Tag Archives: unblogged

Unblogged October

31 October 2024 Keith

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 view

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!

amusements, memes, personal

Unblogged September

30 September 2024 Keith

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 200^th 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 postcards I wonder how soon my 200^th 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 200^th 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 45^th 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.

amusements, memes

Unblogged August

31 August 2024 Keith

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 moth Also comes the gardener and reports a Jersey Tiger moth in the front garden. Not unusual, we see one (or sometimes more) most years.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

amusements, memes, personal

Unblogged July

31 July 2024 Keith

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.*** 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.

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.When 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 moth It 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.

amusements, personal

Unblogged June

30 June 2024 Keith

Being some of the things I did in June that I didn’t write about …

Saturday 1
So I was thinking what a dull and dismal day it was for the beginning of June – and it was. But then when we were eating this evening there’s a jay on the peanut feeder just a couple of meters from the dining room window. He was having a good tuck in too, and extracting large pieces of nut which disappeared whole. From the plumage it was almost certainly a juvenile, probably only passing through looking for its own hang-out. Although it may well be the one I saw a couple of days ago, salvaging some peanuts from the ground under the rambler roses. We don’t see jays going through the garden very often – maybe once a year – so good to have seen this chappie.

Sunday 2
There I was this morning sitting at the dining table doing some heraldry research, and I realised the jay was outside on the nut feeder again. When suddenly down swooped the magpie, driving the jay away. The gardener later reported that there were fledgling blue tits in the trees, and the parents were also seen scolding the jay. Meanwhile the jay has emptied the nut feeder!

Monday 3
As we have for the last couple of years, we’re leaving most of the lawn to grow unmown until at least some time in July. It does look a bit scruffy, but we are gradually getting a few wildflowers back; this year we have a nice small patch of buttercups. And of course the cats love the savannah: they can melt into the long grass and sit watching and waiting for anything that happens into their jaws – luckily this is mostly hapless insects.

Tuesday 4
We still have the jay around. Seen this evening attacking the nuts in the feeder up by the house, and just 2 metres from the dining room window. Of course it flew off as soon as I stood up and got a camera!

Wednesday 5
A good afternoon round at the doctor’s. I ran a “clinic” for anyone wanting help with online access to NHS health apps etc. Only 2-3 customers, but I was glad to help them. N and I also took charge of the waiting area noticeboards again – which the patient group had managed until Covid arrived. Hard work getting them rearranged but they ended looking much tidier and more welcomingly useful. We also met one of the new receptionists, who seemed polite, cheerful and helpful to everyone.

Thursday 6
I came in at lunchtime and looked out into the garden and thought: “What is that on our odd potato plant in the border?” On my way to feed the fish in the pond I took a look. It was a head of flowers. Now I know potatoes do flower, and they’re related to tomatoes and nightshade, so the flowers are similar. My past experience of potato flowers is that they are small and like white tomato flowers. But not these! They’re a rather fetching shade of pale lavender, and huge: probably 4cm or so across. And they’re rather pretty.

Friday 7
We still have our jay around, which I find quite remarkable. I know we have quite a few trees, including an oak, and there are some others around, but I wouldn’t have thought enough to make good territory for a jay. But then it is clearly a juvenile and there’s the attraction of fast food from out bird feeders. The magpies aren’t too impressed though.

Saturday 8
Something must be wrong. I actually made some time this afternoon to do some work on my family history, for the first time in months. Not that I made any progress, but still.

Sunday 9
Blasted tomcats. Well if next door will always have unneutered females it’s to be expected. Sadly. The current local alpha male is a lean, mean, spotted and striped, dark tabby – with nuts that look large enough to be used as ping-pong balls. He’s clearly at the top of his game because we get only the odd glimpse of any other tomcat. He’s persistent; in and out of our garden many times a day; and intrudes through our cat door to mop up any food our cats haven’t finished. He’s even been known to shelter from the rain in ours; and isn’t afraid of going upstairs either! He’ll get caught out, get scared witless, and be cured sooner or later – they always do! The sad thing is that if one could remove his appendages he’d probably be a nice cat; but for now he’s a pestilence. Why can people not get their cats neutered?

Monday 10
So this is June. Really? It is definitely on the cool side for June, and intermittently very windy. We’ve not yet managed to sit outside this summer with a coffee, let alone sit out into the evening over a bottle of wine, which was our habit some years ago. And it doesn’t look as if it’s going to improve this side of the General Election. Bah! Humbug!

Tuesday 11
Blimey! Rewriting, and checking, website code is absolutely knackering. A lot of the time you can do only a couple of hours without getting a completely addled brain. I’ve spent a lot of yesterday and today (on and off) doing little except checking and correcting the formatting of a new, very large and somewhat complex set of webpages – only 50 pages! That’s after days of work to check over the content. All(!) I have to do now is run the whole lot through a spellchecker. And then, barring any further errors, I can send them off to the developers to be added to our system.

Wednesday 12
An interesting cabaret at lunchtime. Arrives the jay (not seen for a few days); it bounces from the rose onto the small apple tree near the house and starts attacking the nuts in the bird feeder. It’s beak is extracting large chunks of nut which are going down whole. After a few minutes the magpie appears, and moves the jay on. Being slightly larger the magpie is definitely dominant. Magpie sits in apple tree and thinks about getting at the nuts – well if that jay can do it, so can I. It has a go, like the jay from a handy twig as a perch, but it isn’t that much better at it than the useless pigeons. Meanwhile a second magpie has appeared to sit on the fence. Magpie 1 departs. Jay reappears, via the rose, and resumes it’s assault on the nuts. Rinse and repeat. By the third round the magpie (not sure which it was) has definitely refined its technique and is being more successful than the jay at extracting large pieces of nut. Apart from the interplay between the young jay and (more dominant) magpie(s), what was interesting was that we’ve never before seen a magpie on a bird feeder!

Thursday 13
Why did I sleep so badly last night? It took me ages to get to sleep. Then I woke up just before 4 and was awake for at least an hour. So when the alarm went off at 8.30 I struggled to wake up.

Friday 14
About 20:15 this evening, while we’re finishing dinner, arrives the local fox (well one of them; we currently have at least two). I think the dog fox. He trots up the garden, stopping midway to stare intently at something in mid-air. He came right up to the house, bold as brass, stopping at one point to look at the cat door (from about a metre away). He then went to investigate one of the apple tree tubs – the one with the bird feeder hanging in the tree. Whatever he found to eat, there was a lot of it as it occupied him for a good 10 minutes. Although N said there was a small amount of fruit there (basically just a few grapes) this would not have occupied him for more than a couple of minutes. So either he’d cached something there, or some passing squirrel had tipped half the contents of the nut basket out. The latter is not that unlikely as the local squirrels, jay, etc. have emptied it completely in two days!

Saturday 15
So you go down the garden to feed the pond fish, and there are little tweety birds everywhere – along with the ubiquitous parakeets. Totally unable to see what they are: it’s just lots of generic tweeting (so possibly young ones) and of course they’re hidden in the depths of the boscage. They’re so uncooperative, these birds.

Sunday 16
The sweet sound of children’s voices! The evening has been raucous with the local brats screaming at the top of their lungs; the parakeets doing the same; and some thoughtful neighbour running a petrol mower. There’s an excuse for the parakeets: they’re wild. Mind you the children probably are too – I certainly wouldn’t have been allowed to make that much noise as a kid. And why do you need a petrol mower for a lawn 5x10m maximum which you could cut with scissors – or a borrowed goat?

Monday 17
Another of those days when you’re feeling like you didn’t sleep well (actually I probably didn’t) and someone stole all your elastic bands. So everything is an effort, mentally and physically. What a good job there’s nothing on and I can spend the day clearing up odd jobs.

Tuesday 18
On the way back from the hospital at lunchtime we’re just round the corner from home … Walking along was a young woman. OK, so what? She was tall-ish and very slim; wearing dark legs and a dark blue top. This was set off with a low crowned black straw hat with a brim about a metre wide – well it was certainly enormous! But the pièce de résistance: walking nicely at heel was a milk chocolate coloured standard poodle, beautifully clipped right down to it’s pom-pom boots! One of those occasions when you need your camera in hand and primed because you had at most 5 seconds to grab the shot.

Wednesday 19
It’s surprising how quiet it is without my hearing aids. My hearing appears to still be deteriorating so I could well be stone deaf within 10 years, if I survive that long. The problem is that you can’t properly hear the things you need to. And what you can hear is different because you’ve lost the high frequencies — so most birdsong is out, except for the lower tones like wood pigeons.

Thursday 20
A very quick trip to the hospital today to collect my repaired hearing aids. I spent more time waiting to be picked up afterwards than I did in the hospital (which was about 15 minutes, and I didn’t rush!). And more time in the taxi going and coming that actually at the hospital. Still I sat outside in the sun while waiting which was very pleasant.
Oh, and true to form, I now think it’s Friday!

Friday 21
What a lovely day. At last we get wall-to-wall sunshine and it’s hot. Too nice to be doing anything, so I mostly didn’t.

Saturday 22
The usual interesting quarterly literary society social call this afternoon. Mostly the usual suspects including attendees from Ireland, USA and Japan. A lot of discussion about the English class system, and the mobility between classes, which usually baffles the Americans.

Sunday 23
I’m not generally a fan of the small plume moths. They always seem dull and uninteresting. But the one which was sitting on our bathroom tiles this morning was, I thought, unusually large (wingspan 25-28mm) and quite prettily marked, even if in shades of beige. Probably the Common Plume, Emmelina monodactyla, which are quite variable.Note the spurs on the legs! This evening I made sure it went back outside to live another day.

Monday 24
So now I’m fed up with this ear infection. I’ve no idea what it is but is seems to be something swollen and sore in my ear canal – and it isn’t wax. I can’t hear anything in my left ear, and it is too sore to wear my hearing aids. At least it isn’t my usual vertigo. I’m hoping it’ll go away and I won’t need to bother the doctors. It’s the more miserable because the weather is hot (at last!) and very humid.

Tuesday 25
Much as I like being warm, and I’m naturally warm, I don’t like this humidity. It’s really draining. So much so that I spent a large part of the afternoon reclining on the bed in front of the fan with all the windows open – so I managed to accomplish very little.

Oh and let’s count the last few days according to my brain:
Thursday was Friday
Friday was Saturday
Saturday was Sunday
Sunday was no day at all
Monday was Sunday
Today? Well who knows?
Yes, I know, I’m going mad!

Wednesday 26
micro moth Meanwhile today I tried to photograph this tiny little insect on the bathroom wall – why do these things always sit where they’re almost inaccessible? It’s about 5mm in size and we often see them indoors. I’m not at all clear whether it’s a micro-moth or a fly; I suspect the former from the wing markings and that this one has feathery antennae redolent of a male moth. Anyway, here’s a very poor photograph; I shall try again sometime when I have more “go” and my proper camera gear to hand.

Thursday 27
Phew! It’s a bit cooler today, which is rather pleasant, but there’s a stiff breeze. In fact the breeze was so strong that I had to shut some of the windows to stop thee through draught. But it has been nice and sunny all day. I’m still struggling with this ear and it’s annoying me; it’s still sore and slightly inflamed, and I can’t wear a hearing aid in that ear. So I’ve got a call out to the doctors. I suspect it’s an abscess and will need some antibiotics. Very annoying!

Friday 28
We’re doomed; doomed I tell you. It’s the end of June and high summer. The buddleia is in full flower, but there’s not an insect in sight. Not a butterfly. Not a bee. Not a wasp. Not even a mouldy fly. The buddleia should be buzzing with insects. The only wildlife I’ve seen today are three woodpigeons. Gawdelpus!

Saturday 29
We have a fan in the bedroom, with a remote control. Last evening the remote was playing up. So I took a look today and the batteries were so corroded I was surprised it worked at all. Mind you we’ve had the fan for some years and they’re likely the original (cheap) batteries. I cleaned it up and put in new batteries. Nothing; it will not work. Check batteries; try another pair; ensure IR receiver on the fan is clean. Still nothing. Take the remote apart; clean it some more; and in the process snap a silly little wire right at a point where I can’t resolder it. Bugger! Unusually eBay doesn’t come up with a replacement; nor does anyone else. At least the fan still works, we’ll just have to get out of bed to turn it on/off. I can’t justify a new fan just for a broken remote – which has now been stripped down for recycling.

Sunday 30
It’s the end of june, so we’re halfway through the year. Well, no, actually we’re not. Count the days: the first 6 months of the year have 181 days (182 in a leap year), and the second 6 months have 184 days. So given that this is a leap year, today is day 182 and there remain 184 days. That means tomorrow, 1 July, is day 183 and there are 183 days remaining, so midnight on night of 1/2 July is halfway through the year. And in a normal year it would be midday on 2 July.

amusements, memes, personal

Unblogged May

31 May 2024 Keith 1 Comment

Being things I didn’t otherwise write about this month.

Wed 1	What miserable May Day. It should be sunny and warm, as befits the bonfires of Beltane welcoming the return of the sun. Instead of which it was somewhat chilly, dull and threatening rain all day. And it looks pretty wet for at least the next week. At this rate we’re in for a long, cold, wet summer. Gawdelpus!
Thu 2	There are times when the cats drive you demented. Because N was at the hospital this evening, I was left to feed said animals. I go downstairs to feed them (and me!) a bit before 19:00. Rosie soon appears, which was not a surprise. I feed her a treat of very unposh chicken catfood; she eats heartily through 3/4 of her food and goes out. The other two are absent, despite having been called three times. Ten minutes later Tilly appears. I feed her the usual small portion; she condescends to lick the gravy off the food, as is her usual way, and goes out. While I’m eating my food Tilly comes back and has two goes, five minutes apart, at polishing Rosie’s bowl. By now Rosie has probably finished off Tilly’s food. As I write (about 20:30) Boy Cat is still dozing on the cushion behind my right shoulder; he’s not moved, so hasn’t been fed. We’ll get starving kitten mode in about an hour’s time.
Fri 3	So you think you’re going to have a quiet day, and everything conspires to ensure you have a continual succession of stupidities to unravel.
Sat 4	What a lovely bright, sunny Spring day with barely a breathe of breeze. It wasn’t unpleasant in the garden even at teatime, although the ground is still absolutely sodden.
Sun 5	My phalaenopsis orchids haven’t done so well this year. I’m down to four plants. One hasn’t shown any sign of flowering and the miniature one has two flowers which are trying to hide in the pot. The other two have just three flowers.They’re some years old now and they’ve not been getting as much attention, water and feed with everything else going on. I’ll have to see if I can rejuvenate them over the summer.
Mon 6	Bank holiday Monday, and it’s as dismal as Monday can be. Nothing going on and its been raining most of the day. Even the cats have been lying low all day. I ended up doing literary society work all afternoon as the web developers and the Secretary were working and emailing me. But I did manage to get my haircut in between it all.
Tue 7	Don’t you just love hospitals. N had an appointment this morning with her consultant, although it was admittedly only an “in case needed”. Can they cancel it in good time? Nooooo! They call just after 08:30 this morning to cancel it. Fortunately we’d not left home, although we had got up at crack of sparrows to be ready in time and booked a taxi. The up side was that I got a clear day to get things done, including the monthly household finances which took forever!
Wed 8	What a lovely sunny, warm Spring day – as was yesterday. It’s so warm we’ve had all the windows open all day, and even sat out in the sun for a while after lunch. And that was good because we spotted the first swift of the year. Only one, but it’s good that we have any at all now; 40 years ago the sky was full of them.
Thu 9	Another lovely warm sunny Spring day. And it brings the smelly barbeque-wallahs out. Barbeques (known locally as crematoriums) are bad enough on their own, but why do these people have to use noxious firelighters or the like to start them? Were they never Boy Scouts? No sooner does that stop, than some neighbour starts up a petrol mower – like you need a petrol mower for a garden this size! – followed by a hedge trimmer.
Fri 10	A couple of days ago I clocked up my 150th Postcrossing card received. Here are numbers 101-150 up on the corkboard before I file them and start the board again.I’m averaging a card every three days, so at this rate I should get to 200 before Christmas.
Sat 11	After nearly 45 years of marriage it still turns up surprises. Apparently N may be offered afternoon sessions at the hospital, rather than the current three evenings a week. This would actually be more convenient. But what surprised me most was her comment that what she misses is eating together every evening, and she fells this is especially important. While I agree, I hadn’t realised quite how important it has become.
Sun 12	Three or four days ago we had an odd rose in flower. By today we have a garden full of roses; suddenly they are almost all in flower. From one lone dog rose climbing the silver birch we have a tree full of small single wild roses, and a rambler smothered in apricot blooms.
Mon 13	Monday is always hard – and even harder when it follows a Sunday.
Tue 14	Something must have happened today, but if it did it completely passed me by. Spent the day with brain in jelly.
Wed 15	Comes the gardener for the second time in a week, after a hiatus of about a month – due to a combination of N’s situation and the wet weather. Lots done, including a soap wash of one of the apple trees to get rid of the woolly aphid. Six hours later and the tree is already looking 300% better.
Thu 16	There’s this first portrait of the King. And it has stirred controversy, as portraits of the monarch always seem to. Some like it; many don’t with comments like “how good that he’s covered in the blood of the slaves/soldiers”, or “why is he battling through menstrual blood?”. Perversely I do like it; it’s shocking at first, but as a portrait it is pretty accurate and it does seem to capture the man – a man of many parts. Yes the red shocks initially, but for me it works and it’s better than the usual dull portraiture.
Fri 17	How’s this for stupid? We order supermarket groceries online every week and they’re fulfilled from a fulfilment centre down the road. The range is restricted compared with what’s in the stores, which is very annoying. I can also order from the same supermarket a small top-up order for immediate delivery by UberEats from the nearest store. Understandably this range is also restricted compared with what I could get by going to the store. But there are things I can buy via UberEats that I can’t get via an online order. Like today I was able to get via UberEats: English asparagus, a common-or-garden pickle, and a small cucumber, none of which the fulfilment centre stock.
Sat 18	This morning we had a really good meeting of the doctors’ patient group. A good turnout of 9 patients, plus the Practice Manager. Everyone was friendly, positive and contributed. And N gave an informal talk about her recent medical experiences, which was well received. Meetings like this do restore one’s faith in humanity a bit.
Sun 19	Just after lunch N refilled the bird feeders. For the rest of the afternoon the garden has been ringing with the squawks of the parakeets. Their chatter is continual, even if there is only one! It’s basically just contact calls – after all they are only budgerigars on steroids! I love having them around, but they are noisy!
Mon 20	The garden is absolutely awash with roses – and not all are even in flower yet! I wondered aloud to N how many thousand (and yes, I mean thousand) rose flowers we had. These photos are just a tiny fraction of the total, especially as the silver birch has not only the Buff Beauty but is a shower of dog rose right to the top.
Tue 21	What a dismal day. Definitely feeling slow and dopey today. And it’s been raining steadily since late morning.
Wed 22	OK, so we get a General Election on 4 July. Prepare then for six weeks of disinformation and misinformation (ie. lies and make-believe) from all sides. Trust none of them – remember they’re politicians and they’re fighting for their seat on the gravy train! As for the prediction of a Labour landslide? Personally I doubt it. Despite what the polls say, Joe Public will chicken out. He and she will vote for whoever they think is going to put money in their pocket, get rid of immigrants, and claw back our sovereignty: and that may well not be Labour. There will also be a lot of tactical voting. Given that Labour are currently about 10-1 on to have an overall majority, I reckon 11-2 against for a hung parliament, or the same odds for a Tory majority, are good bets. My best guess? A Conservative overall majority of 6 seats. It’ll be interesting – if you can stomach it. I’m not sure I can.
Thu 23	While we’re eating our evening meal, the Marmalade cat from next door appeared having caught a wood pigeon – still fluttering desperately to get away. But no luck, she sat gripping it firmly by the throat until dead. She then proceeded to eat it over the course of at least 45 minutes. One of the local alpha males happened along and thought he was going to get a share: not a chance, he was soon disabused and gave up. She was last seen still manfully chomping away at her pigeon. It’ll be interesting to see how much is left in the morning; my betting is that unless she takes the remains away they’ll be removed by the foxes.
Fri 24	An interesting day. (1) It started off with the supermarket delivery refusing my credit card overnight. It was a new card, activated yesterday, because there was some (small) amount of fraud on the old one. I made the payment payment with another card after almost 30 minutes on the phone on hold. Turns out the block on the card was only released at the start of office hours this morning. Why am I expected to guess this! (2) As predicted, all that’s left of the pigeon from yesterday is some scattered feathers. I might find out when I look at the trail camera what happened. (3) While we were checking off the grocery delivery N looked at the kitchen floor and exclaimed “Why is there a small dead mouse down there?” Sure enough a small dead mouse was indeed trying to hide under the sink. (4) As usual by mid-afternoon I was convinced it was Saturday.
Sat 25	Another nice sunny day spent working. One day I’ll actually manage to see something of the summer.
Sun 26	Unloading this week’s photos from the trail camera, I found a couple of nice shots of one of our foxes. The resolution isn’t brilliant as they were in poor daylight, but said fox looks to be in good condition.Just look at the cheeky curiosity on that face. You can see why it’s often said that foxes are dogs running on cat software! Oh and there were no good shots to indicate the final removal of the pigeon.
Mon 27	I know I didn’t put my hearing aids in today, but it has been unusually quiet, especially for a bank holiday. I can only think the neighbours know something I don’t. But then it was supposed to rain all day, but it hasn’t; it’s been intermittently sunny, although quite windy. I don’t remember this amount of wind when I was young and playing cricket – I would have noticed, because not being a top rank bowler I would have been bowling into the wind all the time. It has definitely got a lot windier in recent years. Someone must have put the gods on a diet of beans.
Tue 28	After months and months and months of delays and postponements, I finally managed to rearrange our dental check-ups and hygienist appointments. To my amazement we were offered appointments on 1 July, which is only 5 weeks away. So often we have to wait 3 months!
Wed 29	Had some really good Barnsley Lamb Chops this evening. Really juicy, flavourful and tender. They’ve been languishing in the depths of the freezer for ages and we decided the time had come to exhume them. The freezing will have helped with the tenderness – as well as the fact that I made sure not to overcook them.
Thu 30	Amazingly we have a large white Amaryllis with two large flowers – they’re the size of a tea plate. It’s an old bulb that has been kept going on the windowsill, with the occasional drop of water. It throws up the odd few leaves, but we never expect it to flower. And suddenly, there it is in full bloom!
Fri 31	Today has definitely been one of pushing jelly uphill trough treacle. Just about everything seems to have been an irritation, or worse. Well it’s a new month, and a weekend, tomorrow, so onwards and upward. I hope!

amusements, memes

Unblogged April

30 April 2024 Keith

Hereinafter follows the usual summary of the last month’s doings not otherwise reported upon.

Mon 1	OK so it’s April Fools’ Day. I must admit I never really saw the amusement, although over the years the media have pulled a few good stunts – who remembers the Spaghetti Tree? The origins are unclear, and the first British reference to “Fooles holy day” appears to be by John Aubrey in 1686. April Fools’ Day is not to be confused with the medieval Feast of Fools, celebrated by clergy across Europe on 1 January.
Tue 2	The place is awash with roadworks. Our nearest major road is hobbled, north and south, by ongoing works associated with HS2. And the alternative north-south route from/to the A40 Westway is also closed this week for resurfacing work. This latter has a diversion, which takes you at least 2 miles out of your way, and which this morning also had two sets of roadworks, one with temporary lights. Coming north from the A40 there is no decent alternative; going south is little better. Oh and from next month there will be 6 months of roadworks on the A40 itself, at one of London’s busiest roundabout/underpass junctions. Just to pile on the agony even more, not far away the major road at Old Oak Common (major HS2 station site) is about to be closed for four years, with no sensible alternative route! Why can the planers never manage to join the dots?
Wed 3	I chaired a really good meeting of GP’s patient group at lunchtime. Some interesting background from our Practice Manager on a recent development (later postponed) and some good ideas for futures. But blimey weren’t the minutes hard to write even though I tackled them almost immediately afterwards.
Thu 4	Dear God! What a day. Spent the whole day, apart from taking the supermarket delivery, doing stuff for the patient group: meeting minutes, monthly news bulletin, meeting prep for next week. It was never ending, and I just cannot clear the other miscellaneous stuff off my desk. It’s completely knackering.
Fri 5	My brain is frazzled to a cinder. Working on literary society stuff all day – mostly membership renewals and getting the member DB tidied up for the move to the new website etc. It is Saturday, isn’t it?!
Sat 6	Fuck! To put too fine a point on it. I’ve got this f’ing cold again; I think that’s 3 times in 8 weeks or so. Felt miserable all day and doing things at about half speed, at best. But here are some daffodils to cheer things up!
Sun 7	Boy Cat certainly had the right idea for a Sunday occupation. Followed by fresh cod for tea, and another good snooze.
Mon 8	Why the the Americans get a total solar eclipse and we get nothing. How do they deserve it more than we do. It’s a conspiracy I tell you. I shall never see a total solar eclipse, and I’m pissed off about it.
Tue 9	Cloudy, dull, rain, sunshine, wind … I think the only things the weather didn’t throw at us today was thunder & lightning and snow. Everyone is getting really hacked off with the rain and the wind. “With hey, ho, the wind and the rain … For the rain it raineth every day. With a hey, and a ho, and a hey-nonny-no.”
Wed 10	Phew! That was a bit of a fight: taking all three cats to the vet for check-ups and their annual injections. Each cat has to go in its own carrier; sharing is not permitted. N had much the worst of trying to catch and imprison them. Luckily we had our friendly local London cabbie to take us, so there is plenty of room on the floor of the cab for 3 cat baskets. We were early to the vet’s, and they were running late, so we had to sit around for nearly an hour waiting. But at least all three got a clean bill of health except that Boy Cat has to have some dental work done, which will hurt the credit card even more than today’s little outing.
Thu 11	I don’t believe it! Not only has it been dry today, but it’s been considerably warmer too. Cloudy and dull most of the day, although this evening there is at least a bit of blue sky. It was even warm enough to have some windows open and get some fresh air in the house. It also made life a lot easier and more pleasant for the window cleaner this morning.
Fri 12	Well what a surprise: a sunny, warm and dry day. And there’s still a little daylight at 20:00 BST (so 19:00 GMT).
Sat 13	As befits a lovely warm, sunny Spring day, we have our first rose in bloom – one of the pink ramblers.
Sun 14	As usual on Sunday afternoon, I unloaded this week’s captures from the trail camera. I got a good shot of one of our foxes (we have at least three visiting regularly) in morning daylight. The fox is standing about 5m from the house and 3m from the camera. It’s not a brilliant shot due to camera resolution. I’ve no idea what it was watching on next door’s roof!
Mon 15	Full marks for the doctors today. I’ve got this filthy cold for the 4th time in 8-10 weeks; the same sinus/cold. Sent a request to GP, explaining this was how I was 30+ years ago before a sinus op, and the only fix to stop the cycle was antibiotics. The doctor didn’t even call me, but just sent a prescription over to the pharmacy, who walked round the corner with it for me. Now that’s what I call service.
Tue 16	Back on Sunday I actually took a few photos in the garden. This one’s called “Lions on the Savannah”.
Wed 17	We’re getting there. Spent the day working on the new literary society website etc. including helping the developer start switching our email accounts and doing a chunk of testing and small updates. Hard work!
Thu 18	So the magpies are still using the nest they built in the top of the silver birch tree. I’ve seen one going into it several times today. It’s not obviously been carrying beaks-full of food, but it could be feeding chicks.
Fri 19	Getting more and more despondent about N’s health. Hospital are not acting with any urgency while her health is just deteriorating. Hospital called at 17:30 this afternoon; she now has to have an appointment with an anaesthetist in a week’s time before they’ll confirm a date of the procedure she needs which is pencilled in for a week later. That then has to heal before it can be used for treatment. That’s going to be much too late and probably past the point of no return.
Sat 20	It’s that time of year, when this week I’ve had an absolute deluge of financial and other important paperwork. Like today arrived the renewal for the house insurance. But it beats me why they have to email 11 (yes, one short of a dozen) separate documents one of which is 50+ pages and another 20+. Then when you renew (online!) they send another three documents which only duplicate the ones you’ve already had. It’s no wonder the premium has gone up almost £80 (or 17%); they’re clearly overpaying people to write by the yard.
Sun 21	Oh dear! It’s many years since I’ve consumed a whole bottle of wine at a sitting. But I managed it tonight with a pretty strong bottle of my favourite Tavel Rosé – and it did slip down easily. Everything that’s going on is enough to drive you to drink! (Actually I’m typing better after the wine!)
Mon 22	Amazing! Today I picked the first six ripe Hot Lemon chillies from the one odd plant I overwintered from last year. And there are at least another eight well on the way; but currently no further flowers. This is amazingly early.
Tue 23	I avoided going to the hospital with N this morning. I wanted to keep an arm-wrench on the consultant, but I didn’t need to as he decided that N needs treatment urgently. So there will hopefully be several more appointments & procedures over the coming days. Really worrying to have got to this stage quite so suddenly; I feel sick in the stomach. And it’s always when you’re under stress from other things too.
Wed 24	N off to the hospital this morning – at their request – as not feeling good. She was well looked after and there all day, but sent home late afternoon. She now knows what constitutes a real emergency. It has also finally got her appointments sorted out, including a procedure on Monday morning.
Thu 25	Everything just gets worse and very stressful. Having to watch N’s condition like a hawk. And trying to get to implementing the new literary society website over the weekend. And of course everything is conspiring against it. Not a happy bunny today. Beer is definitely needed.
Fri 26	Although N is not in an especially good place, and has a very depressed appetite, we’ve had interesting sandwich combinations last night and tonight. Last night was brie and (warm) asparagus, which worked remarkably well. This evening I had hot bacon and asparagus between bread with some HP sauce; again this worked surprisingly well for a combination one wouldn’t normally even consider palatable. If nothing else the English asparagus season is so short one needs to make the most of it.
Sat 27	Our oak tree is coming nicely into leaf. But if you walk down the garden there is a veritable carpet of small twigs with clusters of young oak leaves on the lawn. Yep, it’s the squirrels again! They clearly like nibbling the fresh oak buds and/or flowers, and in the process are dropping the remains. Obviously they don’t realise that the more oak tree they destroy now, the fewer acorns they’ll have come the autumn.
Sun 28	A day of watching paint dry, at least metaphorically. The literary society’s new website due to go live today. But of course a delayed start as the developers have to update another part of their platform first. So nothing started until after 17:00 and is still not complete as I write about 19:30. Nothing I can do except twiddle my fingers until it’s done. And true to form with most of these things it’ll doubtless run on until pushing midnight! How many times have I been here over the years?
Mon 29	At this moment, 19:20, I have no idea what is happening. Sent N off to the hospital at crack of sparrow fart this morning for the plumbing procedure to facilitate dialysis. She managed to ring me at lunchtime to say it had been done, but no further news. At 17:30 she texted to say she was starting a 2 hour dialysis session. I’ve no idea if they’re keeping her overnight, or if I’m going to have to race off to the hospital to collect her in the dark. It doesn’t help that she can’t get much of a phone signal in the hospital. So I await instructions. At least yesterday’s website migration went OK and completed just before 21:00; barring the inevitable few silly things, of course.
Tue 30	Well 10 minutes after writing yesterday N rang to say the hospital were sending her home. Brief discussion ensued and concluded she was OK to get a cab herself, rather than me going to collect her – especially as it would likely be an hour before I got to her. In the event she arrived home in about an hour, pretty exhausted. This evening she has gone off to a nearer hospital for her first real dialysis session, which will now happen 3 times a week. While none of it is good, thankfully she now has the treatment she needs – and should probably have had 3 months ago. Fingers crossed that she’ll start seeing some improvement over the coming weeks. And breathe! Our first pink rambler rose of the year, taken earlier in the month It’s been a hard month, but hopefully we’re ending it in a better (if not ideal) place than we started. Please can we now have a quiet, warm and sunny May!

amusements, personal

Unblogged March

31 March 2024 Keith

Here follows the usual list of things what I did done but didn’t feel impelled to otherwise write about.

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

memes, personal

Unblogged January

31 January 2024 Keith

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

memes, personal

Unblogged December

31 December 2023 Keith 1 Comment

Fri 1	Another bright sunny day, but what a stinging frost; the roofs almost looked as if it had been snowing lightly. But oh bugger … Why is the heating not working? Error code on the boiler display; low water pressure. Why? Call our heating guy; I adjust it as instructed, but too much so it still won’t work. Luckily he was in the area and dropped by – problem fixed in 2 minutes with the cover off the boiler. Phew! From there the rest of the day was an uphill struggle.
Sat 2	Well there was no real frost last night and this morning is really dull and misty – they’ve taken away the hill which should be about 1km to our SE. Bat at least we have hot radiators and water.
Sun 3	This blasted cold. I’ve had it for about 10 days and I cannot shift it. Snotty nose; bunged sinuses; watery eyes; inflamed ears and Estacion tubes. It fair gives you the willies.
Mon 4	Absolutely wrecked. Had a dreadful night sneezing and snotting with this cold. Much clearer once I got some ibuprofen and decongestant on it. Also better having got the pond guy and window cleaner here and gone. Nothing else to get up early for this week as my Wednesday meeting has been postponed – for once not by me!
Tue 5	I must have had something in excess of 10 hours sleep last night – solid sleep as I woke up only once for a few minutes. As a result all the head bits are somewhat clearer, although not best, and one is still feels very disinclined to do anything – so I didn’t.
Wed 6	Once more it’s finances day, and yes we’re solvent for another month. We also get the government’s geriatrics’ winter fuel payments, as well as well as a miserable £10 each “Christmas bonus” from DWP. While one doesn’t mind having extra cash from the government (we have and still do pay enough in tax) how sensible is it to give this money to people like us who, let’s be honest, really don’t need it. Mind you when our health insurance is going up 20% this year …
Thu 7	Well that was fun – NOT! 22:30 this evening, we have a blocked loo. Very blocked. N and I eventually managed to clear it, after much poking, prodding, hosing, flushing and bailing. It took us an hour. We and the bathroom all ended up soaked (fortunately mainly clean hose water). Much mopping and cleaning, followed by showers all round. And so to bed. Why do these things always happen last thing at night?
Fri 8	Heard today that one of our neighbours had died (at home) over night. Not really a surprise as she was a heavy smoker and had had lung cancer for quite a while. We of course drank her health and memory with our bottle of Rioja this evening – which I feel sure would have upset her Baptist beliefs.
Sat 9	Blimey we must have had quite some rain overnight, as we had standing water – colloquially known as the Great Lakes – down by the pond this morning. And it stayed most of the day, despite the rain easing off by lunchtime, so the water table really is high. N reckons we’re going to have a relatively mild and wet winter. I’m not so sure.
Sun 10	Yet again I have no clue what day it is. By lunchtime Friday my brain was convinced it was Saturday. Yesterday felt like Sunday. And today: well I have no clue. So it’s no real wonder I’ve managed to get almost nothing done; the big tasks just keep being kicked down the road.
Mon 11	We finally managed to get all the Christmas cards written. We do send a lot – because we like to – but because we get our own cards printed as large postcards, and print address labels, the job is much quicker than fiddling about with envelopes, and uses a lot less paper. It is also much cheaper; like 10-15p for a card (postage is obviously the same).
Tue 12	Yesterday the hospital rang and gave N an appointment for this morning! So I with N to the hospital for the start of a round of consultations & procedures for her hereditary condition. Consultant, specialist nurse and an armful of blood tests. More to come after New Year. Some of the blood results back before the end of the day. And she has an online seminar tomorrow morning. But trying to get them to schedule anything else quickly is a Sisyphean task of pushing jelly uphill with a toothpick.
Wed 13	Afternoon spent sorting out and wrapping presents which have to go in the mail. What’s good these days is not just the ability to buy the postage online, and printing it all as an address label, but that the Royal Mail will come and collect anything larger than an ordinary letter which has been paid online – and the collection is free too! So having done the online postage you click the button and pick the day you want the items collected (usually tomorrow). Letters still have to go to the postbox, but as long as you can pack, weigh and pay for items online there’s no longer any need to go to the Post Office. Now that’s what I call service.
Thu 14	Bastard! Started sneezing, sneezing, sneezing late last evening and couldn’t stop. Wet runny nose too. Couldn’t breathe so ended up with a sore throat and didn’t sleep well. Got up at 03:30 for 30 minutes to do a Covid test (result: negative). This morning it’s clear that I have this <expletive deleted> cold back. At least I assume it’s a cold as I’m not especially feverish and I tested negative for Covid (using two different makes of LFT).
Fri 15	Situation normal: Yesterday I was convinced it was Saturday (I blame the cold). Today I have no idea what day it is, but this evening erring towards Saturday again. WTF is happening to my brain?
Sat 16	I learn that I’m not the only one with this strange time dilation in the brain. Today we had a good social call for the literary society. One of the members admitted to having tried to join the call yesterday (Friday), quite believing that it was Saturday. Basically it seems this is what retirement does to you!
Sun 17	We always have our Sunday lunch in the evening, and very often not the traditional roast. This evening: steak & chips. And senior cat did OK too with a three course meal. The cats had fresh cooked cod for tea (their weekly-ish treat); junior cat is so stuffed he’s incapable. Senior cat being more sensible paces herself: so she had room for a few morsels of our steak, followed by a small amount of cream for pudding. It’s all right when the cat gets a three course meal!
Mon 18	Attended an interesting online talk about the entomology collections of the National Museum of Scotland, given by a young and very enthusiastic curator. Lots not just about the collections, but why they’re useful and important – especially for tracking things like climate change and biodiversity.
Tue 19	Good to see S&Z (wasn’t expecting to see Z) who dropped in for a quick coffee and cake this morning. S on the way back from a physio checkup following her hip replacement. Seasonal gifts duly exchanged. Z much professionally occupied by the volcanic eruption in Iceland.
Wed 20	A few days ago I was moved to write to my three “girl” cousins (sisters; two older than me) on my mother’s side. I also wrote to my three half-aunts (on my father’s side). What a pleasant surprise this morning to get a call from the eldest of the cousins, who I’ve not spoken to in hundreds of years (although we’ve always kept in touch). A lovely 45 minute phone call.
Thu 21	Spent all afternoon sorting out and wrapping presents. Totally knackering.
Fri 22	Butcher the Dinosaur Day. Christmas supermarket delivery – slightly early against all our expectations. It included a decent medium-sized turkey and a nice looking piece of porchetta. A happy half hour spent butchering the dinosaur – crown for Christmas day and the rest in the freezer. Porchetta for Sunday and cold cuts.
Sat 23	If the NHS want me for a health check, why do they need to send me three text messages and a letter in three days. I’ve not yet had a chance to respond to the first text. This is just bullying and harassment, which I won’t take from anyone. They got a very snotty email. Ball back in their court. Of course nothing will happen now until New Year.
Sun 24	Well I got there! I’m not sure N has though. And I cooked dinner: a very nice piece of Porchetta – and plenty for cold cuts over the next few days.
Mon 25	Warm, wet and windy. Just as well we didn’t want to do anything other than get up late, open presents and eat. But OMG wasn’t TV dire!
Tue 26	Boxing Day. The highlight was the first of this year’s Royal Institution Lectures, this time about Artificial Intelligence. Did I learn anything? No. Should I have done? Probably also No. But I’m not sure how much it would have meant to 12-ish year-olds; as so often there were a lot of long, complex, words and concepts which weren’t explained.
Wed 27	What is the weather coming to? Another wet, windy and dreary day on which to continue eating Christmas left-overs: cold meat and sort of bubble-and-squeak.
Thu 28	Oh the joy of those dull days between Christmas and New Year! Turkey, Pork, Leek & Mushroom Pie. And there’s enough for lunch tomorrow.
Fri 29	I hate printers, especially laser printers. The new one has now decided that it doesn’t want to play anymore. Not sure I can fix it. So as I need a workhorse printer (for many reasons) I have to throw money at the problem and buy another new one – for delivery tomorrow And I’ll go back to HP (at least their toner is cheaper).
Sat 30	So there I was, sitting in the kitchen putting together individual bowls of salad for our evening meal. And I thought “Blimey it’s really quiet; what’s wrong?” Until it dawned on me “You silly bugger of course it’s quiet, you’re not wearing your hearing aids!” Duh!
Sun 31	And so ends another year, much as it began: grey, miserable and wet. Here’s hoping 2024 is better for everyone. Have a happy, prosperous and healthy New Year!

Zen Mischief

Tag Archives: unblogged

Unblogged October

Unblogged September

Unblogged August

Unblogged July

Unblogged June

Unblogged May

Unblogged April

Unblogged March

Unblogged January

Unblogged December

Eccentric looks at life through the thoughts of a retired working thinker