Tag Archives: fatigue

Back to Blogging

17 Replies

Sorry about the erratic service. I’ve been very tired and disorganised and my hands have been very sore. I’m not sure what happened – I was recovering from the arthritis flare-up when it suddenly became worse. It wasn’t particularly painful  but my knuckles felt very tender and I had no strength in my hands for simple jobs like tucking my shirt in or using a fountain pen. Even now it’s a bit tricky pressing on the mouse button and I only have three capable of pressing down a key on the keyboard. Fortunately I don’t need many as I am generally a two-fingered typist anyway.

I have discovered why some of my eBay photos do not allow me to edit them properly. It seems to depend on the camera settings I use. My Panasonic, despite being old and slightly faulty (some of the pixels are missing from the screen) continues to be better than the pink party camera foisted on me by the shop owner. It has better battery life and close-up focus abilities so I carry on using it. For some reason it will no longer let me crop images properly. I don’t know why, but I have tested it on some other settings and can now crop properly.

Even if other things hadn’t intervened, I think I would be ready for retirement soon. It’s very wearing having to go to work and use a dreadful pink camera and a computer that won’t switch on properly and which works very, very slowly . . .

My cheap laptop and ten-year-old Lumix actually do a better job. Having worn out two cameras in the last six years I am becoming quite resentful that I am not provided with proper equipment to do the job. It will be quite relaxing to retire.

Photographs are from Julia’s recent excursions.

Thinking After Midnight

16 Replies

I didn’t start writing until after midnight last night. Or, more accurately, I didn’t start writing until after midnight this morning. The second sentence is the more accurate, I think, but it looks wrong.

That was the trouble with the blog post I produced. Something was wrong with it and I couldn’t quite put my finger on it. It started with words like “vicious cycle” and “good habits” and slid (via an historically inaccurate view of Boadicea with a knife-equipped chariot) into a discussion on  the change of Boadicea’s name to Boudicca and how I wouldn’t mind giving monastic life a go if it featured more carpeting. It’s hard to write a blog post based on such stuff. Finally, at 1 am, after several edits, I decided it wasn’t working and binned the lot.

I think what happened was that under the influence of fatigue, the punning part of my brain broke free and started playing with words. It does that sometimes. If you ever happen to be sitting next to me when I start smiling for no discernable reason it’s because two words have just connected in my head and the result has amused me.

I may be doing something like watching TV, listening to a speech or typing a blog post. but my mind is miles away. I may be in a coin shop in Nottingham discussing the price of packaging to Austria, but inside my head I am in Morecambe, or the Karoo or 1642. I have inherited this from my father.  He had the ability to hold a conversation on one subject while his brain was engaged in calculating something completely different. That, I think, sums up the similarities and differences between the two of us. We both have the ability to think about two things at the same time, but he would be solving a problem at work, while I just conjure up mental images of a bicycle with knives attached to its wheels.

Meanwhile, I have come up with a photo for my biographical notes. It is reasonably accurate but by using one that already exists I can avoid tidying myself up. It may need some work doing on the size as it seems rather large when you open the page. Meanwhile, I’m tempted by the pink one, but I’m not sure it presents quite the right image. It’s the sort of photo that you get when you leave a camera unattended in a monkey enclosure.

The Pink One

It’s Wednesday and I can’t think of a title

12 Replies

Sorry I ‘ve been a bit erratic. I seem to have been very tired over the past few days and just haven’t got round to blogging. This isn’t much of an excuse, I know, because there isn’t a lot of  effort involved in typing a few hundred words, but it just seems to have defeated me. This, I suppose is a sign that I’m getting old. When I was a lad I’d think nothing of starting work at 6am and then working and carousing my way through the next eighteen or twenty hours. I had so much more energy…

Much less sense, but definitely much more energy.

I think I mentioned that we were hard at work putting Duke of Edinburgh coins and medallions on the internet. I’m not sure if I mentioned that I remarked to the boss that if my co-worker had been at work he would have been telling us off for a lack of good taste. And sure enough, when he returned to work and saw what we’d been selling, he did comment on our poor taste. It seems to be poor taste that is gently paying off, and it has certainly paid my wages for a week.  Most of it was already on and just needed “Duke of Edinburgh” or “Prince Philip” adding to the title. The medallion pictured in my last post is now on its way to Australia. A lot of people in Australia like royalty items. A lot, to be fair, probably favour a republic.  I’m easy either way, but if someone wants to buy something, I’m happy to sell it.

That, I think is enough for now. It’s going to end up around 300 words and that’s a good start. I don’t want to bury my readers under a deluge of invective about David Cameron, for instance, who is either slightly immoral or very, very stupid, with his lobbying activities. Looking at his track record, I actually favour very, very stupid. I made the mistake of watching Prime MInister’s Questions this morning, and the current incumbent, and his opposition opposite number gave me a great insight into the politics of the school yard and the way that two reputed heavyweight intellects become childish idiots when you give them a country to run.

I had a brainwave whilst watching them, and looking at the rest of the associated sycophants. It’s a pay per view game show combining Prime Minister’s Questions and the current fascination for big cats. If I say that the working title is “Release the Lions” , you can probably guess the rest.

I still haven’t touched on roadworks, builders and pharmacies. I may have to write a second post…