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the lockdown log 66
Let’s get straight down to that appointment with the scales. I can’t remember offhand what the last weight that I mentioned here was, but my fears of being into the teens were unfounded as I got as solid 109kg. OK, that is 6kg up on my best from around November 2020, but not a disaster and four days later a subsequent check gave me 108kg. I am still lacking my mojo, but going back to regular weight checks might help a little with some focus.
I suppose that my daily exercise is helping and I think that I have managed over 10km per day walking every day this year. After this morning’s effort I have 2150km (over 1300 miles) in the book so far for 2021 and am looking good for over 4000km for the year.
We are venturing out and getting a little more confident about it. The news that mask wearing may become optional soon leaves me wondering whether or not I will keep wearing one whilst around the shops. I do have the condensation problem with my glasses, especially around the colder parts of supermarkets, or sometimes when I walk under an air-con vent, so tend to leave the glasses off whilst map wearing and peer myopically at the shelves and products. Not having to wear a mask would, in those circumstances, be a blessing. A decision to be made.
In the garden there are signs of flowers on the cucumbers and tomatoes so I am hopeful of some greenhouse grown crops in a while. We have had a few strawberries so far and the tayberry and raspberry fruits are forming. Hardly The Good Life, but it is nice to go and pick something to eat. On the herbs front things are mixed again. The parsley has been difficult this year; normally I don’t have a problem with it. We have carpets of chives after a slow start, but the tarragon has done almost nothing and the basil is struggling despite being in the greenhouse.
With all of my various projects I have been neglecting my hobbies and so many of the plans that I had last year have not come to fruition. As with the weight loss many of these things do require some focus and, again, I am lacking that extra little bit of desire to make things happen. In the garden I have been doing a lot of general maintenance rather than getting on with the big jobs, but that is mainly down to Mother Nature: Stuff grows and has to be kept under control. Grass cutting is close to becoming a weekly job at the moment with the alternating wet and warm days for example.
With the way that the weather has behaved lately the Berkshire Belle has had no inclination to go and sit in the garden and has had no interest in me firing up the BBQ either and so there has been no pressure on me to try and get some of the garden projects finished. Instead I fiddle around the edges so to speak and can happily spend a couple of hours pottering around outside just doing anything that I see that needs doing; a bit of pruning here, some weeding there and so on. I can just get lost in the moment with no plans or aims, just the basic “See it – Sort it” principle. Maybe it helps to keep me sane.
Stay safe out there, wherever you are.
the lockdown log 63
The lunch outing was a success, despite driving for over an hour to get there, but after some good food we had a slow meander back via Waitrose and Abingdon and Aldi at Farringdon. Around Reading and the village where we ate it was wet and horrible, but within about ten miles coming home we were into sunshine and a very pleasant drive.
I am slowly getting some focus back into the garden projects and because that progress is visible it is generating some motivation. Much of what I am doing are things that I dislike such as painting (and the preparation for painting), but I am moving again and that is good.
There have been a lot of distractions; silly things going wrong prominent amongst them and new jobs coming into the schedule that I had no expectations of having to do. Life is like that though and you just have to get on with it.
Paid work plods on regardless and I seem to have no issues with that. I can turn up, do my stuff and come home and I am grateful for that. I have no recollection of a time where I had a problem with a job and although there have been times when I have not especially enjoyed a piece of work or a time at work, I have not lacked motivation to do it. The fact that I am still working getting on for aged 70 perhaps bears that out.
Technology has been one of the distractions for me and I am still using an old desktop for these blogs as my laptop will not display the blog properly at the moment and I am too reluctant to invest time working out why. This is a Windows 10 machine and works slightly differently to the MacBook. It is also an American device and I realised the other day that it was using American English not UK English. I have changed the settings, but it is still trying to Americanise my spelling, so apologies if you have found some strange words recently. This PC uses a grey fond on a white background and, in certain lights, I can’t be relied on to spot when it has corrected me.
That’s it for this week. Sorry it is a short one, but time is pressing and I need to go and cook a couple of Brill fillets, along with some veg, for dinner.
Stay safe wherever you are.
the lockdown log 58
It has been one of those weeks when working around the weather has been paramount and I have managed to get a fair amount done outside. The high winds have also tested some of my bodges (I can’t think of a kinder expression) to reinforce my neighbour’s dodgy fences and we have come through that examination well.
In between downpours I have managed to paint our patio set with a coat of Hammerite and it looks reasonable, certainly much better than it did, although the colour is a lot lighter than the Navy Blue that is shown on the tin. It is another job done and the Berkshire Belle can get on and order us some cushions.
I have more repairs to make to the deck that I had thought and have found a problem that needs some thought as to how best to fix it. The cost keeps mounting and in some ways the fact that we are starting to accept that we will not be going away on holiday again this year is a blessing because I can divert funds to the garden. Looking at it the other way if I fix the deck we won’t be able to afford a holiday, but my way is easier to accept I think. At least we will have somewhere to sit and enjoy our bit of England.
The birds are back after the desecration of their trees in our neighbour’s garden and it has been nice to hear them singing as I work. A young robin spent most of Sunday afternoon poking about the garden just a few feet away from me as I painted and was not at all put off my the radio commentary from the Portuguese Grand Prix. I also had one of the young foxes watching me for a while from behind a flowerpot.
The foxes are still causing major damage and leaving me a mess to sort out every morning. There are two of the out playing on the deck this evening as I write this. One thing that I had not appreciated was their desire to have toys and I find all sorts, some traditional dog things like balls that I assume they have pinched form other gardens, but they also have the plastic rose off a watering can, plastic bottles and bits of wood. The cubs are growing and one is almost as big as mum now.
Poling day today, but we have postal votes and so ours were sent off about three weeks ago. We always try to vote; the postal votes are a hang up from the time that we would often be away in May and wanted to avoid missing out. Having registered back then we have just carried on and it is relatively easy although this time we have two elections. One is for the local council and is a straightforward vote, but the other is for the police commissioner and that one is one of the alternative vote type which I am not in favour of. Personally I think that the requirement to cast an alternative vote is just ridiculous.
Doom and gloom hangs over us both at the moment and neither of us can find a way out of it for now so we just have to get on with life. The Berkshire Belle has got used to her weekly trip out, but didn’t get one today as we were waiting in this morning for a delivery that didn’t turn up until half past two by which time it had started raining and we had both lost the will to go out – the garden centre will have to wait until next week.
We do have one treat lined up in that we have booked to go out for lunch one Friday early next month so that is something to look forward to. So one that note I’ll close for this week. Stay safe wherever you are.
the lockdown log 56
Today has been an odd day to round out an odd week. More disasters than triumphs, but that’s life eh? I’ll tell you a bit more in the coming paragraphs, but all in all I am still here as are those closest to me so I am thankful for that.
This morning started quite well. I was up just after five (my day off so a bit of a lie in) and breakfast of pasta with some homemade tomato sauce was good. The Berkshire Belle decided that we would go shopping and so my quiet time got a little disrupted as she wanted to be out by eight thirty and I had a few household chore to get done, but I still managed to watch a Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain concert on YouTube as well as a bit of use practice myself so things were going quite well at first.
By the time we got out a sinus headache had set in and was getting worse. The low sun didn’t help either on the drive across town tom Sainsbury’s so by the time that we were in the store I was not feeling great. We then had one of those shopping sessions where we had a total communication breakdown and compounded things by going into the store next door for further shopping. We had recovered our sense of humour bu the time that we got home, but then the bank that I use for my business contacted me for some further information and when I powered up the PC it decided to do a software update and I could not use it until after lunch.
Later I did sort out the bank and paid the paper bill on-line before heading out into the garden with no thought of what I was going to do other than that I needed to do something to take my mind off on my headache. The box of extra long wood screws that I had ordered from Amazon had arrived and so I put those to good use and was starting to have a productive afternoon when the tree surgeons turned up to work of the Leylandii hedge at the bottom of a neighbour’s garden. The noise and smell from there petrol chainsaws was too much even with my ear defenders on and so I retired early. At least I had made some progress.
The week has not been a good one in general, especially in terms of my weight. I deiced after writing last week’s lockdown log to change my eating habits slightly to see if it would help kick off a losing streak, but, despite cutting down on intake, I have put on 2.5 kilos according to my scales. Now I accept that it could just be another rogue reading and tomorrow may show something a bit more where I want to be. I hope so, but this was a blow.
My big idea was this. Five days a week I walk about 5-6 miles at work (8 km) and I eat my breakfast pack in two stages, about one third before I start work and the rest about half way through. Now my tracker estimates calorie burn off at around 1400 per morning, but I do about two thirds of that in the first half and so I thought that if I was to eat two thirds of my nosh before I start it would be a better balance. With cutting back on what I eat later in the day too, including having a couple of soup lunches, I was hoping to maybe lose a kilo or maybe two instead of which I have gone the wrong way. I have no idea why, but I am going to persevere for another week and see what happens.
I have been generally very fed up all week, apart from a few good moments. One of the latter came on Tuesday when I was hoping for a text offering me my second Covid vaccination. This did not come through at lunchtime as had happened for the first one and I went off into the garden in the afternoon in low spirits. I had just got started when Bane, the little black cat from next door, turned up to offer advice and I suggested to her that, as she looked like a good witch’s favour, could she not magic up my appointment? Meow she said and my ‘phone warbled; it was the text from the doctor! I will be getting my second jab next Tuesday morning and will be treating Bane with a lot more respect in future…
The fox family are still wreaking havoc in our garden (another source of downers), but the cubs are showing signs of rapid growth and I thing that a couple of them are being encouraged to set up their own homes. All being well they will all be leaving soon and I will be adding some fox prevention measures into my garden project programme. I doubt that I can entirely rid myself of them, but I will try and take away some of the fox friendly aspects whilst still leaving room for hedgehogs.
The garden project is coming along, but I have had a few setbacks this week and have not made the progress that I though possible this time last week. Today, despite an early shutdown, did see some good progress towards finishing the jobs that I want to have done by the end of this month. I have over a week to go though and am determined to hit my deadline.
Stay safe wherever you are and I will try to too.
the lockdown log 30
Autumn has come, the leaves are falling heavily on the remnants of various Atlantic storm systems and it is generally wet and cold. Outside jobs are not much fun and neither is walking for exercise, but both are necessary, so how to motivate myself?
There is a serious issue here in trying to sustain the progress that I have made so far over the last year with the garden renovation and, since July, my weight loss. In terms of the former there is an element of burnout, but it is less critical in that I have the Winter to finish things off now. The weight loss program is more urgent and whilst I have lost a lot so far I know that there will be another plateau sometime soon and any slacking off will bring that on and/or make it worse.
At least I can deal with setbacks more often than not and if I do have a bad week with no weight loss, or worse a gain, I am sure that it will just drive me to regain my position over the next week.
The shed has finally arrived and is up. The picture below shows it as built and it has already been painted on the three sides that we can see, plus much of the interior. The back will get painted when I next get a couple of dry days, but before that I will put the shingles on the rear of the roof. The shed can then be pushed back into place against the fence and I can do the front shingles. The capping pieces are on order and will, hopefully, be here next week.
Time is my biggest resource issue at the moment. The days are getting shorter and there is a lot to squeeze in. When it is wet I will not run power out to the shed so am restricted to jobs that I can do with hand or battery tools. That is not too bad as the pressure is off and all I need to do is to make sure that I do a bit every day and weave into those jobs the annual stuff; I have over 100 bulbs to plant in the next three weeks or so for example, have leaves to clear, grass to cut and so on. It all helps to fill my days.
Over the course of writing this the sun has come out and the light makes everything seem more cheerful. I have a chicken roasting in the oven for dinner tonight though and there is the veg to go with it that need preparing and cooking. Any further outdoor activity will have to wait until tomorrow.
I hope that you are all well out there. Stay safe wherever you are.
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