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Saturday 28th
March 2020
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07:59 GMT
Once again the forecast for yesterday
seemed to suggest a good day, but the wind
continued to spoil things by making it feel a lot
colder. For a few hours in the afternoon the air
temperature was 13° C, and in direct sunshine, in
still air, it would have felt good, but alas it
still felt chilly. Of course there is the problem
that in these days when going out is a rare
luxury, I may not have appreciated in the same way
as when actually walking in the sun.
The sky was
clear enough for the sunny periods shown for
6am to be actual non stop sunshine. To my
great surprise, the clear sky did not mean a
frost this morning. It is still a very chilly
morning, but not that chilly. It should
stay sunny this morning, but the sun may
finally disappear behind cloud at 2pm. It
won't even get that warm - just 11° C maximum.
As it clouds over there is a very small chance
of rain, but I expect it will stay dry. Maybe
the only good news is that tomorrow may now
see some sunny spells in the morning, but the
afternoon will probably be very dull. Tomorrow
may well be a very chilly day with most of the
morning barely higher than 4° C, and the
afternoon only touching 7 or 8° C. It is
possible we will have to wait until 6th April
to see the sun again.
Yesterday was another day where I
didn't feel that good, but I also didn't feel that
bad. It is still my belief that I am fighting some
sort of infection, but happily I seem to be
winning. Of course it is always possible that it
now takes me a full day to get over the sort of
walk that I should get over overnight. I am
relying on some very vague memories, but I think I
can remember my dad, who seemed very old to me,
complaining about aches and pains typical of old
age. He did when he was 52, and so he obviously
was not that old. Now my mum, was always
complaining about her "screws" (meaning her leg
joints) in any bad weather when she was not that
far into her 60s. By that standard I am doing
quite well - maybe even very well.
There is a very strong bias towards blaming
any ache or pain, not matter how small, on Corona
virus, and I am not immune to it. If anything I am
even more biassed towards it for some sort of
comedy values. I find myself not being able to
take this thing seriously until something serious
happens. One curious thing is that in the last
week or two I have heard of several people dying,
and none of them have died from anything related
to corona virus. I have no doubt that some will be
dying from this virus, but as far as I am aware
not even a friend, of a friend, of a friend, of a
friend has reported any deaths. What I have seen
is things like a 93 year old woman, who is
theoretically in the "instant death" category
spending less than a week in hospital, and making
a full recovery. This virus may be very infective,
rather unpleasant, but not as lethal as predicted.
I predict some will die because they are so
neurotic that they can't be bothered to fight it.
In cases like yesterday, when I was feeling
a bit achey, and maybe a bit under the weather,
the only thing to do was to stress test myself. I
can't say I was keen, but I forced myself into the
garden to do some work out there. It was one of
those sessions where I probably achieved a lot
when considered from the point of view of
preparing the ground for later work. It was also
another of those work sessions where photos don't
really show much unless you know there is an
absence of something.
This is one of those pictures that does not
convey any impression of the sweat that went into
the work. It shows the house end of the lawn-to-be
area. I had two objectives, actually three. Once
upon a time this was a rockery, but not by design.
It was where I had piled up a load of rubble. So
one objective with to thin out the rubble, and at
the same time I pulled out some weeds. It is going
to need a lot more work to get rid of all the
rubble, and some I might just attempt to bury. The
other objective was to shovel away all that had
spilled over the edge of the path. Once again it
is not a fully finished job, but at least I can
where I am going now. Odd bricks and tree roots
make the job harder.
Once again I had another go at clearing the
right hand side of the back of the garden. The
most successful thing was pulling ivy off the
fence, and also off the rotted tree stumps that
are sticking up just left of centre of the
picture. It is a real bugger of a job, but I feel
I have made good progress. There are still a lot
of shoots and roots below the bricks at the very
back, but once I remove them, and stack them up
elsewhere, I reckon I can finally eradicate the
ivy - or at least eradicate it enough that keeping
it down will be easier/possible.
It has been many years since I last
saw all of the garden path. I thought it stopped
at the tree that is now just a stump after it was
cut down. I was wrong. Before that tree grew from
nothing, through the path, into the 40ft + high
tree that was cut down, there were two trees
behind it. Trees that may once have been fruit
trees. The path, which I laid, went up to those
trees that are now just rotten stumps by the
fence. Yesterday I uncovered two more flag stones
that can just be seen on the middle left of the
picture.
If I could cut that tree stump off flush,
or even slightly below the level of the path, I
could potentially relay the path, slightly higher
to avoid some bastards of tree roots, and once
again have a garden path to the end of the garden.
I think only dynamite would do the job properly,
but I haven't got any, and it would be the sort of
thing the neighbours might complain about. I think
I just have to be patient, and wait for another 10
to 20 years for the remains of the tree to decay.
I don't think I was working in the garden
for more than an hour. At the end I had exchanged
some aches and pains brought about by being
inactive, and sitting at my PC for two many hours,
for the sorts of pains that are easy to explain. I
will admit that I didn't think they would be as
bad as they were, but they didn't seem to be the
sort of pains you might get from, for instance,
'flu. Maybe they were the sort of pains you might
get while fighting an infection, but they faded to
a low level surprisingly quickly.
They left a sort of tenderness - the sort
that is a warning not to do that again too
quickly. Well I didn't intend to do more gardening
too quickly. I have got to the point where I would
have to commit to a lot of work next
time....well, probably. I guess I could
still find lots of little bits of tidying up, and
I have to admit that they do build up to make a
big difference over time. I had a bit of a rest
before tackling my next stress test of my body.
The rest gave time for some of the mud I
had brought into the house from the garden to dry
out. It did so quicker than I imagined so that
when I got the hoover out it made short work of
it. I had really only intended just to hoover over
a couple of muddy footprints, but I ended up
hoovering the back room, the front hall, and the
front room. For someone who can only derive
a little bit of pleasure from hoovering after it
has made a good difference, I felt quite satisfied
to achieve what I did.
I am not sure if it was the gardening or
the hoovering, but I did seem to hurt my dodgy
ribs along the way. There was no real static pain,
but they were not shy in letting me know if I made
a movement they didn't like. With hindsight, it
was probably tugging at Ivy roots that did the
damage, although shovelling up stuff can put some
strain on my chest.
By early to mid evening I was feeling sort
of ill, and sort of not ill. I find it really hard
to describe in any sensible way how I could ache,
and yet not ache, to feel tired, but not to feel
tired. Perhaps I could sum it as by saying I felt
tender, or that I felt fine provided I didn't
think about how I felt. i still couldn't shake off
the idea that I was fighting an infection - and
winning - but it was taking it's toll on me.
At one point in the evening I felt a bit
cooler than I thought I should be. That made me
check my temperature to see if I had a fever - I
had, but only if you stretch the definition far
beyond anything sane. My temperature was 37.4° C,
and that is 0.1° C above one of the many
definitions of normal. A quick online check showed
this - "Your body temperature of 37.4°C
(99.3°F) is within normal range. Your body
temperature is about right! Congratulations!"
I conclude I am fit and healthy. Shame it doesn't
quite feel that way.
I finally had the last part of an Amazon
delivery delivered yesterday. The biggest item was
this relatively cheap camera stabiliser. It is
purely a mechanic device, and it boils down to
nothing more sophisticated than dangling a weight
underneath the camera to make any movement a bit
smoother. I had actually experimented with
something similar, but made up of odds and ends
held together with gaffer tape. My experiment was
for a much smaller, and lighter camera, and it did
sort of work. This new one is supposed to be
robust enough for a full DSLR camera, but I am
thinking it will probably work much better with a
lighter camera. The big problem now is that with
all gigs cancelled, there is nowhere to try it. I
might take it for a walk around the park today,
but as yet I am not sure if I am going out.
At a time when entertainment might be
useful, there was little on TV to catch my
attention last night. By 9pm I had been in bed
reading for half an hour, and at 9pm I turned out
the light, and I was soon fast asleep. It seems
odd that at a time like this, with a killer virus
on the loose, when our freedom to go out is
severely curtailed, when the days can seem long
and boring, that I seem to be sleeping rather well
recently. If I have any complaint it is that I
seem to wake up at sunrise - and sunrise is
getting earlier and earlier ! In other
circumstance I could like it, but when it is
struggle to keep amused all day, a long day taxes
the imagination.
Once again I am unsure how I feel this
morning - apart from one particular aspect. It
feels like hay fever, and my nose has really been
itching in the last hour or so. In theory I should
be mostly protected from any tree pollen (for that
is what I seem to be sensitive to) while indoors,
and away from any open window - but the bathroom
window is open, and only 40ft or so away from me.
It might be wise to treat this as a cold if it
perseveres, and stay in to avoid alarming any body
who might see me sneeze. There are many neurotic
people out there who constantly believe they are
about to die - even the young and fit who tend to
suffer least from corona virus.
I don't think I really have any idea what I
will do today. I'll just make it up as I go along.
I think I might start with laying on my bed
reading. If I should happen to doze off, it will
be a good thing.
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