Monthly Archives: December 2021

Christmas Looming

14 Replies

Today was another of those days that drifted gently down the stream of life with scarcely a ripple.

The morning started in a moderately interesting way when we joined a traffic jam. Ten minutes later we were diverted down a side road as Police Officers directed traffic around a bus. There was a mechanic’s van, a recovery vehicle and a fire extinguisher. I couldn’t any more than that. As I say “moderately interesting”.

And that was it. We lost a medallion that someone had ordered, and deduced that we were lacking a small box. It eventually turned up under my desk, so that wasn’t a great start to the morning. I must do better.

We had  a couple with a young child in during the morning. I engaged the kid in conversation because he was becoming bored and he asked his mum why Santa was working in a coin shop. I really should trim my beard again. And lose more weight.

At home we discussed the Christmas shopping, which I really must sort out tomorrow, as it’s only 11 days to Christmas.  First I have to address the Christmas cards to my family. Every year I say I’ll slip a note in as I should get better at keeping in touch. And every year I panic at the last moment and struggle to get them in the post, once again with good intentions but no letters.

Actually it’s only ten days till Christmas as midnight has slipped by. Where did they all go?

Yes, that is me in the picture. It’s a few years ago . . .

Thoughts on Watching TV

14 Replies

I just spent an hour messing about with thoughts and coming to no real conclusion. At that point I thought I’d give myself a deadline of 20 minutes. In that take I have to write something and do all the tags and stuff so I can post before midnight. point.

\it’s a useful target and cuts out all the woolly thinking. What happened was that I watched a TV programme about social media. It was a poor programme in many respects but did give me a few things to think about, including the mixed messages being sent by a presenter who drifted from one thing to another without any real thread to it. I cancelled Facebook years ago and felt better for it. I don’t use Twitter, except to announce new posts, though I’ve had  a message coming up recently that indicates that might not be happening. I’m not really bothered and haven’t followed it up. WP, I regard as writing practice rather than social media, and that’s my lot.

The most interesting bits were the rage/jealously segments. It seems that one Tik-Tok user had his car and house burned by people who took exception to his posts. I really can’tb understand why he became so popular, but I definitely don’t understand why someone would set fire to his car. I think it’s all down to the modern desire for fairness and equality. It breeds envy. Instead of looking at a successful person and finding out how they made their success, people just moan that it’s unfair.

Life, as I was always told, is unfair. But it’s also what you make it, and if you want to make it a place of misery and envy then you are free to make that choice. It’s just that no matter how bad my life becomes, I’d rather use my time to enjoy it than moan that other people have been luckier than me, and don’t deserve their success. Strangely, the people who moan most also seem to be the ones with the least talent and work ethic. I wonder if there could be a link . . .

I’m now going to use the title of this post for a poem. Looks like I’m back in the game.

 

Simon Wilson, Nottingham Poet

Miserable Old Git, Moaning and Methotrexate

25 Replies

Julia picked up my methotrexate earlier in the week. It’s for my arthritis and acts by supressing my immune system, which is what is causing the problem. Well, that, my weight and 45 years of manual labour. There was a note on the form that came with the pills, saying that I was behind with my blood tests and they would not dispense more until I was up to date. They worry about it destroying my liver. There is no such thing as a simple drug, they all come with side effects.

Anyway, last time I had a note like that it took weeks to sort out and then a month or more to return my fingers to a reasonable condition after missing the medication. I don’t want that again.

I’m not sure if I covered this in the blog before, but over the last three months I have been arguing about it with the pharmacy and wrangling with the GP surgery to have the inaccurate note removed. I was up to date when it first appeared on the form and have remained up to date – even having two goes at the last one when the laboratory had to retest due to “technical reasons”.  I’m not sure what the “technical reasons” were, but it makes a good excuse.

I have just written an email to the surgery asking for the record to be corrected, citing my previous email on the subject (because I have now started filing all my dealings with them) and asking that they reply to confirm they have made the necessary correction.

I am now taking things more seriously, being fed up with shoddy record keeping and the rest of the things that are happening (appointments disappearing from the system, prescriptions sent to the wrong place etc).It is time to sort things out.

Meanwhile, as our Glorious Leader launches “Plan B” to divert attention from the Christmas party scandal, we have a strange situation. We can’t hold Numismatic Society meetings (twenty middle-aged men meeting to talk about coins), due to “Plan B restrictions”. Boris didn’t mention this, but that’s what the owner of the meeting room says. However, under Plan B, football matches, bars, clubs and restaurants are all still allowed to operate.

Of course, if I’d been in charge it wouldn’t have been Plan B, as Plan B lacks gravitas, being the name of a rapper and reminding me of Bela Lugosi’s last film. Even without that, there are just too many words that begin with B that could be used in a disrespectful fashion.

However, that may just be me.

Nottingham U16s

Sports, Snake Oil and a Senior Moment

21 Replies

In sports coaching, they say that it only takes two weeks to break a habit. I’ve even heard an Olympic athlete say that it isn’t self-discipline that keeps people training, it’s habit. When the kids said they wanted to take up sport I told them one thing – that I would support them but that they wouldn’t be allowed to come home from school and tell me they didn’t feel like training that night. The only acceptable way was to arrange it in advance because they had something else to do. I didn’t mind them having a social life but they had to have structure.heir training. As result, even when it meant one of them spending two hours on buses to get to training (I had to give the other one a lift somewhere else that night) we never missed a night’s training unless we’d planned to do so.

Four months ago I had more than two weeks off and I broke then habit of daily posting on WordPress. It always takes a lot more effort to establish a habit than to break it, and it’s taking more time and effort than I thought to get back into it. Same for reading WordPress, writing poetry and checking eBay. They are all broken habits that I’m finding hared to re-establish. The only habit I’ve successfully restarted is procrastination. Ironic really, that I wasted no time in starting to procrastinate once I was well.

The difficulty in trying to re-establish a good habit is covered in the material I’ve had from the NHS on-line weight loss programme. You get a choice of several organisations which will provide support in your efforts to lose weight and keep it off. The one I selected seems to give off many of the vibes I associate with  snake oil salesmen. But that, of course, may just be me. Or it might be that I didn’t need a team of bright and bouncy people to tell me that the way to lose weight is to eat less. I knew that without watching a video.

Meanwhile, regarding “Senior Moments”, I got up this morning with the intention of going for a blood test, checked the time, and realised that the test is next Wednesday. I really must get a diary and start writing things down.

 

Ladybirds

24 Replies

That’s what Julia found today, clustered in a gap in the polytunnel door frame. I thought they were hardy tomatoes when she first showed me the picture on her phone, but they turned out to be ladybirds. I don’t have the patience to count spots but she seems to have  a few different sorts.

Sometimes I miss the active life outdoors, seeing nature and getting lots of healthy exercise. Other times, I don’t. There’s a lot to be said for sitting inside. It isn’t exactly warm in the shop, but at least I can feel my fingers and toes. That wasn’t always the case when working outside in winter, as I recall.

That’s why I’m cooking tea – to atone for my wimpish ways in working indoors. Nothing special, just pasties with cauliflower cheese and nobby greens (that’s Brussel’s Sprouts if you don’t live round Nottingham).

The timer just went. I think that means it’s ready.

Here’s the picture again, partly  for symmetry and partly to cover up the short post.

 

 

 

Starts with Soup and ends with Poetry

22 Replies

I’m writing this in the last hour of 1st December, and will post it minutes after midnight to make sure i get something written for what is currently “tomorrow”.

Soup first. I was wrong about the quantity. We had it for lunch then used the remains in the vegetable stew and dumplings we had for tea. I had mine with lashings of brown sauce, so it wasn’t as healthy as it could have been.

The green soup turned out brown, which turned to an off-putting greenish khaki once I applied the blender. I’m not sure which I prefer. It has a distinct salty taste, turning to broccoli. I’m not sure why as I only used one stock cube and no other seasoning. Apart from that, it’s OK. The colour, I think, can be traced back to me softening the onions until they turned brown – heat too high and concentration not switched on. It should be good for three days, and it might take me two of those days to work up the enthusiasm to eat it. I have seen that6 colour before and it is not usually associated with pleasant things.

Writing next. I had two poems accepted by Obsessed with Pipework. It’s a mixed blessing. I’m glad to have the poems accepted but it means that I now have nothing out with editors. This is a situation I feel I should remedy but it’s also a weight off my shoulders.

Marmalade Hoverfly

Marmalade Hoverfly

Over the last couple of years I have allowed my writing to reflect the editors I send it to, rather than what I want to write. That’s a good thing to do if you want to make a living as a freelance writer but I’ve left it a bit late for that and I really write for pleasure and relaxation.  I have proved to myself that I can write to an acceptable standard and I have proved that I can bounce back from rejection.

If I now change down a gear, it’s because I want to, not because I’m making excuses. Yes, at the back of my mind I do have an ambition to see my name on the spine of a poetry collection (or maybe more than one) but that is not as important as the pleasure I get from writing.

It’s an ego thing. Is my poetry really that good that it justifies cutting down a tree? Probably not. (I added the “probably” to give me an escape route if I ever succumb and do publish one). I don’t, to be honest, work hard enough to be able to produce a book and admire people who do.

This is very much in the area of “Writer Biographies” and blogs. A lot of them list the author’s educational achievements from forty years ago, their glittering careers and a long list of publications. It’s very dull and it isn’t really a picture of who they are (unless they really are  a pompous dullard).  I, as you know, am not overly burdened by education, achievement or success so  I couldn’t compete with them if I wanted to, but I promise you that if I could compete with them, I wouldn’t. What I have been gives some insight into what I am today, but what I am really concerned with is what I will be tomorrow. Same with my writing. Everything I have published is faulty and my ambition is to publish something tomorrow that is less faulty.

Lake District – a better photographer would have noted which bit . . .

The photos are a pork pie, a hoverfly on a poppy and a load of hills next to a lake. That’s just to remind myself that lots of things are (a) more important than poetry and (b) will still be around long after I have gone.

Soup

32 Replies

I made more soup this week, using a 1kg pack of frozen casserole mix from TESCO. It comes ready chopped and by the time it has been left to thaw in the fridge for 2 days all the veg is nice and soft and doesn’t take as lot of cooking. It cost £1, which is probably expensive compared to buying the veg separately, but cheap when you consider the time it saved me chopping and cleaning up.

Recipe: Boil the bag of veg with stock and seasonings, liquidise, dilute, eat. Or drink. We had a discussion at work about that – do you eat soup or drink it? My view is that you eat it if you use a spoon, but drink it if you sup it directly out of a receptacle. Anyone have any other views on what is a long-running topic in the shop? (We tend to avoid politics and religion in favour of coin design, soup consumption and the various roadworks in the city).

It came out a little bit beige, due, I think, to the presence of potato and swede and the low quantity of carrot. Apart from that, the basic soup turned out well. The seasoning left a little to be desired as I used garlic, ginger, lime juice and too much chilli. I must buy lemons, as the lime isn’t quite right. I must also restrain my tendency to add a bit more chilli. It never looks to be enough. However, a little goes a long way and soup is supposed to be nutritious rather than a test of fortitude.

Quantity? Well, I had a soup flask of it for lunch yesterday (a bowl and a half or thereabouts) and we had two bowls of it last night for tea. We will be having it for lunch today and for lunch tomorrow (I’m trying to cut more bread out). After that I think we should be about finished, though lunch on Friday is a possibility.

Tips for next time – only use half the bag, add a carrot and use less chilli. Possibly add turmeric, which is always good to bring the colour up.

Making soup always reminds me of the soup sessions we used to do on the farm. I used to do one with schools making vegetable soup from a supermarket bag. Out of a dozen kids it was rare that you could get more than one or two to taste the soup.  They claimed to eat soup at home, but didn’t trust anything that had been made in front of them from vegetables, stock cubes and water. They preferred “proper soup” from a can or sachet.