Monthly Archives: April 2019

Becoming Pollyanna

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In fairness, I should have added one small bit of good news to yesterday’s post.

Despite a couple of lapses of memory in taking my anticoagulants I managed to pass the blood test, with a result of 2.4 against a target of 2.5. I may not be getting any better at remembering the tablets, but I am getting better at correcting things.

That means I have three weeks until the next test.

I also managed to get in and out without incurring car parking charges, so that was another bonus.

Sometimes you need to look for the little chinks of light.

The Dying of the Light

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I have just finished eating a miserable, boring and tasteless meal. Low salt baked beans, low fat oven chips and cheap burgers. Even a large spoonful of chilli jam couldn’t bring it to life. This is, I suppose it’s the cost of being healthy.

Not for the first time, I have found myself pondering if life is worth the trouble if you have to extend it unnaturally by eating pap. In fact, after my last few weeks I’ve been asking myself the same question in general, regardless of the quality of my diet.

Even having another haibun published hasn’t cheered me up.  Generally I like to mention my successes in posts, smile modestly and simper a bit whilst feeling mildly smug. This morning I just looked at it, saw all the imperfections and uttered a small sigh.

Click here if you want to read it. But don’t feel you have to, if you are here to hear me moaning about life just read on. For a good poem, click here.

I wonder if Dylan Thomas ever looked at his poems and uttered a small sigh.

Today’s annoyance in the shop was a gas man, who insisted on walking round the shop with a meter, checking for gas leaks. We don’t have any gas leaks. This may be because we don’t have any gas, but we had to have it done anyway in case they were leaking next door.

Tomorrow they will be digging up the road in front of the shop looking for a gas leak. I’m not sure if I mentioned it last time they dug the road up looking for a gas leak. It was about a month ago. There ought to be a rule that if they have to do the job twice they don’t get paid for the first one.

As if that wasn’t bad enough they have just started major gas works, with road closures, on our way to work. The signs say it will take six weeks. It didn’t cause too many problems this morning, but it’s school holidays so things are always easier on the roads. The real test will be in two weeks when the schools go back.

When you’re growing up your parents never tell you about days like this.

A Difficult Day

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There were 21 parcels to pack this morning according to eBay, but in reality there were only 15 because six of the orders had come in on Saturday afternoon and we’d already packed them.

Fifteen is still enough.

When I arrived, via a blood test and McDonald’s, there was a telephone van outside the shop but he drove off as I unlocked. I went in, set everything going, and settled down to do the questions. There were five questions, one of which didn’t merit an answer. I wasn’t able to answer the other four so that was soon done.

Then I listed the items that needed packing, reached for the first one and started to pack. I pressed the button to find the address, and the internet died.

When the boss arrived ten minutes later I was busy switching off, restarting and prodding the reset button with a paperclip. And muttering.

He revealed that there was a telephone engineer outside again. On enquiring about our service, we were told he couldn’t possibly be to blame as he didn’t know which wire was ours.

Neither of us found this terribly convincing as any idiot with a tool box is capable of causing disruption, regardless of knowledge.

We struggled through the next hour using the boss’s phone and an unsecured BT account we found whilst searching.. It was slow and tedious.

Then, as if by magic, the internet returned. We looked out of the door and found that the telephone engineer had gone.

That’s a coincidence isn’t it?

Despite this we managed to get all the parcels packed and despatched. We also managed to serve a rush of customers, who started coming in as soon as the internet flickered back to life. It was almost as if they knew we had things to catch up on.

At least I didn’t have time to be bored.

In the afternoon I got rid of four bags of books, coughed a lot at the dust and got told off by Julia.

It’s been a difficult day.

The picture is a Great Tit in the Mencap Garden. There were several about with nesting material in their beaks when I was down on Friday. As usual, I couldn’t get a decent shot so this one, with no nesting material, will have to do. I’m going to try again tomorrow.

A Few Photos

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Here are some photos from earlier in the week. The year is shaping up nicely, though I’m a little worried that the papers are predicting another Beast from the East with temperatures below freezing. My only comfort is that they’ve been reporting on it all winter and it hasn’t happened yet.

Spring in the Mencap Garden
Spring in the Mencap Garden
Spring in the Mencap Garden

The primulas are doing well. As is the blossom. If only the photography was up to scratch.

Spring in the Mencap Garden
Spring in the Mencap Garden
Spring in the Mencap Garden

Here we have some landscaping features – a newly donated chimney pot, the newly painted table and the newly painted log. There’s a lot of new stuff happening in the garden just at the moment, as you may have guessed from the unimaginative titles.

Chimney Pot at Wilford
Heart on a log
The newly painted table

Finally, I’ve thrown in a magpie. I like magpies, and they sit still long enough for me to get a shot.

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Magpie – so black it’s actually blue in places

A Mind Runs Riot…

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After looking at the website about the burger in space yesterday, I had a conversation in the shop today and experienced one of those moments when everything becomes clear.

One of the customers was telling us about his planned cycle ride to Skegness and back next weekend. It’s about 180 miles.

That was when I asked if he’d like to do it to help Julia raise funds for the polytunnel cover. I thought if he’d do a ride for her I could organise the fund-raising and we could raise a good portion of the money. I thought it was a good idea. He didn’t. But it got me thinking.

One of my thoughts is that he can kiss goodbye to any thought of future discounts…

My next thought is that we could try for sponsorship for sending a novelty carrot into space. Fundraising is a dog eat dog world and you need to go out there with a big idea. I’ve just looked at an internet guide to sending a balloon into space.

After looking at the cost of cameras and satnavs, I’ve decided not to pursue this. For one thing, you need to buy decent ones if they are going to be useful, and for another, when I tried out the flight path planning software the results weren’t encouraging. It depends on the weather, but if I’m going to spend £300 on electrical gear I’d rather not dump it in the North Sea.

If we set it going, for instance, from the Peak District at 9.30 on Monday morning, it will cross the country, burst at 80,000 feet over the North Sea and drift back by parachute to land just inland from Donna Nook, where we go to see the seals. It’s a bit close for comfort.

At that point I started thinking of rockets. I can’t think of a way of  raising money with rockets, but it looks good fun.

I found a link that offers rocket assisted ash scattering, but haven’t found one that has fund-raising possibilities. Yet.

No pictures – I have to take Number Two Son to work.

See you tomorrow.

 

I’m Back!

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Having said that, I’m not sure I have much to say.

Life is very boring, I still have a head full of snot (though a lot of it is leaking out as I type) and I haven’t slept properly for two days, as I start wheezing and coughing as soon as I lie down.

None of this compares to being seriously ill, walking for hours to get water or being homeless in a war zone, but it’s human nature to stress your own problems and ignore the problems of other people.

We’re getting someone to come and do some roofing for us soon. It needs some routine maintenance and the gutters need doing. It’s going to cost about £300, which I don’t really want to spend. On the other hand, my roof is still sitting on top of my house and is in no danger of being spread all over town by an airstrike or a tornado.

After writing that I had a look at the story of a man from Sheffield who sent a burger into space on a weather balloon.

As global warming scares the life out of me and our government busies itself with breaking democracy I’m glad there are still people with time for pointless buffoonery. Strangely, it seems other people are doing similar things.

It’s hard to follow something like that. My lunch of quinoa with salad and mixed beans looks virtuous, but rather dull, compared to a pie in space.

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Still no Charger

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Just another short post and a recycled picture because I can’t upload pictures without a card reader or USB port. I used to do it for eBay using something called File Transfer Protocol. I can remember the name and the fact it took ages, but I can’t for the life of me remember how it worked.

The charger should be here tomorrow. I can’t tell you why, because Julia says I’m being ungrateful.

It has taken three adults to produce this state of affairs.

If I’d done it you would currently be reading a longer, better illustrated post. Least said, soonest mended, as they say.

I eavesdropped on an interesting conversation this morning. Someone who packs a lot of coins for banks was complaining that they are still having to use plastic bags despite everyone trying to cut down on plastic use. They were very indignant about it.

What made me laugh was that only five minutes earlier they had been comparing holidays, and the necessary long haul flights, they had taken recently. This included South America and a tour of the islands of the Indian Ocean.

To be fair, crying would also be a valid response.

Today’s recycled photos are cacti.

I’m hoping to be back on my laptop tomorrow.

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Succulents

 

Another Short Post

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Still no charger, so it’s another quick post. Hopefully the new charger will be here tomorrow. If not, I have made sure I know my password and will have to access WP from work.

Day off today. Went for drive to do a few errands. Beautiful day. Loads of lovely photo opportunities which I didn’t have time for.

This afternoon it went grey then gave way to hail, then snow, then wintry showers. So many words for frozen water. Inuit take note.

At that point my battery ran out. My foresight in writing down my passwords has proved useful and I am now continuing on Julia’s old netbook. It’s slow, the screen is small and I just spent five minutes trying to clear a random full stop which turned out to be a speck on the screen. However, I am grateful that it has a working charger.

I was caught out by the shower this afternoon so I’m feeling cold and miserable at the moment. I may have to take a remedial nap.

Hopefully I will have the charger tomorrow. Until then, I will probably be silent as it’s surprisingly difficult adapting to the technology of a netbook.

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Daffodils

Just a Quick Note

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Following my run of bad luck, I now have no charger for my laptop. I’m currently sharing it so I didn’t try to use it until ten minutes ago. At that point Number Two Son informed me that it wasn’t working.

That leaves me with 30 minutes battery life, hence the briefness of the post.

Hopefully a panic order for next day delivery from Amazon will produce a replacement tomorrow.

It never rains but it pours…

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Apple Blossom

 

New, but Not Improved

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Sorry about the lack of activity in the last few days. It seemed like I just went out like a light. I fell asleep in my chair on Friday night around 9 pm and didn’t waken until 3 am, despite the efforts of my family to wake me and make me go to bed. By that time I’d missed both my blogging deadline and my time for taking anticoagulants.

After that I developed a new snivelling cold, multiple aches in the joints and a need for more sleep. I managed to get to work on Saturday, including running the shop by myself on Saturday afternoon (as the other two sloped off for afternoon meeting of the Banknote Society) and slept all day Sunday.

I’m now re-launching the refreshed, but completely unimproved, new me.

It’s a modest relaunch because I’m also cooking roasted Mediterranean vegetables and, at 10.15, will be off to collect Number Two Son from work. This gives me twenty minutes to complete the cooking, serve it up, eat it (quickly) and get going.

It doesn’t give me much time for composing literary masterpieces.

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Nickalls the fencer in action – we just sold his medals (as seen in the featured image) to a collector in China. He was the first fencer to win two titles in one year with the Universities Athletic Union – Foil and Sabre in 1935.