Tag Archives: catching up

No Time . . .

Sorry, I’ve become unreliable again. I’m having to devote too much energy to problems in real life (as opposed to the bowdlerised version I present in the blog). One, which I can discuss now, is sciatica. Some heat, some stretching and some attention to my seating arrangements have improved it after two weeks of problems and I’m happy that I’m on the way to recovery.

The other is annoying, frustrating, but essentially trivial matter at work, which has been annoying me, and preventing me from concentrating, for the last few days. This is something and nothing, and the annoyance at being unable to shake it off is actually greater than the annoyance at the situation. However, that’s work, and has no place in my blog apart from a passing comment.

Sometimes, like when I had two boundary disputes with neighbours and a collapsing chimney stack, you just have to work through them carefully and persistently. In the end, all three problems were resolved and though one of the neighbours was annoyed with me, nothing bad happened. The one who was annoyed really had no reason for it – I won’t go over the details as it still irritates me.

This morning I got a new acceptance, so that’s good. Three of last months submissions were competitions, so I won’t get any sort of answer for months yet, probably never, as they disappear into the black hole that is the fate of most competition entries. Of the other four I now have two acceptances and am waiting for two. It compensates fro my other problems in some way – I’m still in pain and I’m still annoyed, but at least I am also grinning while all that is happening.

My current energy is devoted to catching up on reading blogs (with limited success I’m afraid), reading Laurie’s latest book (I’m only two months late) and thinking about starting the presentation on medallions. That’s about ten days away and I really must start.

In fact I will go and start now . . .

Lots and Lots of Lovely parcels

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The smell of cooking potato is wafting through the house. It will soon be followed by the scent of sizzling sausages. Tonight’s meal is not going to rate high on the sophistication scale. I briefly toyed with the idea of sausage casserole, but quickly blanked it in favour of wedges and beans. I will add one of the many relishes I currently find myself in possession of, and consider it a meal fit for a King. The new King will probably disagree, as I doubt that his minions are currently engaged in cooking anything as mundane as this.

I returned to work today, to find a list of sales on eBay. There were 25 parcels by the end of the day but all I managed was to pack & post 16 of them and the pack a couple of others ready for tomorrow. It works out at three parcels an hour, which is not impressive, though I did have to disinter some of the stock from dark recesses and use some cunning packaging on a few others, which all takes time. I really wish the owner of the shop would consider how we are going to pack some of the things we sell. Several of them required export labels too, which can be a bit like writing an essay.

Julia came with me and kept me supplied with sandwiches and coffee, before walking over to the post office with bags of packages. She is going to help tomorrow morning too, by which time we should be caught up. She truly is a jewel amongst women and deserves better than me. Those are my words, not hers, though I’m fairly sure she would be happy to agree.

We also had a number of phone calls, several starting with “Oh, good, you’re open.”

I had to disappoint those customers by telling them that we weren’t, and I was there to pack parcels. On the whole, they took it well, despite the anomaly of having someone answer the phone to say we weren’t open.

The New Project

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It’s nothing grand, but I will shortly be embarking on a fortnight of writing two posts a day. This is an effort to catch up both with my material, and the target I set myself some time ago. If I do one week of two posts a day I catch up with the things I missed in the week I was cast into the wilderness by WP. If I do two weeks of it I should return myself somewhere on course for the target I set myself a while back. Unfortunately I can’t remember what the target was or where I wrote it down. It probably isn’t that important if I can’t remember it.

Anyway, the new project is two posts a day for fourteen days.

This isn’t one of them because I’m going to prepare myself overnight and start tomorrow, refreshed by a good night’s sleep and provisioned with a suitable breakfast of eggs and bacon. I may have gone a little bit veggie recently, but a serious project requires a serious start.

In the old days they would have employed a haruspex to check the omens and probably have made a small sacrifice. In this case we will use the eggs rather than the entrails and I’ll let the pig make the sacrifice. Having just linked to Wiki I’m amazed at just how much I didn’t know about such things – I didn’t know, for instance, that they also used sheep for divination and specialised in livers. There is always so much to learn. I also learned a new thing about Thomas Becket. Who would have thought that a Christian saint would have dabbled in entrails? Didn’t do him much good in the end, but such is life.

The new posts will be at least 250 words long and will include photographs and links. They may. on a good day, include wit, humour and wisdom.

I had thought of writing it in an upbeat tone, just to make it more of a challenge, but even as I wrote the words, I shuddered. It is, frankly, more likely that if I need a challenge I will write in Latin. I am not a Classics scholar, but I am even less of an optimist.

Sunrise, Trent Bridge

Cream Tea with plastic

Magistrates’ Court Medallion

Today’s photos are recycled. They are photos I took 12 months ago and serve the artistic purpose of highlighting the cyclical nature of life. Or they may highlight the amount of waffle talked by artists, and be reused because I’m too lazy to walk to the other room and fetch my camera card.

Getting up to Date

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I’ve finally uploaded photos of the Harlow Carr visit. Sorry it took so long but I’ve been feeling a bit under the weather over the last few days, despite the intake of therapeutic cake.

As I get older, I’m clearly getting more delicate and the sudden cold snap has caught me out. It’s either that or I’m turning nesh in my old age, as we say round here. According to my search facility I’ve not used the word before in a blog so I added a link. If I have used it before, I apologise for the ,ink.

We went to see my Dad today with NumberTwo son. It was a bit sad. Dad is healthy enough, and well looked after both by my sister and the home, but he’s not likely to remember Number Two Son on his return from Canada in two year’s time. It’s easy to ignore this when it happens gradually, but you can’t ignore it when looking so far into the future.

More pictures here from Harlow Carr, including the current state of the dogwood fedge.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

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.

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Life after the Care Farm