| 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! |
Tag Archives: unblogged
Unblogged October
| Sun 1 | Good grief, we’re 3/4 of the way through the year! Although it’s quite warm, it’s getting dark and dreary – the dismals (ie. SAD) are beginning to get me. Arrggghhhh!!!!! |
| Mon 2 | It’s time to think about Christmas cards. As some here will know for the last 20 years we’ve had our own cards printed, as large postcards, often using one of my photos. We’re investigating something different this year; if it works it’ll still be a postcard but of some collage. We’re experimenting. And as I’m sure I’ve mentioned before, postcards work extremely well. Printed in bulk they’re cheaper than cards, they avoid all the faff of envelopes, and they hinder the writing of “family letters”. |
| Tue 3 | A few days ago, when watering the plants on the study windowsill, I managed to water the scanner – rather more than I thought. In consequence it had some significant water ingress and despite mopping it out there was obviously water damage to the electrics as the scans didn’t properly. So buy a new scanner, which arrived today. It’s cheap and cheerful; not yet convinced about the quality of the scans, but it’ll do for a while. |
| Wed 4 | N’s birthday. We went to dinner wih a long-time friend, and very pleasant it was – made better by it being our first social outing in in seems like forever. |
| Thu 5 | Late abed last night, so had the luxury of a lie-in (well more like a good sleep-in) this morning. Consequently not much got done, except we did manage to audit the freezer – and just as well because the running log was 50% wrong! |
| Fri 6 | How can the supermarket so comprehensively bugger up our delivery. 75% of what we ordered was just shown as unavailable. Of what we did get (ie. not a lot) we got milk which we hadn’t ordered, and double rations of two varieties of cat food. Central Customer Services didn’t know what had happened and had no reports of anything – but did help by creating a repeat order for tomorrow. Customer Services at the Fulfilment Centre rang me later on, but she still didn’t know what had happened and was demanding the warehouse find out – we both suspected a computer glitch. But everyone was duly apologetic and agreed it really shouldn’t have happened under any circumstances and we’d none of us seen anything like it before. Luckily, having worked so long in IT, I understand that these things can occasionally happen. |
| Sat 7 | Fortunately today’s repeat supermarket delivery was fine, barring the expected odd couple of items unavailable. So a great cook-a-thon happened this afternoon – using all the old apples and tomatoes (not together), as well as making mincemeat & apple tart and a sausage and veg traybake for dinner. |
| Sun 8 | At last the Jerusalem Artichokes have got a good display of small yellow sunflower-ish blooms. They’re only about 10cm across, but rather pretty. This isn’t surprising as they are very closely related to sunflowers; they’re all Helianthus spp. |
| Mon 9 | Having casseroled all the surplus tomatoes on Saturday, today they were turned into tomato & bean soup. Tomatoes pushed through the Mouli; onion & garlic sweated in butter; add the tomato, various seasonings & herbs, and a tin of blackeye beans. A substantial evening repast with some added grated cheddar and hunks of bread. |
| Tue 10 | 02:45. Fox barking out in the street. Can’t see it, but it sounds as if it’s a short way away. Actually I’m not sure there aren’t two – one in each direction. Probably territorial; it’s a bit early for fucking season. |
| Wed 11 | Decided that my dermatology appointment scheduled for tomorrow would be a complete waste of time – it’s only a follow-up from January and there’s nothing worth looking at. So I cancelled it. |
| Thu 12 | There’s something odd in the air round here at the moment. A couple of evenings ago one of the local pubs was burned out. It created absolute chaos at the time as it’s on a busy main road – and of course there was the usual crowd of sightseers. It’ll be interesting to see the conclusions of the fire investigation. Then yesterday a family of beavers (2 adults, 3 kits) were released into an enclosure by the canal, about a mile away. Even the Mayor of London turned up! Said beavers are supposed to be re-engineering the water/marsh there, but I don’t see that there’s enough tree habitat for them. I hope I’m wrong, but I’ll give them 3-4 months before some thug has either culled them, or they have to be rehomed. |
| Fri 13 | Our Christmas cards have arrived. They’ve turned out better than I expected. But you’ll have to wait to see them. |
| Sat 14 | After a summer hiatus, another excellent literary society online talk, hosted by yours truly. We’re getting too good at this. |
| Sun 15 | Why doesn’t it get any better? There’s always so much to do, and however hard you work you never seem to make any progress or reduce the length of the to do list. It’s almost always a case of you really need to do A urgently, but before you can do that you have to do B, and that needs C and D doing – but D can’t be completed until A is done! Arrggghhhh! |
| Mon 16 | Oh bugger! Woke up this morning with a headache and dizziness – so much so that I was slightly queasy. That scuppered accompanying N to her hospital specialist appointment. Bloody labyrinthitis. |
| Tue 17 | Rinse and repeat – although some of the soapiness has been washed out. |
| Wed 18 | It’s raining. How unusual! The Rosie Cat has just come in and she’s sparkling in the light from tiny water droplets in her fur, almost as if the kids have sprinkled her with glitter. Really a rather fetching look! |
| Thu 19 | Oh God! It’s crap IT month. First a dead scanner. Then a dead printer. And today my PC won’t start. No time to try to find out what’s happening, so I have to try to do everything from the laptop, plus the backups (on the server) which, of course, didn’t run last night. I don’t need this! |
| Fri 20 | What a nightmare week. I feel completely shell-shocked. I’d like to say I’ll have a quiet weekend, but if nothing else I need to investigate what ails the PC. First I have to extract the tin box from its corner. Lucky I had the laptop pretty much ready to roll – although I keep having to drag files off the backup server and install odd bits of software, so everything is taking extra time. But we’re getting there. |
| Sat 21 | Result! After lunch I bit the bullet and attached my wounded PC. It was refusing to boot; clearly not picking up the boot drive. Ensure everything inside is firmly plugged; and it has power OK. Swap the two drives to see if the cables are dead; or maybe the boot disk. Nope. Nothing. So I wonder if the power cable is dead; try plugging into a different socket on the power distribution. Yes! Everything works. So clearly one channel in the PC’s power supply has died; but (for now at least) the rest are OK. And we’re back in business! Job done in an hour, including recovering the updated files from my laptop. Phew! |
| Sun 22 | After all that rain and gloom the second half of the night was clear – at least it was crystal clear at 06:30 with Saturn shining really brightly in the western sky. It was, however still overcast at midnight, so we missed the display of Orionid meteors. |
| Mon 23 | What happened!? I actually managed to pick up a project rewriting web material for the literary society I’d not touched for over a year, and which should have been done ages ago. That was after I’d spent ages on IT support for the society. |
| Tue 24 | Spent half the day looking at new laptops for N and maybe a new PC for me. More money! We’re having an expensive month. Luckily we have the money – but not for long at this rate. |
| Wed 25 | Wasted so much of the day, again, looking at laptops and PCs. Nothing much usefully achieved other than the grocery order. |
| Thu 26 | So finally I managed to get our new PCs on order. Laptop for N, and a new high-spec PC for me. After this I discovered that somewhere in the IT chaos I’d lost the records for half a dozen new members from the literary society membership database. So that wasted a good hour putting it right. |
| Fri 27 | Things are definitely weird round here. I’ve never been one for dreaming a lot; I could go weeks or even months without being aware of a good dream. But recently – say the last month – that I’ve been dreaming much more than usual. Well at least much more than I am normally aware of. And it seems to be mostly before waking in the morning rather than the middle of the night. I’m not one for recording dreams, trying to store them in memory, or trying lucid dreaming, so I don’t have much of a handle on what these recent dreams contain. I just have this vague memory that they’ve all involved some bizarre synthesis of school, university and my former work – pick any two, or even all three. I cannot explain why this is happening. There’s no obvious trigger: no change of medication; I get really good scores from my CPAP machine; I don’t watch horror movies or read horror stories; I don’t eat late at night. But there must be something triggering it. It’s very odd. |
| Sat 28 | All children should be microchipped at birth. Discuss over dinner. Well we do it for our cats, dogs, horses etc., so why not our kids? And the rest of us can get a catch-up chip with our flu jab or the like. |
| Sun 29 | Evening meal: Roast chicken thighs with pork stuffing, with bubble-and-squeak du maison; followed by apple & mincemeat crumble & cream. And a bottle of very nice Greek white wine. |
| Mon 30 | It’s no bloody wonder the counrty’s in a mess. You book the guys to come and take away a pile of rubbish. Yes, they say, we’ll be there between 13:00 and 16:00. Are they? Not a chance. It’s now 19:40 and pitch dark, and they’re now supposed to be here in the next 10 minutes. Ah, door bell; they arrived as I typed at 19:45. One lad; but very efficient; here and gone in 20 minutes. Job done, apart from some sweeping up to do in daylight. Phew! |
| Tue 31 | Is it my back? Or my bowel? Or my bladder? I can’t work it out, but it’s bloody uncomfortable. I foresee another trip to the doctors. One is not amused. |