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Saturday 14th
March 2020
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09:08 GMT
There was something about yesterday that
made it feel very spring like. Maybe it was the
taste of the air, or maybe it was that there was
very little wind to make the afternoon temperature
of 11° C feel cold. There was some good sunshine
in the morning, and sunny intervals, or sunny
spells seemed to go on longer than the early
forecasts said they would. Even from mid afternoon
when the periods of sunshine were quite sparse, it
still seemed to be bright. It was a dry day, and
that helped.
I was not aware of any heavy rain early
this morning, but there was enough rain to give my
garden and potted plants a good watering. In an
idea world we would now have sunny spells, and
indeed the sun is trying to come out, but the
forecast says the last of the rain will be at
10am. The latest forecast does say that sunny
spells will start at 3pm, and that sounds much
better than the gloomy, overcast skies predicted
in the early morning version of the forecast. This
afternoon should see the temperature rise to 13°
C, which will be very welcome, and may feel nice
in the sunshine. The headline feature for tomorrow
is rain, but at the moment the forecast shows it
to be dry until 1pm when only light rain may fall
until about 6pm. The rest of the day will be dry,
but overcast with the afternoon temperature only
reaching 11° C.
As mentioned above, there was a subtle
quality to the air, light, or something else that
made it feel very spring like. Although we are
probably going to see some more chilly days for
another month or so, I felt compelled to open the
bathroom window - and leave it open. In fact it
will probably now be open until it starts getting
chilly next Autumn. By open I actually mean I have
pulled down the top half of the sash window enough
to leave a gap of about 4 inches so that some
fresh air can circulate, and keep the room dry,
and the air in the house will be a bit fresher. I
have a special stop mechanism to prevent that gap
getting any bigger of smaller.
It didn't feel quite mild enough in the
morning to go to Tesco in my sleeveless denim
jacket. It was interesting in Tesco. I had read
reports that some supermarkets had been stripped
bare because of panic buying. I did note that the
shelves were stripped of toilet paper, but other
than that it seemed normal. I didn't see anyone
with overloaded shopping trolleys, and many
people, myself included, were just using hand
baskets. I didn't seem to have any problem buying
anything I might want. (I stocked up on toilet
paper because of Brexit, and once this latest
panic has subsided, I will probably increase my
stock because Brexit has not yet bitten while we
are in this transition phase, but as soon as
imports have to be individually checked by customs
officers.....).
It was my intention to be very lazy
yesterday. The idea was to help my strained
muscles recover after my gardening on Wednesday
left me feeling a bit delicate. I was going to do
it the day before yesterday, but there didn't seem
time. There didn't seem time yesterday because I
must have been suffering from Spring fever. I
started some spring cleaning in the afternoon. For
me the most significant thing was to wash the bits
of the wall in the living room that I had missed
last time. There was one corner that I couldn't
get to because there was too much junk in the way.
The space to park a chair (which seemed
sufficient, rather than get my ladder out) has
been available for months and months now as I have
slowly thrown stuff away, or otherwise tidied it
up.
It a fair bit of scrubbing with a cleaning
cloth, hot water, and some spray cleaner, but the
deed was done, and now my living room looks a bit
better - and the Dettol, with bleach and the smell
of spring flowers, [or something] has left the
room smelling fresher. That was helped by opening
the windows while I worked, and for a couple of
hours afterwards. While I was in the mood I
tackled another tricky little problem. I had a
sticker stuck to my fireplace using some
industrial strength double sided tape. It was
looking really scruffy - doubly so after I tried
to remove it some months (maybe a year or more)
ago. I had to attack it with lighter fuel
(petrol). The fireplace looks much better
now.
There was no point showing a picture of
where I cleaned the wall because without a
"before" picture there is nothing to compare it
to. The same could be true of my fireplace, but at
least there is more to see than an expanse of
painted woodchip wallpaper. I should have taken a
wider picture of my fireplace so the decorative
uprights either side could be seen properly. You
can see a glimpse on the left of the picture. They
are the same marble effect as can be seen above
the pink tiles.
To finish my work in the front room I gave
the little desk like table in there a quick
polish, and dusted off a few other surfaces. I
won't go as far as to say it now looks good in
there, but compared to how it was 10 years ago, it
looks magnificent....well, sort of. The more
important thing is that the room is now in a state
where it would be relatively easy to clear it,
maybe only a half at a time, for the great day
when I paint the walls and ceiling - sometime in
the indefinite future. Should it ever happen that
Angela becomes a regular visitor, as she once was
before her love interests wandered, I would bring
that day forward, and even think of laying a new
carpet.
The peculiar thing about all the work I did
in the front room is that in terms of hours it
didn't take that long, and yet subjectively it
seemed to use up a large chunk of the afternoon.
It was also hardly restful. I don't know how many
times I got up and down the chair I was using to
reach the top of the wall, but it must have been
good exercise because I could feel my forehead
getting damp - and that was with the window open,
and fresh breeze coming in.
I also did a bit more tidying up in the
backroom, and even in the kitchen. The work in the
back room was the same as I have been doing for
weeks now. My eyes would come to rest on
something, and I would think of something to do
with it. In this manner I would spend anything
from 2 to 40 minutes doing a bit of tidying or
clearing. I don't really know how much I might
have done in there yesterday. What I do know is
that every time I walk through that room I sort of
marvel at how much room there is in there now. I
still have plenty of work to do in there, and
ultimately it will need to be repainted, but what
once seemed an impossible task now seems to have a
potential end. In fact several ends. Getting
everything in it's place will be one end. The
final end will be repainting the room, but like
the front room, washing the walls will improve the
look enough to suffice until the great repainting
happens.
My work in the kitchen was mostly doing
some washing up, but I did take out some rubbish
bags, and I did some cookery. The cookery was
skinless/boneless chicken thighs cooked in
Patak's curry like sauce (with added hot chilli
sauce). That needed very little preparation - just
put the chicken in an oven proof container, pour
over the sauce, and let it cook in the oven.
Turning the chicken over half way through was
probably a good idea, but it probably didn't make
much difference at the end. he one tedious bit of
preparation was top and tailing green beans, and
then cutting them into mouth friendly lengths
before zapping them in the microwave for 10
minutes.
It made for quite a pleasant dinner,
although the sauce I used was not very strongly
flavoured. The "tikka" and "tandoori" flavours
from the same range were much nicer. As I sat down
to eat my dinner, while watching Star Trek, I felt
like it had been a productive day, and that left
me feeling satisfied, and a little tired. It also
left my feeling philosophical. No, that is not
quite right - I wasn't left feeling that way
because of anything I had done earlier, but I was
after starting to watch the news. I get really
annoyed that all TV stations have lost the art of
news broadcasting - or so it seems.
I watched the start of the 6 O'clock news
on BBC1, and it started with a summary of what the
half hour programme would contain. Most of it was
about Covid-19, the corona virus. That summary,
lasting less than 5 minutes, seemed to contain as
much information as the 25 minutes of stretched
out blathering that followed. Maybe I missed
something of importance while watching Star Trek,
but every time I switched back to the news I would
just think "that's nothing new" and switch back to
Star Trek again.
By 9pm, after 4 small bottles of beer, and
an old episode of Have I Got More News For You, I
was feeling ready for bed. By 9.30pm I was fast
asleep in bed. It was one of those annoying nights
where after 4 hours of probably good sleep I woke
up, and it took at least an hour to fall asleep
again. I was slightly hindered by it getting to
that annoying temperature where it was feeling
chilly in my bedroom, but somehow too hot under
the duvet. The next 4 hours of sleep were a bit
lumpy, and featured some dream that seemed
important, but seem to have evaporated from my
memory now.
One of the other indicators of how it felt
like spring starting yesterday. I was going to
keep these plants indoors until they had grown a
bit more, but I decided to put them out on the
windowsill. My original idea was to put one one
each of the small sides of the bay window, but
both fit very nicely on one. I will have to go to
the shops now and get some sort of container to
put on the other small side of the bay window now.
When I started to successfully lose weight
last Autumn I had fantasies about being able to
buy new jeans from places like supermarkets. If
only I had waited ! I saw these jeans in Tesco
yesterday. I could have actually put on a few
pounds and got into these ! I have never seen such
large sizes in Tesco before. My diet is on hold at
the moment, and has been for some time now, but I
am still trying to be careful when I can. Once
spring takes off at full strength I intend to get
back on my diet at full strength, and then I guess
I will have to start having fantasies about buying
jeans from more fashion orientated shops -
assuming my intentions come to fruition.
This might look like panic buying, which
seems to be the meme of the week, but this is the
normal quantities of vitamin D3 that I buy. For
the last couple of years I have bought two bottle
so I can keep one bottle by my pile of prescribed
pills I take in the morning, and he same for the
pile of prescribed pills I take in the evening. I
will admit that I don't normally buy fish oil in
such a big bottle, but it was the small bottle
that Savers had with 1000mg tablets in it. I
usually buy my fish oil from Aldi, and it includes
cod liver oil rather than oil squeezed out of any
old fish that passes by the processing plant.
That brings me to today. I still feel a bit
creaky after that heavy gardening, and then after
doing my wall washing yesterday, but I don't think
it is going to stop me doing much. The one thing I
want to do during the day is to go and buy a
container or two for more plants of the third bay
window windowsill. I expect I'll either get it
from Poundland or Poundstretcher. I may even go to
both places.
Later on I need to try and prepare myself,
mostly mentally, to go to a gig this evening.
Chain are playing in The Chatterton Arms. A change
of management at the pub has lead to a resumption
of live music there again, and I think Chain are
the first band to play there for months (and
possibly over a year). The Chatterton Arms was
probably the first place I saw Chain play that
wasn't The Catford Ram. It is an easy, but very
boring journey on the 320 bus (with a choice of
320, 208, and at a pinch, the 366 bus). It is
possible I may get the 366 bus home. The reason I
normally shun it is that it takes the scenic route
home, but it does go past The Lord Homesdale pub.
There is a gig taking place there, about 0.8 miles
from The Chatterton Arms, tonight that I am
curious about. I rarely stay to the second set of
any gig I go to now, and so I might steel myself
for that 0.8 mile walk through the back streets to
see what is happening in The Lord Homesdale. I
know it is a Pantera tribute band, and so I doubt
I'll stay for more than a few songs, but you never
know...
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