Tag Archives: figs

Senior Moment – forgot the Title!

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I’m sitting at my work computer, it’s 9.26. I have read my emails, done something for Julia online, replied to a couple of emails and am now going to use 10 minutes to do the initial work on tonight’s blog post. It’s amazing what you can do when you are fresh.

One of the emails I had to reply to was one from an editor who normally accepts my work. This time he didn’t. Not sure how I feel about that. Everyone needs a wake-up call from time to time but I can’t completely escape the feeling that it’s part of a worldwide plot to stop accepting my work. It’s a tricky one to reply to. I’ve never fully grasped the etiquette of writing to editors as they are busy (and unpaid) people and don’t necessarily want me burbling on. On the other hand, it seems rude not to reply when somebody writes to you.

So I waited a few days to compose a suitable message. Later that day I was sent the results of a competition and found that I had failed to get into the top ten. To not get a prize is expected – competition is tough. I’m always ambivalent about competitions but every so often I have a go, generally unsuccessfully. However, they count as a submission towards my target, even if nothing good happens, and count as a rejection if I don’t get a mention.

So, misery piles on misery.

Then I got another email telling me about two acceptances. I already knew about one because I’d been asked to accept an alteration to it. I had assumed at the time that they only wanted one. It seems they want two. I’d mentally categorised the remainder as “available” and thought of sending them out again.  It’s a good thing I didn’t, as it’s embarrassing to make multiple submissions.

This all shows the advantage of waiting a few days – I was in a much sunnier mood when I eventually replied than I would have been if I’d replied right away.

I now note that I have a note from WordPress – You are currently using PHP 7.4.30 which will no longer receive security updates as of November 28, 2022. Please update to PHP 8.0.0 or higher by changing your hosting configuration. In other words “You are doomed. Change something, make your WP experience worse and keep paying through the nose.”

Or am I wrong? Will an update finally improve my life? There has to be a first time for everything.

Tonight, Julia went to visit a neighbour. She took plums and came back with figs.

Meanwhile my WP spellchecker keeps trying to make me spell like an American. I’m hoping this is just a phase it’s going through as I start on the new computer.

Day 126

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I thought about talking about 1st World Problems (this is the second week in a row ASDA has failed to supply the figs I ordered!)

I thought about discussing politics. But I decided against it.

I even thought of mentioning that I saw a man on a cycle wobbling through traffic as he used one hand to look at his mobile phone (an operation that would be considered both dangerous and illegal if he were to do it in a car. But I decided not to bother.

So I deleted it all and thought “What can I write about?”

I could write about the emails we had on eBay today. One is from a German demanding to know where his goods are. The answer is that they are in Customs at Frankfurt Airport. He could have established this for himself as he has the tracking code. Sadly, the German Postal Service is currently so inefficient that most eBay sellers in the UK snigger at their name. They are finding it difficult to cope with the UK being out of the EU.

Another customer wrote to complain that we had under-stamped an envelope and he is being asked £1.50 for excess postage. He has written to us via eBay demanding a £28 refund. When we asked what was wrong with the letter he told us he doesn’t know, as he hasn’t seen it yet and is only assuming it is the one from us.

Then we had one in the afternoon enquiring if I would check that we had remembered to post his order as it had been three days and he hadn’t had it yet. I did check. We had remembered to post the letter. We mainly remember, as that’s how we pay our wages, But sometimes the Royal Mail isn’t perfect.

And that, as the word count rises to 300, is probably enough. I’m going to go now. We have chocolate cake to eat (it was heavily reduced in M&S and called out to Julia s she passed) and I have imaginary sarcastic letters to write to customers. I’m not allowed to write actual rude replies. This is, to be honest, a strain.

Return to Work and Another Senior Moment

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I went back to work yesterday after having my dressings changed. You can tell I’m going to the doctor too often because the receptionist just shouted across “Take a seat Mr Wilson, I’ll book you in.” to save me walking to the desk and back.

Everything is healing well. I have a selection of photographs showing the development of the problem, followed by the progress towards healing, but I think this probably falls in the area known as “over-sharing”.

At work I lost my camera cable. I know I had it when I arrived because I had it in my hands. Then it disappeared. For three hours I looked for it, worried about it and muttered. Eventually, as we left, Eddie said “Simon, what’s that hanging round your neck?”

It was the camera cable, in a safe place, and hidden by my lockdown beard. I really do need a trim.

Unfortunately, my knee was quite tender so, to ensure more comfortable driving experience, I bought myself a knee brace. I am currently having a free month on Amazon Prime and was able to order it with free next day delivery. I’m wearing it now and it is doing some good. I’m going to try a new route tomorrow, using as much motorway as possible. It’s another stage in the aging process – making sure you know where the toilets are.

Today, having heeded the warnings of my doctor when discussing my return to work, I got up and moved about more. As a result I feel much better. I’m aiming to do full days on Thursday and Saturday next week, so I was pleased today went better than yesterday. I’m aiming to be fully fit and back at work full time in two weeks, so am keeping my fingers crossed.

Back to work, fully fit and free from senior moments may take a little more work.

As I wrote that line, one of the neighbours brought us some figs off her tree, so I re-used the picture from last year. I’m quite fond of figs.

One of those Cheerful Posts about Happy Things

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If something is upsetting you, it needs addressing and the worst thing in my life this week has been WordPress. I have now made the first step towards my new life after WordPress. I am committed to another year, using the plug-in Classic Editor, but the countdown has begun. The Classic Editor, for me, is as good as the Classic Block, and has the added advantage of allowing me to relax as I write.

My email system, like WP, has recently had a so-called “new and improved” version and, as with WordPress, it’s time to move on. I have just signed up to a new provider who has a good clear system with plenty of useful features. I’ve been testing it and it seems OK so I’m going to start moving across to it. This is also part of my plan for the new blog.

I’m not quite sure what form the new blog will take, and don’t know where it will be hosted, but I do know that, unless a miracle happens, it won’t be on WordPress.

I think I’ve been conned over the garden fence issue, and I know I have the law on my side, but it’s easier just to go with the easiest route. Half a garden fence is cheaper than being proved right in court.

The dishonest customer is a bit more of an issue but Julia has told me that my plan of posting bits of dead animal to him is an over-reaction. The fact that I was going to use roadkill rather than killing things specially does not, in her eyes, make it any better.

I’m already beginning to feel better…

Foreign Banknotes

I found a list when we were clearing some old papers out. It was a list of inventions I was considering.

Top of the tree as ideas go, is compostable underwear. It’s like normal pure cotton underwear but with added potato starch. I’m sure you all compost your old underwear anyway, but this would have the added advantage (to the manufacturer) of programmed obsolescence.

Instead of wearing it for twenty years, people would have to buy new when it began to biodegrade, probably after three. Then they could chuck it on the compost heap, buy new stuff and feel virtuous.

Julia has just read this over my shoulder. She tells me that not everybody composts their old underwear. Well, shame on you, I say. I have composted cotton and wool clothing, and leather and cotton work gloves. Yes, even leather will compost away. Things with polyester can also go in the heap, but you have to go through it to retrieve the mesh of polyester left behind, so it probably isn’t worth the effort.

Anyway, that’s enough writing for one day. Time to load a photo or two and look at new blogging platforms.

We had gammon and roast veg for tea tonight, as in the photo. We also had a plum flan, but that didn’t last long enough for me to take a photograph.

Gammon and roast veg for tea

Last night we had new potatoes and mint from the garden (Julia has been growing them in containers) with a quiche that included our own tomatoes.

We picked more plums today and were given more figs. It’s a good time of year. It’s just a shame it means winter is on the way.

 

The Fruit Exchange

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We gave one of the neighbours a bowl of plums the other day. I thought Julia was being a bit generous with the size of the bowl, as I like plums, but let’s face it, they go bad easily so it’s better to give them away than see them rot.

Today we had a knock on the door and were given a bowl of figs and two sizeable squash.  Fair exchange, as they say, is no robbery.

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Figs – Brown Turkey

They look a bit green, but they are beautifully ripe – I’ve already had one to check. Some of the plums are perfect and some still a little sharp, but it’s better, I feel to pick at this point. One year we left them a bit late and a lot went brown and mouldy overnight. Some years, because of poor management, the tree fails to produce, but although it’s disappointing it’s not as bad as wasting the crop.

Our cherry tree, as I may have remarked before, was picked clean by birds most years so I simply took it out, which gave more room for the plum and the rhubarb.

Julia tells me that the container grown damson tree is almost ready to pick, though the harvest will only be eight fruits.

The final photograph is plums in a steel bowl. It’s difficult photographing fruit. They may sit still, but there’s not much of interest about them so when  I got the chance to use the reflections I gave it a go.

Reflected Plums - Victoria

Reflected Plums – Victoria

The problem was that as I took pictures I ate plums and by the end of the shoot there were significantly fewer plums in the photographs.

I’ve been thinking about my retirement and if I really need a garden or should buy a flat instead. A flat would mean no garden and less work, but a bungalow would mean space to sit outside and would make me take exercise, which I really should have. And I could plant fruit trees.

There are various proverbs and quotes on this subject, but it is now time for me to plant trees even though I may not live to sit in their shade.

Clumber Park

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We had 13 packages to send off this morning, including two very expensive bank notes and two very cheap football cards (my labours of last week bearing fruit!).

Then I took Julia to lunch and decided to get some use out of our National Trust membership. Last year, we didn’t get a lot of use out of them. We went to Clumber Park, which isn’t far from the spot where I took the bluebell pictures yesterday.

It’s home to a number of things including a lake, which I photographed a few times last year, and a chapel which featured in a few photos.

This time we decided to visit the kitchen garden. It’s an excellent place, and very well designed. There’s a massive lean-to greenhouse up against a south-facing wall and a gentle slope to let the cold air flow away downhill. I didn’t walk all the way down, but I’m pretty sure there will be holes in the wall to let the cold air flow away. They designed things better in those days.

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I’ll let the photos speak for themselves.

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Hopefully they won’t say something bad.

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And finally.

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Cream Tea at Clumber Park

It’s a hard life, but I’m coping…

Day Off

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Well, this is vexing. I wrote this post and pressed the buttons and sat back as it loaded. I had added (Part 1) to the title, but when I switched on to write Part 2 I tried to link it to Part 1 and found it wasn’t there. This means that, for the first time in 72 days I have failed to post.

I am not happy. Ah well…

It was a day off today, and instead of making me drive to a distant tourist spot Julia allowed me to relax with a short trip to the Mencap garden.

We managed to fit in a Harvester Unlimited Breakfast on the way – so it wasn’t an entirely bad start.

At the garden, instead of making me walk round and look at things, and probably enjoy myself, she allowed me to do a number of jobs including refilling bug boxes (using hollow stems from the scabious we’d cut back a couple of months ago) and putting some bird boxes together.

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I fear I may have seemed a little ungrateful for the opportunity to spend our day off working for an organisation that won’t allow me to volunteer officially. (For those of you new to the story I’m not allowed to volunteer to work with my wife, as I’ve been doing for the last five years, because of “conflict of interests”.)

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We had a fig each after that, and I took some photos of the vine leaves.

It wasn’t one of my better days, though building nest boxes is always a good thing to do. So is eating fresh figs.

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After that, we returned home for a cup of tea. I downloaded photos and, whilst snoozing happily in my chair, dreamed of Derbyshire.

At that point Julia demonstrated the depths of depravity to which a wife can stoop, waking me up to remind me I’d said I’d give her a lift to Wilkos to buy paint for nest boxes. Obviously I’d meant I’d give her a lift if I wasn’t asleep and it wasn’t too close to Pointless. I don’t ask much from life and a snooze and a TV quiz seem quite modest requirements. So does freedom from being woken up to go shopping.

We went to Arnold, and I took some photos from the rooftop car parks at Wilkos and ASDA (who are currently renovating their car park). They aren’t great photos, but they didn’t offer much in the way of scenery. The main theme is Rain, with a secondary motif of More Rain.

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The Day gets Better

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I’ve just been adding photographs to the post about the attempted break in. As you can see from them, we had a CSI van and beautiful blue skies. I don’t usually go to the garden when people are there but I thought Julia could do with a hand this afternoon. She normally has to travel through town on the bus with two bags of kit as she travels from one job to the next but I thought after the trials of the day she deserved a lift.

I am such a gent. I am also currently unemployed so it seemed the least I could do.

While I was there in the morning I forgot to tell you that Julia had spotted a beautifully marked Green-veined White. I could only get a distant photo with my phone, so I have nothing to show. It’s a common butterfly, but it’s a new one for the garden list and that’s always good.

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Willow arch

Yesterday we had a good few hours, with Bill from Men in Sheds bringing his battery powered saw to help cut up pallets. We now have all the bits cut to make three new benches.

He also  brought four nest boxes in kit form so the group can put them together and paint them. Even better, he’s going to do another 20 for us. This will let us upgrade the existing boxes and leave some to sell towards funds.

Despite the break in it’s been a good week, and the fruit is looking good. All we need to do is stop people stealing it.

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I would have taken more photos, but the batteries ran out. (These were all taken on Wednesday morning, though the post is written on Thursday.)

We were also given a perfectly usable set of 5-a-side goals the school was throwing out, or fruit cage frame, as we now call it.

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The new fruit cage