Monthly Archives: November 2024

Topsy Turvey

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I took to my bed on Monday night after an evening of shivering. All my joints ached and I could hardly move. The slow climb to bed confirmed the wisdom of our decision to move to a bungalow. I stayed there most of Tuesday, only rising in mid afternoon, and a lot of Wednesday, rising at noon. Gradually I began to feel better, and mobile. By Wednesday Julia was able to pronounce my colour to be “better”.. By this she means “less corpse-like” as I have a habit of turning grey when I am ill, and my natural disinclination toward rapid movement becomes more pronounced. At best I appear to be a grumpy zombie, and at worst I have found myself prodded violently awake “just in case”.

I’m not sure what it was, or what caused it, but I think cold, lack of sleep and hours sitting immobile in the car all contributed. OK, and old age. And my immunosuppressants. I always blame them these days.

I managed a few taps on the keyboard yesterday, but didn’t do much. Today I feel a bit more enthused, but still not overly motivated. I have also lost my appetite and reduced my calorie intake despite Julia’s efforts to a feed me back to health.

That’s about all there is to report, apart from feeling like Rip van Winkle. I went to bed in a world where politics seemed dull and ugly, and woke in one where politics appears to have run down a rabbit hole and returned with an unsubtle double act where a megalomaniac billionaire is bankrolling Mr Teflon, the man to whom nothing can stick. At the moment I am puzzled rather than worried, but I imagine that will change in the next few months.

 

A Hard Decision is Made

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Julia as Lifeguard – Britannia Pier, Great Yarmouth

I’ve been trying to get this started most of the fay, but things kept intruding. Some intrusions were welcome, such as  Whatsapp calls from Number One Son in Norwich and Number Two Son in Toronto, or a cream tea made from a Cornish High Tea in a Box I’d ordered last week to mark our 35th Wedding Anniversary (after 35 years I’m definitely running short on ideas). We had pasties when it arrived on Thursday and were then too busy to do much else apart from nibbling the biscuits with our tea. This afternoon we finally got round to the scones with clotted cream and jam and tonight we are having the last two pasties with roasted vegetables (carrots, leeks, broccoli, potatoes fro those who are interested). That just leaves us with a few Cornish teabags (yes, they grow tea in Cornwall) and that will be it. They also grow tea in Scotland. For a while we grew tea in Nottinghamshire but although the tea plants survived they didn’t really thrive. This, to be fair, was due to shortcomings in the care, rather than the plants themselves.

I have also had to break for things like sorting stuff to take tomorrow, buying a new bed and writing, though not much writing today.

Things that make me happy – Number One – Julia at a tearoom

Yes, I said buying a new bed. The bedrooms aren’t really up to taking an extended Victorian iron bedstead and because I have always told Julia this move is to give her the house she deserves, instead of one that I use as a warehouse and workshop, I have decided that we should have space to walk around the bedroom and taken one of the most painful decisions of my life.

What makes it more bearable is that when you buy an antique bed, there is a good chance that you will at least get your money back. When we come to sell the beds we are currently buying we will be lucky if we get their value in firewood.

Julia, Sutton-on-Sea. Can you spot a theme running through my photography?

Settling In

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Gadwall – a duck with natural camouflage. Its main distinctive feature is that it has no distinctive features.

I’m far from out of the (metaphorical) woods yet, but things are looking a lot brighter. We have furniture. We have a little more idea of what is happening and we managed to tempt a builder into action, even if only for half a day.

We tested the local chip shop, which serves large portions of high quality fish, chips and peas and found it to be as good or better than our current local shop.

This afternoon I visited the annual exhibition of the Peterborough Military History Group. The car parking will be suitable for me and several of the people at the exhibition were still recognisable from the distant past (it’s around 35 years since I last attended a meeting). That takes care of my social life – the second Wednesday of the month will henceforth find me in the company of old men in the meeting room at the museum. The fourth Tuesday of the month will be the coin club, though this might be more elusive, as I’m told they are down to about half a dozen members. They still post meeting notices in Coin News, so I hope they still exist.

Wheatear

The cafe at Peterborough Museum has been done up since I last visited and I enjoyed a lemon and poppy seed muffin with a cup of tea and proper china teapot for one. Yes, I’m a simple man, but sitting there in what had once been a fine Georgian house (still with flame mahogany doors) I confess to feeling a sense of history. I’m looking forward to my next visit.

Finally, as we chatted in the kitchen and looked out at the darkening sky, a bat flew past. Then another. Or possibly the same one going back. Hard to tell with bats. That’s more bats in an evening than I normally see in a year in Nottingham.

There were no senior moments tonight.

Today’s theme is birds.I have some good photos of medallions but I’m sure that most people would prefer birds.

Heron

Yet One More Senior Moment

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Squirrel in MENCAP gardens, Wilford

Today, in a massive senior moment, I made an even greater fool of myself than usual. Walking through to the front room with a plate of mustard mash with spring onions, mashed carrot and parsnip, brussels and haggis, I stumbled on a box we had carelessly left close to where I put my feet.

I had previously remarked on the fact that we needed to take care we put things during the move as I am not that steady on my feet. The stiffening of foot and ankle joints has robbed me of my former agility, and even in my prime nobody, let’s be honest, ever mistook me for a dancer.

Squirrel in a bin – Clitheroe Castle

 

So there I am, walking past a box with a plateful of squishy food in my hand, poised in mid anecdote. It’s not a picture that reflects credit on either our standards of housekeeping or my culinary efforts. Of course, I caught my foot. I shuffled, overbalanced and fell with all the grace of a giant redwood falling under the assault of a lumberjack. However, that was where the resemblance ended. There is some philosophical talk of whether or not a tree makes noise when nobody is there to hear it. Well, we don’t know about trees, but I can tell you that I make a noise when I fall. It’s a word that shouldn’t be used in polite company and it tails off towards the end.  Julia says it was one of the most plaintiff uses of the word she has ever heard, as I slowly toppled . . .

She was also much impressed by my grace as I twisted in mid-air and managed to place the plate on a chair before coming to rest on my elbows, also on the chair, with the plate of food three inches from my face.

Squirrel on bird table (and fly on squirrel)

I’m not sure how many times I have fallen now – but I’m lucky it’s still the sort of thing I can use as material for a post. Give it a few years and it won’t be quite so funny. However, give it a few years and I’ll have an electric mobility scooter and a whole new selection of ludicrous anecdotes of near disasters.

A man of limited attention span with arthritis and an electric mobility scooter, living next to a country park with miles of paths which are on the edges of old gravel pits . . .

What could possibly go wrong?

The header picture is our new squirrel, taken through the vertical blinds of our new kitchen. Not the most technically satisfactory picture, but I was afraid I might scare it if I moved to photograph it. The other pictures are a selection of my other squirrel photos.

Grey Squirrel