Monthly Archives: March 2018

The featured image is a picture of my lunch – quinoa, chia, pumpkin seeds, beans, chickpeas, sweetcorn, dill and spring onions, plus a mango and chilli dressing. Since I actually read the instructions on the quinoa and found out that you can use it straight from the packet lunches have become very simple – tear open a few packets, open a few cans, chop a smidgen of veg, mix. It’s very easy.

Lunch left me full and feeling virtuous. What it didn’t do was leave me feeling like I’d had a good meal.

I suppose that persistence will eventually pay off.

Before that I’d been to hospital for the regular blood-letting. It had been a bit thick last week and they decided another test was needed. If they had to rush about before work, deal with car parking then queue for a slot before being stabbed in the arm multiple times they might not be so keen on all these tests. As the needle slid in through the bruise left by last week’s test, all these things come to mind.

Then, to add insult to injury, the bleeding wouldn’t stop.

They put the signs up on the new shop today – my first day of proper work in the new shop. It’s looking good, though if you look hard enough you can see that fat bloke with the camera who gets in so many of my shots.

Collectors World, Wollaton Road, Nottingham

The final highlight of the day was sorting a thousand crowns for an export order, including brandishing an eraser in the vicinity of a few of them to make minor improvements. It’s a funny old world…

Charles and Diana Crowns – a marital mistake enshrined in numismatic form

Charles and Diana Crowns – a marital mistake enshrined in numismatic form. It’s like me having a coin struck to commemorate my diet.

A Day Off, and a Fish Pie.

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We had a telephone call from a this morning. It wasn’t the normal one asking if we’d pass control of our computer over to a complete stranger who claimed to be from Microsoft. It wasn’t even asking if we’d ever had PPI. It was from Severn Trent Water telling us that we could expect lower than normal water pressure as the freezing weather had caused a number of bursts, and repairs would take a few days.

The roads are breaking up in places too, after just a few days of ice and snow last week. I assume that they build their roads better in places where they have snow, because at his rate we’d have no roads at all if we had a full winter of bad weather.

However, we still managed to fit in a Full English and a visit to a jeweller. It was quite a good morning.

The afternoon involved housework and wasn’t quite so good. Due to a cock up on the catering front, as Geoffrey Palmer used to say in The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin, we now have enough fish pie to last us two meals. This always happens when Julia decides to “help” by shopping on the way home from work. We already had plenty of ingredients, and we had fish pie on Saturday. Julia cooked it and I assumed she’d used all the stuff she’d brought.

She hadn’t, but I didn’t know how much extra she had left over until I opened the fridge tonight. We’re having fish pie tonight. And tomorrow.

Fish Pie

Fortunately we like fish pie.

End of The Beast

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It was definitely wet this morning, with a few drops of rain in the air as we walked to the car and puddles where ice had recently been.

The temperature is now a couple of degrees above freezing and I’m hoping that his will continue. If it freezes at this point it will be like being in the middle of the biggest ice rink in the world. The forecast for the next week is rain and rising temperatures. I imagine that the rivers will rise and we will move seamlessly from snow to flooding as our topic of conversation.

It was noticeable that ebay sales were down in the shop over the last week, something we attribute to a general feeling of misery in snowbound areas. The post has been a bit haphazard over the last week or so, with people not able to get to the post to send me things, and our post office not getting a collection sent out when the van failed to show up. I also had no post at home for two days, followed by a big wad yesterday. None of it was actually important, or even interesting.

In the shop we still saw quite a few customers, both buying and selling, though not on Thursday. On Thursday only the staff turned up, and at least one of them would rather have been at home. I still haven’t really got the hang of this employment thing.

By Friday it picked up and Saturday was back to normal. Hopefully ebay will pick up now.

Modern Life and Poor TV

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Over the years the British TV industry has made a lot of great TV. So has the American TV industry. Sadly, the people who plan what programmes to play have decided not to use any of that output tonight. Julia has gone to bed, as we are up at 5.00 tomorrow morning, and after washing up, making her sandwiches and having a snack, I’m at a loose end.

I could go to bed, but if I spend too much time there my back begins to play up, so I’m resisting the idea for a few more hours. This is probably a sign that we need a new mattress. It’s also a sign that I could spend a little money and make my life more comfortable. That’s not something I’ve thought of before. It’s probably a sign of the wisdom that supposedly comes with age, but it’s been a long time coming.

I could also do some work, as I have a number of things tasks piling up, but you know how it is. Sloth and procrastination, even in the company of poor TV, are preferable to work, even if that work is only googling stuff and making lists. It’s like sugar and fat – you know lentils and carrots are better for you, put you still reach for a biscuit in preference to salad. Or is that just me?

Inanimate objects, meanwhile, continue to make my life complicated.

My shoes have decided to express solidarity with my trousers and make my life a misery. The right shoe has started leaking. I’m hopeful that if the snow goes soon I may get another nine months out of them.

The problem with shoes is that my left foot is nearly a size larger than the other. In order to achieve a decent fit I have to stretch the left shoe a little, then wear it in. Sometimes this takes several months, and can be quite uncomfortable on account of the bunion that is starting to develop. By the time I have everything as I like it the shoes start to wear out.

I’ve tried getting round it by buying bigger shoes, but it’s hard to find size 13 in the shops, and it can be difficult walking when your right foot is rattling about in a massive shoe.

As if this isn’t enough, the car warning lights have started winking at me again. The left sidelight is devoting itself to inducing an intermittent fault. I’m not even sure why I need a sidelight with all the others, but it seems important enough to warrant a warning light of its own.

This is one of the complexities of modern life. In the old days bulbs just used to blow and you replaced them at MOT time or when a policeman pulled you over.

So Much Stuff, So Little Time

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The Royal Mint has just released a series of 10 pence coins featuring the 26 letters of the alphabet, each one representing a feature of Britishness.

Like so many modern coins, they could well have been designed in an afternoon by a group of kids. They don’t show a great flair for design, and some of them show a somewhat hazy grasp of Britishness. Given half an hour I’m sure I could come up with a better set.

We haven’t had any phone calls about them yet, but they aren’t released until next Monday so there is still time. It seems that they will be making 100,000 of each design, which is quite low in mintage terms. However, if you read another article, they are doing a million of each and will make more in years to come. Another paper is already reporting on rarity and values. Looks like the misinformation has already started…

When not applying my waning brain power to balancing on ice and learning about 10 pence coins I’ve been looking up details of snow clearance and winter preparations in other countries.

I now know the snowiest city in the world, and it’s not where I thought it would be. I was thinking Canada/Russia/USA. It’s actually Aomori City in Japan with 312 inches a year. That’s taller than four tall men. Even the 10th city on the list – Buffalo, NY, has 95 inches of snow a year. Some years in Nottingham we don’t have much more than a couple of hard frosts. Even this year I doubt we’ve had more than 6 inches in total, and this has been a Very Snowy Year.

I also know there’s a shortage of snowplough drivers in Maine, that they have special facilities to store winter tyres in Sweden and that last November Chicago deployed 210 snowploughs to clear a light fall of snow. There are only 450 snowploughs in the whole of the UK.

And finally, I know that although we always complain about winter disruption, we would complain even louder if we had to pay for winter tyres and extra snowploughs.

Did I Mention the Snow?

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It snowed overnight. The temperature was minus 3.5 and the roads were tricky because with many people staying at home there weren’t enough cars to clear the slush.

Number Two son rang to check that his elderly parents were OK. I’m not sure if I’m pleased he’s worried about us, or whether I’m annoyed about becoming old.

Fortunately things were better by the time I went home, and the journey was quicker than usual due to the lack of cars. Nothing is ever completely bad. It got worse when I arrived at Sainsbury’s as the car park was not cleared and several cars appeared to have been abandoned rather than parked. Two of the “abandoned” cars were put there while I was inside, so it was purely bad driving – one of them being parked lengthwise across three disabled spaces.

Often it isn’t the weather, it’s idiots in cars that cause the problem. Can’t say too much after yesterday’s exploit, but the less cars we have on the road the fewer problems we will have. Unfortunately that also means we have more slush and, consequently, more problems. It’s a tricky balance.

It was still below zero when I arrived home and I expect that the side roads will be icily unpleasant again in the morning.

I think that’s enough about snow for now.

We seem to be going quite fast in the clip below, but I promise you we weren’t.

New Day, Old Photos

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After being side-tracked by ebay I finally got round to adding the photos to yesterday’s post. Then I had the problem of letting people know that there were now photos on the post, as they are unlikely just go back on the off chance.

I was going to add them on this post and refer people back to the post. Unfortunately I forgot. As a result I’m writing this post to refer people back (in case they want to look at photos of disappointing snow and a woman fighting a bird feeder). So that people don’t feel I’m wasting their time I’m going to add a selection of photographs.

The featured image is the poppies made from plastic bottles. They are still going strong, despite four months in miserable weather.

Garden Gnome at Wilford, Notts

I thought the garden gnome was reasonably topical.

This memory problem isn’t an isolated one, I also forgot what my plans for tea were. Having agreed with Julia that I would make Welsh Rarebit, as we still weren’t hungry after our large breakfast, I went through to the kitchen, where the smell of cooking reminded me I’d put potatoes in to bake ready for…er…

I couldn’t actually remember what I’d been planning. Fortunately, baked potatoes and Welsh Rarebit seem to go together quite well, and with the addition of the remains of the gammon from last week passed for a meal. Don’t worry, we also had fruit to make it a bit more nutritious.

Puffin at Bempton Cliffs

I threw in a Puffin photo because everyone like Puffins.

Tomorrow I’ll be throwing some vegetables into Monday’s stew so we will be a bit healthier. I’m planning on a few lentils too. It should be virtuous, even if it isn’t good.

It’s quinoa salad tomorrow too. If it’s true what they say about grains and salad and vegetables I’m going to be positively bouncing with energy tomorrow and stacked to the earlobes with vitamins.

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Life after the Care Farm