advertisement


Today I have mainly been v3

I'm sorry, I don't understand your point. I'm not trying to 'prove' anything. Assuming the well-known figure of speech is 'each to his own' I'm simply observing that we don't all like the same things, and a little tolerance wouldn't go amiss.

So what is a 'shame' exactly, that gives you a problem with that?
It was rather your seizing on the being put up against a wall and shot comment.
 
Well it was intended as a lighthearted and gentle rebuke to what I took as a lighthearted remark. Sorry if you took it to heart.
 
this morning discovered the compressor on our mobile AC has got intolerably noisy - i think it is on its way out.....discovered our local recycling centre wont take it, and i'll need to pay the council contractor £35 to collect and dispose......

Started reading a PhD thesis that i am the internal examiner for - will probably read twice over the next 3 weeks. Sorting out some HR issues, need to finish some shortlisting but screen work is too hot in this weather.
 
Just got home from site visits in Central and East London, it’s a hot one today. Thankfully our house sits between 2 rivers and we’re not far from the sea, there’s always a breeze in the afternoon. Will be catching up with some paperwork for the next hour.

Cheers BB
 
Just got home after seeing the Top Gun film. It is a good film and the flying sequences are very well done. As there is no CGI they do look believable.

Went across to the local pizza house afterwards got a bit emotional there (had to ask waiter for an extra napkin) as I started to think how much Heather would have enjoyed it. She quite liked Tom Cruise and aircraft so it would have been right up her street.

Managed to keep it together when the waiter came to take my order. Ordered our signature pizza, hot and spicy. We shared one of these the first time we eat together.

Top Gun seems to bookend our life together, the original was released before we met and Maverick after she passed away.
 
Last edited:
I have been busy getting better this past week. I read two Danish auto-biographical books written by a local author, Jesper Stein, who is a contemporary of mine. The first was about his upbringing in Risskov, where I live, the second about his final and successful attempt at becoming permanently sober after he had achieved some (international) success as a crime writer.

Jesper Stein was afraid that he would never write again if he became a teetotaller. Wrong he was. During the "reprogramming" process to never ever drink again, he realized that he had subscribed to the self-destructive and long-standing myth that inspiration and alcohol (etc) go hand in hand. Instead he found that he could only write when sober or when just a little intoxicated. When his alcohol dependency took over, nothing came. Alcohol ate up his soul to such an extent that he could not write a word and his private and social worlds fell apart.

Somehow his reflections about his life and struggle with alcohol struck home. I know that having a depression is not the same as being an alcoholic, but the fact that I have carried depression with me as long as I remember back in time, makes me wonder what effect it has had on the people who know and knew me. What effect it has had on my adult life, my work as a teacher and as a poet. Somewhere along the way I stopped writing poetry. In the period from 1988 to 2005, I really wrote a lot every day, I simply could not help it. Then the output lessened to a trickle before it almost stopped from around 2013. My mind gradually seems to have become buried in sand after that.

Today I am slowly freeing my mind from that vast mountain of sand gathered throughout the last 10 to 20 years. I am getting myself back again.
 
Last edited:
Today I spent an hour walking along the Nantes-Brest canal.
I would have walked longer but it was unbearably hot.
 
Today I spent more than a few hours sat in the study monging on the internet , playing a computer game and not daring to move to the the other side of the house because it was unbearably hot.Drank a lot of water. Some inconsiderate twerp decided to light a smelly bonfire late on. Had to close all the windows pronto. Eww. Smelly smoke is smelly. I will now have to wreak revenge whenever the wind is in the right direction. Just sodden old plants. No rubber tyres or anything too nasty. I'm not that vindictive.
 
Off to Penzance today. If the sea is inviting I’ll have a paddle in the kayak. Otherwise it’s a small stream session on a little leat/stream that runs through Newlyn. So tight and overgrown it requires a five foot fly rod to cast comfortably. Anyways, had eight lovely brownies and rather more refusals. I think the contortions I went through to fish two hundred yards in two hours would win me some sort of prize in the over-seventies agility classes( like they probably have in China).
Back to home with the soundtrack of ‘Built to Spill’ version of ‘Cortez the Killer’ covering most of the journey. It’s version is 20.30 mins long so no speed limits were exceeded in a rather nice day.
 
I've been taking a day off work. It's been spent mostly on the computer and on my phone, with the occasional intercepting & spraying of individual cluster flies that I fear wish to make my home theirs. :eek:
 
The boy had a school inset day, so we went off to the beach for the day. Car park at Anderby Creek was rammed by the time we got there (2 hour drive), so went on the hunt for somewhere to park. Found another (mainly empty) car park a couple of miles along. So a fair trek along the beach to the cafe at Anderby Creek for lunch, but a nice day out all the same. Had a paddle in the (brown) sea, a bit of beach cricket....not quite Devon or Cornwall, but unfortunately can't do that in a day.
 
While I was sitting outside at 11pm finishing off my bottle of wine, a barn owl flew across the garden and perched, illuminated, on the roof 10m away from me. I watched him, then reached slowly for my phone to try and get a pic. He heard, swivelled his head and gave me a stare. I froze, and we had full eye contact for fifteen seconds before he thought better of it and flew off. Wonderful!
 
Yesterday was the first anniversary of our move to Dorset.

Mrs seagull has a part-time job so worked in the morning. I went to play table tennis with the cancer support group.

We met up for lunch in the garden of the local Quaker Meeting House where the CSG meet each Friday. We had a very calming Mindfulness session in the garden. I was aware of several aircraft flying overhead and the calls of the gulls. Reminders of our old town (Farnborough) and our new home.

Went to the Electric Palace to watch the Downton Abbey film which was corny and totally unbelievable but some good lines were surprisingly funny.

Today is the Food and BEER festival!
 


advertisement


Back
Top