Monthly Archives: April 2024

The Day in Retrospect

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It’s 16.05. I have booked a blood test, decided which walk-in centre I will go to for my COVID booster and written a blog post. I have caught up with some WP reading, skimmed the news and made lunch. Earlier today I spent two hours in the back room of a shop drinking tea. It’s not an impressive list of activity and I really should have done better. Specifically, I should have sorted more books and started making some lists of things I need to do before moving.

However, I’m now going to run into the kitchen and make it look untidy so Julia thinks I’ve been doing things.

As I wrote that, she rang. It’s as if we are linked by some cosmic bond. I confess to laziness and she picks up on it from miles away, rings, asking if I have been cooking.

“Yes.” I said.

“No you haven’t.”

How does she know that? Can she read my thoughts at a distance? Is she bugging my computer? Or does experience lead her to suspect I have sat here all day and done nothing?

There’s something uncanny about the woman.

Later this week I am going to start selling on eBay. I have a lot of low value rubbish lying around and it will probably be better to sell it than to give it to a charity shop. I will do a test run and see. If it works I will carry on. If it doesn’t, I can change to Plan B.

Plan A – sell it on eBay.

Plan B – don’t sell it on eBay.

There are obviously a few of the finer details that I need to work on, but that will do for a start.

A lot of stuff to sort through . . .

Variety of Weather

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Around lunchtime yesterday Julia remarked how nice the weather was compared to the forecast.

This morning at 5.20 it was lovely and bright, though I didn’t really appreciate it as I hobbled to the bathroom with half-closed eyes.

At 7.10, as I sat on the side of the bed wrestling with my socks, the rain was positively throwing itself at the bedroom windows.

First of the Marigolds

Then it brightened up a bit, then the hail started. It’s now 12.07. The sky is blue, the wind is cold and the weather is dry.

On the way home, after dropping Julia at work, I noticed that wind has stripped most of the magnolias, but a laburnum has started to blossom. it’s a bit early, but so were the magnolias.

It’s 12.14 now (I’m not writing slowly, I just got sidetracked reading about laburnums). They sky is grey, rain is tapping on the window, and only the cold wind remains constant.

Sorry, I took a bit of a diversion there. That’s the trouble with the internet. I’ve read a number of trivial news stories and noticed two more lots of rain. I’ve also made and eaten lunch.It’s now 14.14. That’s a coincidence, I just happened to look at the clock on the computer and thought it was worth mentioning. Or was it that I subconsciously saw that and decided to look. You never know, do you?

Red Kite

 

Here’s a view of Ospreys, and here are some Peregrine Falcons. The Ospreys are on Camera 2 and the Peregrines are still neat and tidy. As the season progresses they gradually amass a pile of dismembered pigeons and a variety of flies. I’d hate them outside my window. I’ve just been watching the raindrops on the Nottingham camera. Then I looked up to watch the raindrops on my windows. Amazing, isn’t it? All that awesome nature and technology and all I can do is discuss the weather.

Here are more Cathedral cameras if you want them.

Buzzard

Of Books and Battles . . .

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So many things to write about, and very little actually written.

This seems to be the story of my life. I actually settled down and finished two short articles for the Numismatic Society Facebook page. They took ten months, most of which was procrastination. The second stage was to piece things together slowly, followed by editing and thinking. Or, in other words, self-deception and procrastination. Then I finished them off in an evening. That’s it. Ten months wasting time and an evening of work. If you can call sitting at a keyboard work.

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

Somehow, the decluttering process has ground to a halt and I seem to have done little apart from make the house more cluttered.It is one of life’s ironies how this happens. Tomorrow all the old and damaged books that aren’t wanted by charity shops will be off to waste paper. It is time to be ruthless. Most of them should have gone years ago, but they came to me in various ways and I didn’t have the heart to do it. Now, when it’s a case of them or me, I am finally developing the necessary killer instinct. Nobody wants books on fifty year old sales techniques. My Dad didn’t want them, which is how I ended up with them. I don’t want them but somehow they mutated from being old books to being part of my life. It’s stupid really, and probably reveals more about my mental state than my reading habits. Just because you remember things from childhood doesn’t mean you hve to keep them. After all, I remember polio, but I wouldn’t want it.

I actually tripped over a pile of books a couple of nights ago. I manged to grab a chair and avoided an actual fall, but if it’s war they want, it’s war they can have.

I’m going to put the kettle on, open Fahrenheit 451 and plan a surprise attack on . . .

. . . well, it wouldn’t be a surprise if I told you, would it?

Stack of books burning

Sleeping . . .

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My life, at the moment, is like a science fiction film – I keep waking to find that significant amounts of time have disappeared.

It happened a few days ago when suddenly realised I hadn’t posted for several days. Then it happened again when another couple of days went missing. I know I was around as I wrote three paragraphs for a new post. Unfortunately, due to the nature of time, they aren’t relevant now as the “yesterday” they refer to is now “the day before yesterday” and to go through it all amending timings and using the correct tenses for things is more than I can enthuse myself to do. Fortunately, with it being in my normal rambling style, it’s no great loss to literature.

However, compared to this afternoon, this is nothing. This afternoon, having arrived home around 1.30 and sat down with a book to read about eels and ponder the progress of my afternoon, I regained consciousness three and  a half hours later to the sound of Julia’s key in the lock.

My afternoon, which had been meant to include a light lunch,  a little cookery, two phone calls and some note taking for an article I’m thinking of writing, turned out to be a blank interlude. I hadn’t even felt tired, so I’m not clear how I switched off so completely. I’m hoping it is to do with my urological problem, and the numerous associated nocturnal bathroom excursions. If that can be fixed fairly soon it will be a help.

I remember the three months of blissful, undisturbed sleep I had after my last visit to Urology. It came at the cost of tubes and bags (I didn’t even know there were “day bags” and “night bags” until then) but it did involve unbroken sleep so it was worth it. Well, almost unbroken sleep. There were a few nights when the tubes kinked, or I woke up tangled in the tubes, or, once, after a night of unrestrained tea drinking, I woke around 6am to find the bag was full and everything was backing up . . .

If it isn’t to do with this, it may be due to another medical condition and after looking several up (cyberchondria strikes again) I’ve decided that I don’t want any of them.

Photo by FOX on Pexels.com

 

 

 

 

And suddenly . . .

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Sheep, as far as the eye can see . . .

. . . it’s three days since I posted.

It just seemed to happen. It’s not that I’m short of things to talk about, just the opposite in fact, but I just have trouble sorting my thoughts out. At the back of my mind there is the thought that I could be blogging thousands of words a day instead of the (intermittent) 250 I set as my target.

One of the things I have been thinking about is the many opportunities to work for no reward. I was browsing a website where a writer, who already seems to have a well-paid job was offering their literary services and directing people to the recommendations of various bodies about fair pay for artists. This person was active in education, which I always find ironic.

Lambs, everybody loves lambs.

When we used to host students on the farm we were paid, grudgingly, £5 per student. It couldn’t be more than that, we were told, because the students couldn’t afford it – the college wasn’t even paying. For that they had at least twelve hours of input from us, plus insurance, hot drinks, materials and access to animals, and paid us £50. The college, meanwhile, was spending millions on new buildings.

They wrote to us at the time offering their expertise on a consultancy basis. It was £75 per person per hour.

I demonstrate the secret of my success in Egg and Spoon racing

Words definitely do not fail me at this point, but I won’t use the ones that I have in mind. I wanted to reply that if they wanted to carry on using our facilities they would have to pay two staff for six hours each – a total of £900 compared to the £50 they were actually paying.

I was not allowed to send that reply.

They also sent us a Modern Slavery Declaration to sign, as we were one of their “suppliers”.  So we didn’t just get paid a pittance, we were expected to fill out paperwork to justify ourselves. Ironic again, you may think, that they were so concerned about modern slavery whilst sitting in an office wearing clothes produced by child labour and intent on obtaining our services for next to nothing.

Their staff didn’t even come prepared. We had to provide lunch for one of them, who assumed their would be shops in the village, and on another occasion one reached over my shoulder as I was working at my desk and took one of my pens.

So much to say, so little time . . .

Cute kid or spawn of the devil?

The Promised Second Post of the Day

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Several years ago I was a member of the Poetry Society. The poetry in The Poetry Review was a bit highbrow for me, and I’m not very sociable so the constant emails from the local group were a bit irritating. This was particularly so as they circulated my email address to every other member of the group, which resulted in some spam. It wasn’t a massive problem but I could have done without it.

Eventually, after disappearing without trace when I entered the National Competition (members got a second entry free), I sent some submissions to the magazine. Well, you have to try, don’t you? I was rejected. I didn’t mind that, I’ve been rejected plenty of times. I did slightly mind the tone of the rejection, though I’ve been rejected in a patronising manner more than once. I’m sure it will happen again, particularity in a field where many practitioners have two or three degrees.

What I did mind was the suggestion, contained in a link, that I might like to make use of the Poetry Society’s  editing service. I can’t remember how much it used to cost, but it wasn’t the cost that annoyed me – it was the inappropriate nature of rejecting poems and then trying to sell the services of the society.

Much the same thing happened today. A magazine that turned me down a few weeks ago has just written. I can, it seems, send them £3 and they will send me the title of the poem they were interested in. And next month, if I send another £12 they will tell me why it was better than my other poems, give me their thoughts on it and, possibly, advice on developing it. They left the £12 until the end.

It may well be that I need to take advice, but it’s the manner in which it’s offered. Plus, to be honest, I have had some good advice on haibun from various editors, who have done it all free of charge. Some of them are very successful and have multiple collections published, so it’s good advice.

And that’s what I want to moan about.

Sorry if it seems ungracious to editors, but after one from a haibun magazine spent several emails on suggesting improvements (two major and several smaller ones) the other one suggesting that I should pay £3 just to find out which was their preferred poem, followed by £12 more for a few thoughts, hit a raw nerve.

I know they have costs to cover. I’m in three societies, have subscriptions to five magazine regularly buy single issues of others and buy about half a dozen poetry books a year, so I’m trying to spread a little money around. However, I’m sure that haibun magazines have just the same costs as the ones trying to charge for advice.

My Orange Parker Pen

My Day in Vegetables

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The day comes, the day goes. In the kitchen I cut carrots, potatoes and parsnips, slice leeks and spring greens and consider if I can force more vegetables into my diet. I have already had blueberries and raspberries in my porridge and had beans on toast for lunch. That comes to eight, against a target  of five a day, so I decide I have done enough.

It is a confusing time of year. My head tells me it is five pm, but the clocks, having gone forward last week, tell me it is six pm. Sometimes, despite all the clocks, instinct still governs my thinking. We still haven’t worked out why the clock on the Tv is still an hour behind as all other devices have set themselves to the new time. Perhaps the TV, like me, prefers the old ways. Viewing was, as I recall, much simpler when we had two black and white channels. Then there were three, and then we had colour.

After that, the floodgates opened. Four channels, five channels, daytime TV . . .

I could, I suppose, put sweet potatoes in with the roast vegetables, but if I do that it will have almost exactly the same ingredients as last night’s vegetable stew. This isn’t a problem for two meals in a row but as tomorrow’s evening meal is going to be vegetable soup it could be. The soup, you see, will be the blended leftovers from the stew. There are many complexities in life, and menu planning on a budget is one that gets little notice. If TV journalists and politicians were forced to work for minimum wage I’m sure we would see many more stories about this sort of thing.

Anyway, I’m off to finish cooking tea. I will probably come back for a second post later as i have something to moan about, and Julia has had to listen to me moaning all day.

Oddly shaped, but grown with love

 

 

Narcissi

Schindler’s Lift

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Spring in the Mencap Garden

It was my six monthly Rheumatology review this morning. It all went well. They are keeping me on 6 monthly reviews as my right forefinger (despite having mainly recovered) is still a little swollen and sore but apart from that, all is well. It would have been different if I’d gone last week, but today, I was fine. I will just have to be careful.

Using the lift in the Treatment Centre, I noticed it was made by a company called Schindler. hence the title.

The actual experience went very well. I drove down, anticipating there would be plenty of parking under the Treatment Centre at 8.30, and there was. I was booked in by 8.45, seen at 8.50 and was out and passing the shop by 9.15. I could actually have gone to work, but having arranged the day off (which is only a half day on Friday)  I decided to return home with sausage and egg McMuffins and surprise Julia (who is on holiday this week).

Spring in the Mencap Garden

Unfortunately, when we move, I may have some disruption with my prescription as I will have to be transferred between hospitals, not just doctors. Another part of the rich tapestry that is the National health Service. At lest it will stop me worrying about the practical aspects of the move.

I felt able to relax my dietary regime a little, as I appear to have lost weight again, according to the scales. Mt waistband feels comfortable, but not excessively slack (having been a little uncomfortable a few weeks ago) so I thought I as still doing OK, but wasn’t sure until the scales confirmed it.

Despite this, I am more determined than ever to drop more weight and not become complacent, as I have done in the past. We finished off the ginger nuts, agreed not to buy more biscuits, and had a very light lunch.

In time i will need to buy more trousers, which will be an act with mixed feelings, as I hate spending money on clothes before they are worn out. However, sometimes you have to do these things.

Spring in the Mencap Garden

At the moment my new belt is a matter of concern. In the old days I was once told that the reason I couldn’t get a decent leather belt was because they don’t make cows my size. This was a sobering thought but turns out to be untrue, as these days you can get big belts for the fuller figure. I needed a new one, and recently ordered one. It was longer than my old one, but they allow for this by giving a range of lengths in the description, so I merely punched a few extra holes in it and started to use it. Unfortunately, the surplus length is becoming annoying and I am going to cut it down. This is mildly annoying, as they should be more consistent. I ordered a belt, not a build your own belt kit. Even worse, having punched new holes and worn it I now notice that it has a label by the buckle and it is actually a size up from the one I ordered. That explains it.

Spring at last!

Odds and Ends and Modern Life

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We met my sister near Grantham this afternoon, having had a blood test and a burger on the way. We had slightly undercooked cake and discussed next year’s campaign of scones and afternoon teas which I am planning as part of my retirement.

I have had a book about eels recommended to me (it’s a long story) but I can’t get it on Kindle and I’ve promised Julia I will stop buying books until after we move. Even after giving away huge numbers of books we will still be taking hundreds with us. These days you need to have a well-stocked books case behind you if you want to be taken seriously on Zoom calls.

OK, I’m not actually sure what a Zoom call involves, but I know you need books behind you.

Botham’s Whitby

Talking of which I am being nagged into downloading WhatsApp. I’m not keen but it’s going to be the easiest way to communicate while Julia is in Canada. And the cheapest. However, to download it o my computer I have to open it on my phone first. I don’t have my phone fully connected to the Internet and would like to keep it that way. Nothing is simple, and everything wants to force you into being connected to the internet. It’s full of fraudsters, reality TV stars and influencers. Frankly, it’s not much different, in my humble opinion (as I believe they say on social media) to bathing in a cesspit. However, as Julia doesn’t believe I can survive on my own I will probably have to get connected. When she returns, I will disconnect.

You already know what I think of modern life, so I won’t say it again.

Tea, scones and sunshine. Bettys, Harlow Carr

32?

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This morning I remembered that the dried fruit in the Easter Cake we had from a neighbour counts as one of the thirty. Had nothing extra at breakfast, but managed an apple and some sort of small citrus thing (probably a satsuma) for lunch. Fried rice for tea (wholegrain) so added that plus bean sprouts, sesame, peas, chilli and green beans to the total. That’s 30 already. It’s slightly harder as you get into the third day as we’ve already counted bran, berries, peppers and mushrooms in previous days. I used lemon juice and soy sauce too, so that might already be 32, now I come to think of it.

We have sweetcorn, baked beans and lentils in the cupboard and courgettes and aubergine in the fridge. This is all the sorts of stuff we normally eat, so thirty hasn’t been too hard. Strangely, five a day can be tricky at times.

Mint Tea

This evening I had an acceptance from one of the submissions I sent out on 31st, and a second email from an editor asking if I would be willing to make a couple of alterations. I’m nearly always happy to make alterations, as they generally improve things, so that’s good.

I woke at around 5.30 this morning (that’s the morning of the 2nd, even though I will be publishing on the 3rd) and couldn’t get back to sleep. I’m not sure how I’m going to cope with moving. However, worry never solves anything so I suppose I’d better do it by starting and carrying on until I’ve finished. It’s generally the best way.

Easter Buns