupid.

Monday 23
Blimey did it rain last night; I looked out of the bedroom window at one point and the gutter on our side of the road was an absolute torrent, like a mountain stream in spate, about 3 feet wide and 3 inches deep flowing down the hill at some speed. Then today, at last, we see the gardener again, and he started the autumn tidy up in the garden (despite the wet) and did a couple of odd maintenance jobs.

Tuesday 24
Yet another day at the same old coalface.

Wednesday 25
This evening I hosted a literary society trustees/executive meeting over Zoom – because the Secretary who normally hosts it is away on holiday in the Far East. But I’m not a trustee, nor an executive officer, so I opened the call and once there was a quorum handed over to the Chairman and turned off all my sound so I wasn’t privy to the business – I left video on so if needed I could be visually hailed. I busied myself with various small tasks and when they all wandered off I closed the call. Crazy, but it seemed to work OK.

Thursday 26
Once more I spent most of the morning on literary society work. This time getting all the papers for next month’s AGM online. It took forever, mainly as I’m still working out how to do things in the new system. Despite losing some more hair I eventually got there without having to ask for help from the website provider. Like every system, things work differently so you’re always having to work out how to achieve what you know you can do. I then consoled myself by ordering a couple of cases of wine.

Friday 27
Big cook-a-thon this afternoon. Apple crumble, enough for several days breakfast. Two small chicken pies for cold tomorrow evening. Small cheese roll to use the pastry remains. Tray of roast veg, and some garlic roast potatoes, to go with this evening’s steak which I pan-fried. So tomorrow’s lunch and evening meal sorted, apart from the wine, as well as this evening and several days breakfasts. Result!

Saturday 28
Much to my surprise I ended up with nothing pressing to b done today, apart from a bit of household admin. So did I have a day off? Of course not! I spent most of the afternoon thinking about a household emergency plan and getting all our important information reorganised and gathered together. So at least now I have the concepts of a plan.

Sunday 29
It’s cold, grey and miserable. And not just the weather, ‘cos that’s very much how I feel too. I’m totally out of elastic or any other form of energy supply, today.

Monday 30
Spent a surprisingly tiring 90 minutes sorting out the household filing drawer, weeding aged paperwork out for archiving (or the bin), creating some new files and discarding a couple of others. It badly needed doing as it probably hasn’t been done for several years. It’s a good job done; just don’t leave it so long next time. Now I just have to sort the pile of papers etc. for the archive.

I’ll leave you this month with a photo I took a few years back of the Gleditsia outside our house. It’s not been quite so magnificent this year as the wind has removed all the leaves much quicker than normal.Gleditsia

amusements, memes

Unblogged August

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).brown gypsy mothAlso 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.yellow chilliesI 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.yellow/green parakeet feather

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.yellow/green parakeet featheryellow/green parakeet feather

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.white & tabby cat lounging in the sun

amusements, memes, personal

Unblogged July

Being miscellaneous things from the past month.

Monday 1
Why do these things always happen late at night? Last evening at 11 N says we have no hot water. It was fine in late morning as we both had showers. I check: it’s the same low pressure error that we had last December. But can I remember exactly how to fix it? I’m certainly not confident. Spend 45 minutes hunting for my notes from that previous time – to no avail; they’re not in any of the places they should be. Very annoying; have to leave it to the morning. So this morning I message our boiler guy, who reassures me I had remembered correctly. Problem then fixed in about 2 minutes. Now I’ve made some notes; they’re stored in at least 4 places, and I’ve given N a copy. Also fixed boiler man to come next week to do a service.

Tuesday 2
I do just love days like today. I spent the whole afternoon checking that I have all the paperwork and information needed to complete our tax returns. Despite my careful housekeeping during the year there were inevitably gaps in what I needed. This entailed logging on to internet banking for everywhere we have money – and of course ending up having to double check every bank account. This isn’t just soul-destroying work, it’s so laborious when every institution needs 3-4-5 different codes before they’ll actually log you in. I’m knackered! Still, with luck I should be able to complete the actual tax returns quite quickly now. When I can make myself do it!

Wednesday 3
Another day at the coalface. So anything could have happened, and probably did. Of course, as it’s Wimbledon, it’s been wet on and off most of the day – and not very warm.

Thursday 4
So today is General Election day. Everyone, including the pollsters, seems to be predicting a landslide for Labour. I think it’s going to be a lot closer than that and, as I’ve said before, we could still have a minority Tory government, or even a small Tory majority. Sure there will be a lot of tactical voting, but if all the Reform and Tory voters the polls say are there decide to unite it’s going to be a close call. I think Joe Public will chicken out when he gets to vote and decide to go with the Devil he knows, who he thinks is going to put money in his pocket and not raise taxes. I hope, for everyone’s sake, that I’m wrong and I have a pleasant surprise. We’ll see, although all may not be clear until Saturday.
(For the record I’ve not seen the news today and this is written at about 19:40. I also live in what should be a safe Labour seat.)

Friday 5
OK, so I was wrong. Labour have a huge majority. The LibDems and the Greens have done well, but so, unfortunately, have Reform. It’s interesting that 4 of Reform’s 5 seats are in the less thinking areas around the east coast, especially Essex. It’s just a shame that the LibDems couldn’t relegate the Tories to be third party in Westminster. As for the Tory big-hitters who are left in Parliament, I don’t fancy any of them as Leader; I wouldn’t trust any of them, and many even less than that; what a choice of the bad, the ugly and the dangerous! It’s going to be interesting to see what happens now. The Labour government now have 5 years to turn things round; I wonder how much of it I’ll live to see?

Saturday 6
I know I say this every week, but what day is it? I’m totally thrown these days. It’s partly down to being retired, although I should be used to that by now. But N’s hospital days aren’t helping; it seems unnatural to be going to the hospital on a Saturday, as well as Tuesday and Thursday. It throws the weekend out of sync, which is in part down to the fact that we end up having a light, quick Saturday evening meal. We always used to cook something more special on Friday, Saturday, Sunday but the Saturday has now gone by the board. And I’ve not adjusted.

Sunday 7
Having talked yesterday about weekend food being disrupted, we did today revert to our usual good Sunday evening meal – we gave up cooking Sunday lunch many, many years ago in favour of eating in the evening (as we also do at Christmas). Anyway this week I’d bought a small piece of beef topside with no intention of roasting something so pathetic. This morning I cut it into slices and marinaded it in some lemon, brandy, olive oil and Worcs sauce with garlic and ginger. This evening I pan fried it for us to enjoy between bread with individual bowls of salad. This was followed by mixed fruit crumble (we had lots of fruit to use) and cream. All washed down with a non-celebratory bottle of Champagne. Verily it was a substantial repast.

Monday 8
Comes the gardener. I didn’t think he was going to get a lot done as it was forecast wet from lunchtime, but it stayed dry all day, and a lot was achieved keeping everything in order.
However comes not the man to service the boiler. Not entirely unusual, but a bloody nuisance. A courtesy call would have been helpful. What is it with plumbers etc.?

Tuesday 9
Yet another dismal day, in so many ways: definitely feeling like I need a new body and a new head, and – surprise, surprise – it’s been raining on and off all day. In fact it was raining so hard at one point this afternoon that I couldn’t see the hill which is no more than a mile away as the crow flies. It doesn’t help that I’ve not slept very well the last couple of nights: not lying awake but just not restful either. So I was quite grateful to have my morning meeting postponed until next week.

Wednesday 10
Finally N managed to get the Boy Cat to the vet for his dental, which had been outstanding since April. Poor little bugger had 8 extractions (on top of the 2 he’d had previously) and a load of stiches, and is going to be sore for a few days. He’s becoming a toothless senior cat at the not advanced age of 7. One doubts, however, that the lack of teeth will stop him guzzling dried food – does he not crunch it because his teeth hurt, or are his teeth bad because he doesn’t crunch dried food? But blimey, the dent in the credit card. Let’s hope the insurance pays up!

Thursday 11
Boy Cat seems to be recovering OK, although he’s still a bit dopey. But then he managed to tuck away a bowl of tinned tuna this morning and a bowl of fresh cooked cod this evening – it’s called a light diet! But all three cats are getting fed up with being kept in; we think they’ll have to be allowed their freedom again tomorrow.

Friday 12
It feels like it’s been a successful week, for once. Several meaty chunks of literary society work completed during the week, somewhat against the odds as I wasn’t looking forward to doing them. Boy Cat’s dental done, thanks to N, and a claim form sent off to the vets for them to complete their bit. And today I filed both our tax returns in under 1½ hours total. That was made possible by (a) spending a couple of hours last week ensuring I had all the information to hand, and (b) a good, easy to use, software package to pull it together and then file it online. Overall a result, so a small glass of sherry might be had while I cook Friday evening dinner.

Saturday 13
Why does everyone care so much about this godforsaken football match tomorrow? OK so England are in the Euro final. So what? Will it matter in 5 years (weeks?) time? Win or lose the country is going to be unbearable for the next week, at least; and I’ve no doubt there’ll be a few bars trashed tomorrow night, more if we lose. Actually I hope we do lose because the great unwashed supporters need to understand that we’re not God-given champions but a set of overpaid prima donnas. They all think it matters. It doesn’t. It’s a game, which like all the others has been ruined by money. (Which is why I now have no patience with cricket, which I used to love.)

Sunday 14
The melon experiment [see Culinary Adventures #111] concludes. I had another couple of slices following lunch, and again I have a sore throat, although not as bad as previously. I also gave N a piece (less than ¼ slice) and she later reported a slightly sore throat and slight queasiness. So it does look as if we are both, at least to some extent, intolerant of melon, although it clearly isn’t a full on allergy.

Monday 15
So we lost the football last night. What a surprise and what a shame – NOT. I’ve not been following the football, but it sounds as if England have been dull and lucky to scrape through each round. On the other hand, it seems that Southgate has been a decent manager: quiet, thoughtful and has got the most out of a set of less than effective players. Can England get further? From what little I’ve seen not without a completely new set of more dynamic players; but no need to change the manager.

Tuesday 16
Teatime this afternoon and I could hear some gentle but persistent rain. Looking up, the sun was shining. A rainbow? Yes. An absolute stunner, although I could see less than half as it disappeared behand our oak tree. Clear, wide and bright against a very dark cloud. So clear you could easily see off into the far red on the outside and into the far violet on the inside*, which is unusually clear. I managed to get a few quick snapshots with my little point-and-shoot camera on a sunset setting.**rainbow* I won’t say infra-red and ultra-violet as we can’t see them, but that’s what it felt like.
** It pays to always have a camera readily at arm’s reach; you never know what you’ll suddenly see. It also pays to know your camera settings.

Wednesday 17
Boy Cat went back to the vet for his post-op check-up, and got a clean bill of health. Which is more than our credit card did, as the insurance has declined to pay for his dental work on the basis that he’s had previous dental work before we changed to policy to the new provider, so it counts as a pre-existing condition. Such is the way insurance works, as I know well as my father worked in insurance and always said it amounted to gambling against the insurance company. Still at least we can afford it, and we’d do it for ourselves.

Thursday 18
Most of the day taken up with a long and difficult meeting with GP’s Practice Manager, and then documenting it. Lots of survey results, and recent data, which isn’t all good reading, so we were trying to get to see what we (the patient group) can do to help the Practice turn this round. Not easy; there are no easy answers; all GPs are under the same pressures – which was emphasised by a BBC News report this afternoon on the same issues being faced by a larger practice at the other end of the country!

Friday 19
A day for doing nothing except melting in as few clothes as possible. It was scorching hot. RAF Northolt (5km West) recorded 31°C, Heathrow Airport (10km SW) 30.6°C, and a weather station in Hatch End (7km NNW) 31.5°C. So we likely topped 30°C. Definitely the hottest day of the year but some way to go to get to 2022’s approx. 40°C which really was unreal. Cool showers required.

Saturday 20
Blimey it was hot and sticky last night. Despite having the fan on most of the night I was perpetually wet, so with nasty wet bedding. Gah! Thankfully much cooler today, as forecast, but still quite humid and sticky across the middle of the day. I had all the study windows open which was very pleasant, with the merest of breeze – and we had a shower of rain this afternoon. Otherwise a noteworthy day for being completely unnoteworthy!

Sunday 21
A day of odds & sods. Potting up my germinated date stones (7 of 11 have germinated). Unload images from the trail camera, which I didn’t do last week as it was raining heavily. Stocktake/audit the contents of the wine rack, only to discover we have a lot less wine than I thought, but a lot more spirits. And then cook dinner: salmon en croute, with broad beans, sugarsnap peas, and a green herb & cream sauce (this latter needs to be improved), followed by nectarine tarts & cream, with a bottle of Crémant de Bourgogne. Of course the cats helped with the salmon and the cream!

Monday 22
Cometh the gardener to cut the hay meadow of a lawn. This upset the cats as they now have nowhere to hide on the savannah! It’s surprising how much better, and bigger, everything looks with a cut lawn. It’s a bit brown where it’s been long, but a solid night’s rain and it’ll soon green up.

Tuesday 23
Well that’s the biannual (maybe triannual) wine order done. As usual Champagne** (just 6 bottles) from Majestic; they always have pretty decent Champagne at reasonable prices. Some Crémant on this week’s supermarket order; again they do a good one at a sensible price. And another 3 dozen of various from the Wine Society. It’s only money; and it’s something we enjoy at a weekend. The next order will probably be in the run up to Christmas, unless we run out of Champagne first!

** In the words of Hester Browne “Always keep a bottle of Champagne in the fridge for special occasions. Sometimes, the special occasion is that you’ve got a bottle of Champagne in the fridge.”

Wednesday 24
Sitting outside late this afternoon over tea and cake and there were two red kites circling overhead. They appeared to be a pair as one was that bit smaller, so probably a male (unless a juvenile); and they were doing acrobatic close flying manoeuvres. They’re big birds: a passing gull (probably black-headed gull) was not impressed but soon backed off as the kites were noticeably bigger. They eventually drifted off towards the west. It would be interesting to know if they’re nesting anywhere close.

Thursday 25
Last thing yesterday N came in from the garden bearing a feather. A Ring-Neck Parakeet feather – and that after I had commented earlier in the day that I was surprised never to have found one. Unexpectedly it was mostly dark grey but with green along the leading edge and tip. Checking, it is obviously a primary (wing feather), probably P1 as it was about 13cm. Out of curiosity I checked it under UV light, and the quill is very slightly fluorescent. I managed to photograph it under normal light but couldn’t also get a good shot with my little UV torch.parakeet feather

Friday 26
Today was the day the supermarket delivery system tipped me over the edge. The “warehouse” (sorry, fulfilment centre) which supplies the deliveries holds a much smaller range than even a medium size store. This is a retrograde step as deliveries used to be fulfilled from the nearest large store. There are items I can get via UberEats (yeuch!) quick delivery from our nearest (medium size) store, but which the fulfilment centre doesn’t carry. This seems daft in the extreme. And the fulfilment centre range seems to be dwindling, with products just disappearing. All this has been annoying me for a long time. But recently the fulfilment centre, and the UberEats delivery, have done some stupid things. This culminated in both Customer Services and the Executive Office getting a very stroppy (but polite) email. What I didn’t say, but could have done, is that the whole offering is predicated on ready meals and barbeque fodder, all of which is over-processed rubbish. I don’t expect anything much to happen as a result, but if they aren’t told nothing will change. We’ll see what management bollox they come up with!

Saturday 27
The Ring-Neck Parakeets have been squawking non-stop all day! N says they’ve half emptied the large seed feeder in under 24 hours. One, this evening, was flying around right by the study window; almost as if it was trying to land on the open casement window. There was a loud “bonk” so I think it flew hard into next door’s bedroom window; it fluttered off into the ornamental crab apple tree and sat there looing dazed for a few minutes.

Sunday 28
More natural history … Late last evening I found a small parasitic wasp which had self-immolated in my bedtime mug of tea. The poor thing must have thought it has a nice piece of wood to sit on, but instead found itself instantly cooked. Anyway I rescued it, but CPR was not effective. I kept the corpse to photograph today.tiny black parasitic wasp, with spread iridescent wings, and red-brown legs, and a long ovipositor; wingspan approx. 12mmWhen you look at them, these things are rather splendid (for all their gruesome lifestyle). The engineering is incredible, considering it had a wingspan of about 12mm. It’s even more incredible when you see a tiny, tiny gnat – how can legs that thin be constructed (with exoskeleton, muscle and nerves) let alone work?

Monday 29
Blimey, it’s been hot again today, although with weather stations locally recording only 29°C, not quite as hot as the 30° of a couple of weeks ago. But it must have been even more humid; it was unbearably sticky this afternoon, to the extent that I was bathed is sweat – horrid! I sat outside for 10 minutes after lunch and had to give up and come indoors as it was just too hot. Even now, in mid-evening, it hasn’t cooled a lot. Tomorrow is forecast to be about the same; then it gets gradually cooler with some rain and likely thunderstorms. We need something to clear the air.
In other news we took delivery of our Wine Society order at 08:10 this morning. The wine rack now looks a lot healthier!

Tuesday 30
Another blisteringly hot day, about 2°C hotter than yesterday, so probably the hottest day of the year so far. It left me feeling completely knocked out. Even lying in the bedroom in front of the fan didn’t help much; and I must have drunk at least 3 litres of water during the afternoon. It’s no wonder I have a headache.

Wednesday 31
Late last night a rather pretty yellow/brown moth in the bedroom – probably a Yellow Shell (Camptogramma bilineata bilineata). Wingspan about 25-30mm. I photographed it with my phone, so not a brilliant picture.yellow & brown mothIt didn’t want to be caught and put out the window, so as the windows were open I left it sitting on the ceiling and it had disappeared by this morning.