Tuned in to the Shipping Forecast this morning. Oh five twenty. A few gales here and there. Snormal. Made me think a bit. I listen to the SF as a means to drop off to sleep again. The dulcet, repetitive tones are the equivalent of counting sheep. Although the SF couldn’t care less I did feel as if I should pay more attention and listen carefully to the whole ten minutes.
I’m pretty sure there will be people out there doing this. Mariners, fishermen and lighthouse keepers for example. Ok they may well be waiting to hear the forecast on their own patch but they will almost certainly be listening intently.
It may be that the trawlermen and lighthouse keepers amongst us have their own more up to the minute and detailed sources of info. I dunno. However the romantic in me still pictures them sitting around their wireless sets concentrating hard on the important information being broadcast directly to them as individuals.
Lighthouse keepers are a special case. Theirs is a lonely existence and any contact with the outside world is deeply cherished. For some reason I imagined a situation where civilisation had ended and the lighthouse keepers, with their store cupboards filled to the brim and plenty of fuel in the generator to keep the light burning, tending to the light to the bitter end. There would be no ships at sea to heed their salutary warning but lighthouse keepers are a professional bunch and would have kept at it to the end. That helicopter would not be coming back to fetch them.
I must have woken up again after that 🙂
Farming Today was on. Yay. It was all about farm contractors and shotgun ammo. Two separate articles. Caleb from Clarkson’s Farm was on. Big business farm contracting. The equipment is v expensive and Caleb appears to have a lot of kit. Started his business when he was sixteen I’m told. Stopped watching the prog halfway through the last series. Only watched it in the first place because I was bored.
The shotgun thing is all about attempts to persuade people who like firing them to move to steel shot instead of the lead that has been used since the beginning of shotgun dawn but which is a pollutant. Not going v well apaz. Most folk still use lead.
Musta dozed off again because when I awoke the next person on the wireless was a climate scientist whose house had burned down in the Los Angeles fires. He said with hindsight he should have realise that fires were a growing risk due to global warming and shouldn’t have bought his house where he did. I dunno where else he could have bought it. LA, as its residents like to call it, is mostly a dump anyway and I doubt he would have wanted to commute from somewhere nice up the coast like Santa Barbara.
Some will have noticed that I dramatically crossed off two nights in one go on my sleeps countdown blackboard. The hip hop was 28 days ago counting today so the instructions to stay shuffling on two crutches for the first four weeks had a degree of ambiguity that allowed me to ditch a stick.
Can’t really tell yet how it’s going but I do plan to walk at least as far as the bus stop this morning and will report back. The issue is how my left leg is going to be. It’s taken some hammer over the last few months and I get some twinges coming from it. Hopefully everything will settle down. The right leg certainly feels great. Only using one crutch has the massive benefit of making it a lot easier for me to carry a cup of tea.
I’m still not allowed to bend more than 90 degrees but did manage to remove my right sock last night with the help of the grabber which must be called progress. No way I can get it on on my own though. That will have to wait another couple of weeks when all restrictions will hopefully be suspended.
V misty out. Worradifference a day makes.
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In the shed I’ve closed down every window related to Family Tree research. Decided to take a break today. Had a lot of windows open. One for each farm for example plus a few Ancestry windows. I leave one page open with census results and one with births, marriages and deaths. Makes it a lot easier to navigate quickly to the right place for searching.
The heating in the shed was off for the last few days, what with the near tropical weather we’ve been having. Back on now. Cold hands ain’t no good for typing. Tapping. Will go for a bit of a walk shortly anyway.
It’s back to being a not particularly nice day. Cold doesn’t encourage long walks. Am thinking of seeing if I can make it to Queensway today. The edge of the known world.
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Went for a walk. Yesterday the bus stop was a six minute shuffle. Today it took two minutes walking “properly’ with just one stick for support/balance. Ground breaking performance improvement.
I had in mind walking to the corner of Queensway but it is v cold today and my hands were freezing. Let’s be sensible about it. I’ll try again this afternoon with gloves on. The assault on Queensway shall succeed. I will plant a flag when I get there and claim it.
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Queensway? Did someone say Queensway? Phuh. A doddle. Queensway is fine for today. Curle Ave tomorrow. The skateboarder who passed me the other day returned heading back down Wragby Road. Slight downhill slope so it was a lot easier for him.