Monthly Archives: June 2009

The sun is just now, at 08:30, breaking through the haze and things are warming up once more.  I’ve gone round the house drawing blinds and curtains and setting up the electric fans to keep the air moving.  Works surprisingly well.

The washer is chundering quietly away on its first load of the day and, if the state of the laundry basket is anything to go by, another three loads will see it all away.  Then I’ll do one last, very small load to get things like trousers and shorts washed and dried.

I really do need to get a washing line set up–it’s all very well drying laundry in the machine during the rainy months but now it’s close to criminal to waste electricity like that.  An hour outside in this weather leaves the clothes and linen dry and sweet smelling, and a 20 minute warm cycle in the drier softens them ready for the store.

Yesterday’s allocated task–shopping–got done in spite of it being yet another ‘hottest day this year’.

I timed it so’s I arrived in time to take a late lunch in the supermarket restaurant and enjoyed a plate of fish-cakes (cod and cheddar cheese), salad and chips, followed by strawberries and cream, all on special offer.  My evening meal, very late, was ‘southern-fried’ chicken breast ‘fillets’ and beans.  That was my food intake for the day–I forgot breakfast until it was too close to lunch time.  I’ve settled on a fruit compote with unsweetened yoghurt for breakfast.

Even allowing for the chips and cream, I think I did ok there.  I’m not dieting for weight loss, more to get a good, healthy routine going to see me through the summer.  It may all change at the end of the season when Graham gets back.

Dolly is moaning at me, or perhaps cussing me out, it’s difficult to say.  The Frontline is doing its magic thing but I decided before applying it to give her a good brush and comb to see if there was anything in the way of a tick infestation.  Couldn’t find any, for which I’m very thankful.  Nasty things, ticks.

And then, feet up, glass of wine, and another episode of The Tudors.  Being capable of repeat viewing is the sign of a good bit of TV drama, I reckon.

I suspect that my day today will be a repeat, too, except that you may substitute laundry for shopping.

It’s a matter of adjustment, I suppose.  Like, me to my new regime, and Dolly to fit the puzzle.

I’m working on a framework schedule for myself:

• Monday:  Shopping
• Tuesday:  Laundry
• Wednesday:  House cleaning
• Thursday:  Gardening
• Friday, Saturday and Sunday:  Unassigned

Alongside that I need to decide whether to do my online journal first thing in the morning or last thing in the day before TV and dinner.  The offline journal has long since dissolved into jottings in my notebook alongside whatever poetry work I’m doing.

Not that there’s much of that.  Work, I mean.

Important items on my to-do list:

• Frontline for Dolly, who seems to be troubled with little visitors now that she’s a part-time outdoor cat, and summer is upon us
• Check offside rear tyre on the car–might have a slow puncture
• Get myself a fisherman’s ‘vest’ to replace my bag;  and find out what the British English for ‘vest’ is if it’s not ‘waistcoat’
• Get a new Filofax

Apart from that I wish to record that I have instituted a total ban on all things Michael Jackson, avoiding the online headlines, and keeping the TV and radio mute buttons close to hand. The rest of that story is, so far as I am concerned, silence.

I’m working on the project of going bagless. See, I joined the bag brigade years ago, starting with a clutch bag to hold my Filofax and pipe/tobacco.  Over the years the amount of stuff I need to carry around has increased until, when we lived in Lincolnshire, it embraced two cameras, a full-size sketch-book, three different sizes of notebook, a pencil box, a travelling water-colour sketch kit…

And it’s all become too heavy altogether, weighing down my shoulder and holding me down to earth with far too great an emphasis.

I am of an age now where I need to reduce the weight of my anchors, the better to be able to float off when the time comes.  I no longer need an ox-cart.

So, I’m working on the project of acquiring a lightweight jacket with pockets and a new Filofax to house diary, notebook, sketch-book, addresses… you know the kind of thing.

Other than that, sitting contentedly in the sun, thinking of days long past and wondering if the heroes of my childhood are happy in their respective valhallas.  If any of them are still alive then I feel for them.  Deeply.  No-one should get that old.