I was rather more
depressed than I sounded when writing
yesterday. There were a multitude of
small reasons, individually ignorable, why I
felt depressed, but one I chose to dwell on
concerned drinking. I was feeling that I was
fed up drinking alone, and as a result my beer
consumption was getting smaller and smaller.
To compensate I did drink rather a lot of
booze that wasn't beer last night.
By the time I would usually be going
out, around midday, we seemed to have lost the
sun, and that put me off going for a walk,
although I think I had made my mind up that I
would not go for a walk before that. As nice
as a walk might have been, even with little
sunshine, I could have chosen to just be lazy
in the extreme all day, but I did want to try
and do something constructive. It seemed a bit
gloomy in the back room, and so I didn't fancy
doing anything in there, but I did think I
might spend 20 minutes in the garden. It
turned out to be rather longer than that.
The first thing I did, and it was
initially all I intended to do, was to repair
the back fence. It was tricky doing it from my
side of the fence. There was one slat, the 6th
from the right, that was hanging by just one
nail, and everytime a fox or cat went over the
fence that slat would end up pushed to one
side. As I said, it was tricky trying to do
anything from my side of the fence, but I
managed to get a few screws in it that I hope
do not protrude too far the other side, and
that slat is now firmly fixed.
When I first moved here my friend Ivor
donated an old drinks cabinet to me. Actually
it was his wife who wanted to get rid of it
because she wanted to get rid of most stuff
from his time with his first wife. Now that
drinks cabinet, the one I moved by myself
without fully emptying it, and pulled a
muscle, or popped a rib while doing so, came
with a strip of hardboard that had no apparent
purpose. Since November 1983 it had been stood
up behind the cabinet gathering a thick layer
of dust. When I moved the cabinet I thought
that I would put it aside rather then throw it
away. It proved to be just the right length to
replace a missing slat in the fence. It sticks
out a mile, but it will weather one day.
While I was working by the back fence I
pulled up a lot more ivy root, and I even
managed to snap off one of the two tree
stumps. One is still there, wrapped in ivy,
and it is like a tube of ivy that marks where
I pulled out the other rotted stump. I did
something like archaeology when I used a hand
trowel to try and trace the old path of a
border of bricks at the back of the garden. I
think that is actually a lot cause because the
trees would have grown through the border
pushing the bricks aside. So I dug out some
bricks, and moved some of those that are
stacked against the fence.
I have quite a growing pile of bricks
now. Some of the red bricks may be suitable to
replace some crumbling decorative bricks by my
front door, but I'll have to learn to mix and
use cement to do that. They can wait for
another day in the future.
The other thing I did was to try and
rake a few more lumps out of the lawn-to-be. I
think, or at least I hope that today's and
tomorrow's rain will get either the old grass
seed growing, or the new grass seed I put
down. I also hope that the rain will help to
level out the lawn area a bit more, and the
final hills and dales will eventually be
disguised by grass. It is never going to be a
bowling green, but I hope it will look nice
when it is all green.
This is the end of what should be a
lawn nearest the house. The history of this
end is that it was once more like a jungle,
and so I used it as a tip to dispose of used
cat latter. Much of that cat litter was clay
based, and now this end has a thick covering
of clay - and while it is dry it is very hard.
Together with all the rubble at this end, it
is going to be very challenging to get any
grass to grow there. I think I will need to
completely remove about the top 4 inches to
reveal the old soil. I have no idea how I will
dispose of that clay. I suspect I might have
to patiently throw a small bag of it in the
wheelie bin every fortnight. Maybe I will have
it clear by this time next year !
Although my initial idea was to spend
as little as 20 minutes in the garden, I think
I was out there for a good couple of hours. It
meant I missed my lunch, although I did have
an afternoon snack, but I was getting quite
peckish waiting for dinner time to roll round,
and to eat my cold chicken shish kebab. The
one thing I didn't eat yesterday was any
apples, although that was possibly the only
significant change in my diet. This morning my
blood glucose level was nice and low. It was
just 6.2mmol/l - and that is the sort of
number I am always aiming for. I have two
apples left to eat, and I am only going to eat
one a day now.
There was one other change to my diet
and that was that I didn't drink any beer.
Some beers, like Guinness, seem to be fairly
sugar free, but others appear to contain much
more sugar. Most have some sugar, but it is
usually low enough not to effect me much - or
so I delude myself. Last night I decided I
would drink some gin. I chose a half empty
bottle of "Oriental spiced gin". Unlike some
of the weird gins I bought for Patricia to
taste, this one didn't describe itself as a
liqueur, and so didn't have any sugar in it.
Over the course of an extremely long phone
call I finished off the bottle !
I phoned Sue last night to see how she
was doing in this pandemic. She is in the same
situation as me in that she lives alone, and
so has had no face to face communication for
over three weeks now. Like all phone
calls with Sue it went on and on and on ! That
is how I ended up emptying the gin bottle. I
was not from any desire to get drunk, but more
as something to wet my mouth while talking. I
don't think I was that drunk when we finally
finished the call, and I went to bed - just as
it was getting light this morning !
I got about three hours of sleep last
night, and I can see me having a few serious
snoozes this afternoon. I woke up in pain, and
it was not a hangover, although I do have a
bit of a hangover. The really painful bit was
my lower back and hips. I think I can blame
that on my gardening. I was doing a lot of
bending over, and pulling up ivy roots. I took
a couple of paracetamol before I took my
morning blood pressure medication, and that
has helped a lot, as has moving around a bit.
The pain killers had not kicked in when I had
to go to the toilet, and sitting down on the
toilet was really painful.
I think all my health indicators are
looking good this morning. I have already
mentioned my nice and low (aka "normal") blood
glucose, and my temperature is following it's
normal daily pattern. The other good thing is
that I seemed to be over the peak in my
weight, and maybe it is starting to reduce
again. Maybe I can blame the recent gain on
the apples I have been eating too. Who would
have thought something that is associated with
good health could actually be so bad for me !
Today I have only one small plan. I
want to go to one of the small shops to buy
some Diet Coke, but otherwise I don't really
expect to do much apart from snooze a lot to
catch up with my lost sleep.
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