Tag Archives: blogging

Changes…

Has anyone changed either the title or the page of their blog?

Things have obviously changed since I started blogging (has it really been three and a half years?), though, as at least one person pointed out in the beginning, I was a bit erratic at the best of times.

We are no longer running a Care Farm, I’m not cooking, we don’t get out as much…

You name it and it’s all changing.

It makes sense to change the blog to reflect these changes.

I’m thinking of changing the name of this one to reflect the fact it’s about the thoughts of a grumpy old man who spends his time sorting piles of junk.

With Julia I will then start a new blog based on her gardening.

Does anyone have any comments, or any experience of changing blog names or addresses?

All views and advice will be welcome.

Back to Blogging

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It snowed today. Again.

The other news for the day is that after a break of six days I am back to blogging. Has it really been 6 days?

It started with a hectic night. As it approached midnight I was still busy and decided I’d miss a night rather than just throw a few words at the page. Next night it was easier not to write a post and suddenly not writing blog posts became the new norm.

When the kids used to attend a dojo regularly to train in aikido the instructors always used to say that it only takes two weeks to break a habit. From what I’ve seen in the last week, you can probably break a habit in three days.

I was surprised that, after a thousand posts, I could just stop, though I think there were other factors at work. In the past it’s really annoyed me to miss a post, but this time it was actually a relief. Part of the problem, I think, was that I’ve been finding it difficult to adjust to regular employment, For twenty-five years I’ve been used to planning my own time and making my own decisions (apart from the ones Julia takes for me) and it’s a bit tricky adjusting.

I’ve also been adjusting to new, repetitive, tasks in cramped conditions, which seems to have brought on a new crop of aches and pains. Six hours a day moving coins round may not seem the most onerous of jobs, but the weight mounts up. Honestly.

After a week sorting pennies (we had nearly a ton of pennies to sort this week) and counting foreign currency, I’ve shifted a fair amount of weight. Much of it has been moved whilst sitting in unsuitably hunched positions. We also bought in a large quantity of modern 50 pence pieces, including two of the famous Kew Gardens coins.

The new shop may have more room than the old one but it still isn’t built for comfort. However, it’s a lot better than the old one, and BT may, just possibly, connect the internet sometime soon…

Our other problem is that, with a shared front door people think we are closed, and several have gone into the Indian Takeaway by mistake. You would think the presence of a menu, and absence of coins, would give them a clue, but one spent nearly five minutes in there.

Next week we are going to buy a sign that days “Open”.

Blood Test Thursday

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It’s light this morning, and I’ve breakfasted on overnight oats with blueberries so I’m all set up for the day.

I’ve answered last night’s comments on the blog, come up blank for an idea for a post, and made a mental note that I need another night of reading posts to catch up with people.

That reminds me that I also have a report to write tonight. Sigh.

I’m 12 days behind with some blogs, as I found last night, so I do apologise if you are feeling neglected. That gives me an idea for a post – Blogging and a Lack of Time. I will develop that later, as I don’t have time now. (Sorry – predictable but true).

My leg just started ringing, which means it’s time to get down to City Hospital, moan about parking and let someone stab me in the arm.

Nobody told me life would be like this.

Eleven Photos and the Benefits of Blogging

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Teasels in flower

The main picture shows some teasel in flower. They have gone over a bit but you can still see some of the bluish flowers. I thought I’d include the picture after showing the mature ones earlier on this week.

Fungus at Mencap gardens

Mooring ring

Common Blue at Screveton

I thought I’d ID’d this one…obviously not.

Straw Bale Bowie Bear

The fungus is growing out of one of the raised beds in the Mencap garden and the mooring ring is from the quay at Burleigh pottery in Stoke. I spotted the blue butterfly on a visit to Men in Sheds in the summer and the bear was in a field near Scarborough advertising a music event. The dragonfly was pictured on our trip to Rutland Water, but I don’t seem to have identified it on the photo and can’t find the reference. I think it’s a Common Darter if I remember correctly – I only see common things.

Nuthatce at Rufford Abbey

Detail of the mouse

Swan at National Arboretum

Mint Moth

Poppy and chamomile

The bird with the bandit mask is another Nuthatch and the Swan was cruising down the river at the back of the National Arboretum last year. The mouse is from a harvest loaf we cooked on the farm and the remaining two photos are also from the farm – a Mint Moth (there were dozens about in the herb garden) and a poppy with chamomile.

They all bring back memories, and without blogging I wouldn’t have restarted with the photography – another thing I like about blogging!

A Weekend of …er…nothing much

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Got home just after 6am (after dropping Julia off at work, not after a night on the tiles!) and after a few Amazon reviews, a trawl of the internet for birthday presents (I have no idea, she won’t give me a clue and the day is looming), looking at the blogs of a couple of my new followers and a diversion into Avro Lancasters, I now find it’s 9am. Where does the time go?

Yesterday started with breakfast, dropping Julia off at work, taking stuff to the charity shop and going to a meeting. I’m helping someone launch a range of Jamaican seasoning, and this involved having another breakfast to test the recipe for his new omlette. It includes chilli, and has a definite wake-you-up quality.

Home for lunch. This was a cup of tea and a mournful look at the fridge as I decided that two breakfasts meant no lunch. I am dieting, and not enjoying the experience.

Nice cup of tea

In the afternoon I compiled a list of Farmers’Markets in a 40 mile radius and may, possibly, have drifted off for a few minutes due to the sheer thrill of listing. The defining features of Farmers’ Markets seem to be that the website must be out of date and the contact details unavailable.

Then I picked Julia up from work, shopped, moaned about the price of things, fitted a cover to the car windscreen to ward off frost, made tea and toasted crumpets. It’s autumn after all, and you need to keep yourself warm and cheerful.

We re-heated a beef casserole I’d prepared earlier in the week and served it with red cabbage and kalettes. I like kalettes, they don’t take much cooking. they taste good and they are bursting with goodness, or so the website claims.

Picture of kalettes from last year. I do have a beef casserole photo but it shows brussels, not kalettes, and potatoes, which I’m no longer eating.

After that I blogged, watched poor quality TV (including Strictly Come Dancing), suggested that we should go to tango lessons (I’ve always fancied myself as a smouldering Latin tango dancer, despite all the evidence to the contrary – lack of rhythm, two left feet and suspiciously Anglo-Saxon colouring), made more tea, ate a supermarket panna cotta that was crammed with sugar and additives, downloaded Kindle books and, finally, went to bed.

There was, as you can probably guess from my anti-frost precautions, no frost.

I hate it when that happens.

And that brings us back to the top of the post. It’s 10 am now and an hour has gone into writing, and re-writing, a post about where my time goes.

After looking for a couple of stock photos to illustrate this post I’ve decided to do another post about my favourite photos, but first I’ll probably do one about Armistice day.

After that I’ll heat up the beef casserole for lunch and cook most of the food for next week.

Then I’ll wash up.

I do hope all this excitement doesn’t wear me out.

A Very Average Day

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In the discussion of What’s a Blogger? there have been some good answers.

One of the things that has emerged is that people think their blogs are about boring everday life.

This isn’t true. To someone as nosey as me the details of other lives are very interesting. As I said in one of the comments, I’m the sort of person who enjoys rail journeys because it allows me to look in the gardens of trackside residents. I also like Google Maps, though I’d prefer to see them presented as real time satellite photos. If I ever win the Lottery I will price up a spy satellite. Oooops, I just did. £390 million plus launch costs.

You’d think they’d throw in a free launch for that price, wouldn’t you? They’ve obviously been learning from the computer industry. Computer – £299. Actual working computer with the stuff it needs to be useful – that will be extra.

I may rent one instead. There are a lot of back gardens that need looking into.

Back on the subject of boring lives, I had a double lot of laundry on Sunday morning. I’d felt lazy the week before so I hadn’t done any. This has an obvious knock-on effect, particularly as Julia packed the bags. She always has to sweep the house for anything that looks remotely washable, and believe me, she was successful in her quest. Number Two son contributed too, as he’s off on holiday. He’s only going for a few days, but he’s packing for a month.

The normal people were there, the Odd Couple (who slid in just in front of me and took two driers before sliding out on some mysterious errand), The Big Lad and Overalls. With the Odd Couple away, that left three of us, all looking like sad batchelors doing their own laundry.

A Fat Man taking an Accidental Selfie – my normal “Selfie Shirt” can be seen in the Featured Image

I know this is untrue in my case, and I know that, like me, Overalls, drops his wife off at work at 6am. I’ve never actually spoken to The Big Lad (who is in truth no bigger than I am), because we are English and we are men. I always assumed that he was single as he was a large Goth with Heavy Metal tattoos. After looking at his washing I now know that he does have a partner of the female sort. Either that or he has a strange taste in underwear.

Strange what you see when you keep your eyes open.

There were two new people in – both women. This is unsettling as they don’t usually come in till later, and because they took up all the machines.

I had to overload two small machines, then stuff a third when it became available (hence my view of Big Lad’s washing). After that I had to wait for driers. Then their was no space to fold…

That’s the trouble when you let women into the launderette.

This was just the beginning of what proved to be a very average day.

Part 2 will follow

Falling behind…

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I’m days behind with the washing up, weeks behind with the blog (both reading and writing) and months behind with my reading. If you want to complete the sequence I’m also years behind with the housework (though Quentin Crisp did say” There is no need to do any housework at all. After the first four years the dirt doesn’t get any worse.”), a generation behind in my thinking, and a lifetime behind with diet, dreams and ambitions.

The trouble is that you can’t wash up before you’ve dirtied the plates, can’t read until you’ve bought the books and can’t clean until the house is dirty.

I admit that you can write posts ahead of time, but I find it’s a struggle. Currently I have a few part-completed posts but nothing ready to go. Once I started researching The Kings We Never Had I found myself doing too much research and not enough writing.

The idea behind the book reviews was to give me something to do in advance, but it hasn’t worked like that. I’m behind with book reviews too. Badly behind, because when I photographed the last lot I optimistically included some books I haven’t finished. In truth, I hadn’t started them all when I took the picture.

The book on the Normans seems like easy reading but you will be waiting a while for the review of Some Desperate Glory as it’s heavy going. As there are plenty of copies available for a penny plus p&p, it’s clear that supply exceeds demand.

Poppies

I’m already working on some more books, one of which will be Some Desperate Glory. Confusing isn’t it? I really can’t thing why Max Egremont used the title for his poetry book when there was already a perfectly good book of memoirs using it. I’ll cover that more fully when I write the review.

Meanwhile it’s time for tea – belly pork with vegetables roasted with turmeric and cumin. It’s an old favourite and it’s easy.

Reflections on life and snack food

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The day started badly, with news of the Manchester bombing. I mention it because it seems to be something that should be mentioned, though I have nothing useful to say on the subject.

I think I’ve reflected on this before, and the way we select what goes into our posts. Nobody is going to be reprinting my blog in 100 years and treating it as a valuable social history resource because it’s lightweight fluff and random jottings. However, if I was sitting at a desk with a pen and a book, and a lack of immediate audience, I might be tempted to become serious, or even pompous.

An earlier draft of this post was much more serious, and tried to be meaningful, even profound. However, I soon put a stop to that.

I’m currently watching Secrets of our Favourite Snacks with Simon Rimmer. i’m feeling quite virtuous as I watch, because I’ve pretty much given up crisps and other salty snacks. Apart from nuts, but they are too expensive to go mad on, and are full of nutrients. (That’s a personal view and I would probably struggle to find scientific proof for it. If you follow my nutritional advice don’t bother to ring me from the cardiac ward and complain it’s worked out badly for you.)

I’ve learned three useful things so far – the bigger the container the more you eat, if you are distracted you eat more and there’s a man who writes a crisp blog. Even by my standards that’s a lightweight blog. (The link might not be to the crisp blog mentioned in the programme but it’s the only one I could find.

They then went to Manchester as people in North-west eat the most salty snacks of anyone in the UK. Seems Manchester is fated to be in the news today.

The Day That Dignity Died

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Well, it looks like I owe you all a number of apologies.

First, I missed a day, which means you had to survive for 24 hours without my daily ray of sunshine. I think it was 111 days, but even if I miscounted it 111 is a good number to remember.

I also misled you by claiming things were under control and getting netter. This turned out to be inaccurate. Looking on the bright side, the further developments turned out to be more interesting (and cringeworthy).

And finally, after leading you into the apologies in a flippant manner, I’m going to apologise in advance for some of the words and details I’m about to use. If you dislike posts with unsavoury details of the interior of my trousers you may wish to pass on this one. I will be as refined as possible, but remember the “as possible”; that’s a long way from the sort of anecdote I’d tell my mother.

Cast your mind back to Wednesday morning. It is bright and clear with the gentle hum of traffic and the muted twitter of urban bird life. All is well in the world and I am getting ready for my pre-operative check. The only fly in the ointment is a slight feeling that I should be feeling better as I am positively crammed with antibiotics.

I was not fated to make that appointment, and half an hour later I was at the A&E department at QMC shouting at the receptionist. It wasn’t that I was annoyed with her, just that they have put up glass security screens and you now need to broadcast embarrassing personal details at high volume to make yourself heard. So much for patient dignity.

They sent me straight to the Urgent Treatment Centre. It’s a two minute stroll for an able-bodied, or a crippling lifetime of toil for a man with a bad foot. Not only that, but it’s not all that urgent.

When I was finally seen (which wasn’t really that long compared to a wait in A&E) the doctor asked me to describe my symptoms. Part way through, she seemed to be looking bemused.

“Is there anything wrong?” I asked.

“Well,” she said, “they seem to have booked you in with joint pain.”

“I do have joint pain,” I said, “but that’s not what I told them at reception.”

I distinctly recall what I had told them at reception.You remember such things.

So, once again, I took down my trousers. It’s getting to be automatic and really doesn’t bother me any more. In the last three months I’ve exposed myself to more strangers than the average flasher.

“Yes, you’re right.” said the doctor, “that’s definitely an abcess, in fact it looks like there’s one here too.

She squeezed.

“Eeeek,” I said, trying not to cry,

(To Be Continued…)

The Titles That Never Were

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I just loaded this by accident, which shows what sort of trouble you can get into when you’re blogging. It’s ironic, since the post is partly about the trouble I could get into from Julia if I posted some of these unsuitable drafts. Fortunately it was ready to go, though it was intended for Tuesday morning.

If I tell you I still have posts about Free Range Rats and Hitler and Birdwatching in the pipeline you’ll get some idea of where I draw the line.

Julia draws it in a slightly different place. Which is why you won’t be seeing the following posts.

Nursery Crime: I was saving that for a blog about horrible young visitors to the Ecocentre, but as we were ejected from the centre and no longer deal with schools I don’t think I’ll be needing it. It’s a shame, but it didn’t take much creative effort to adopt a Genesis song title.

My Life and Times in the Urology Ward: It starts when I walk into the wrong clinic – mistaking genitourinary and urology. Easy mistake if you don’t have medical training. As a general rule, a room filled with middle-aged men looking embarrassed is urology. A room filled with youngish people of both sexes looking shifty is genitourinary. After that, the tone of the piece goes downhill.

Cheap Toilet Rolls – The Curse of Modern Society: Julia has vetoed this one. I’ve edited it several times to make it more socially acceptable but she remains intransigent. To aficionados of toilet humour this will surely rank alongside Shakespeare’s Cardenio, Love’s Labour Won or the musical version of Macbeth as a lost gem. Oh yes, there (probably) was one. Thomas Middleton is thought to have edited it in 1615 to allow more time for musical interludes, because nothing says tragedy like a musical interlude.

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Life after the Care Farm