where art collides philosoperontap

Was totes knackered last night and retreated upstairs around nine o’clock. Needed help getting my left leg into bed but it’s already improved this morning and managed by myself. The knack is to sit on the edge of the bed, hook the good foot under the “bad” leg at the ankle and hoist them both up. Simples. Progress. Woke briefly at four thirty and dropped off again until six. Already doing prone exercises in bed. They make a difference. Rotating the feet keeps blood clots away and squeezing your cheeks and pressing down the “bad” leg helps strengthen the operated on area. After the initial post op incapacity I am already confident that progress will be good.

The love of my life has gone downstairs to make the tea.

I was picked up from the Park Hospital at three o’clock yesterday by our Joe who has very kindly come up for the week to help out. All our kids are good. THGs car ain’t the biggest Peugeot 208 in the world and there is a knack to getting into it after having a new hip. The front passenger seat has to be pushed as far back as it can go and you have to go in arse first whilst squeezing your head through the highest, rearmost bit of the doorway. Needed help getting my left leg in. Getting back out is legs first followed by head then bum. A far cry from the days of the Land Rover defender where the seats were at the perfect height and with plenty of headroom you just had to slide yourself across. There again the defender wouldn’t fit in most French car parks.

Am about to postpone next year’s trip to Vietnam btw. Turns out October is the rainy season. Both Hue and Hoi An are under water and the hotels I’ve booked are islands. It’s a good job I spotted this. Will be rebooking at some stage. October is too risky a month for what was not going to be a cheap trip even when using Avios. Comments on Vietnam travel sites say that nobody goes there in that month. We booked it because my companion voucher runs out then but we can repurpose that.

Now downstairs and have consumed three small slices of toast (sourdough) and marmalade. That was the end of the loaf but THG is off on a scavenging mission on her bike this morning and will no doubt come across another loaf. We have some bacon in but tbh that is too filling right now. Will restart the jabs on Monday but it would appear that a few months on Mounjaro has left me with a small appetite even though I stopped it a couple of weeks prior to the op. This is good. May not need lunch.

There are potatoes, potahtoes bubbling away on the stove. What what what do I hear you say? At breakfast? A pea and watercress soup is in the offing which, as you will know, contains spud. I have a ham knuckle in the freezer awaiting call up for a ham and pea soup but I will need to wait patiently for that. That soup is not yet on the radar. Perhaps when the cold weather starts to bite. There is nothing quite like home made pea and ham soup. Whenever I see a ham down to the knuckle at Waitrose I tend to buy it.

The news this morning suggested that parts of the country would have frost today so pea and ham soup time might not be that far off. I look forward to the need to don my thick Black Yak Himalayan woolly sweater. Bought it at the Lincoln Christmas Market a year or four back.  Solid.

I am not in a hurry today. Joe has gone out running. The build up to the Seville Half Marathon has already begun. Three out of four offspring are running plus a son in law. We will all be descending on Seville towards the end of January. Runners and supporters. Only shame is the flights don’t arrive until Friday evening which more or less writes off that day. Can’t imagine the runners will want a late night even though the race isn’t until Sunday. I’m going to rent a car the following Monday and go on a tour of southern Spain ending up in Gib. Dad did his National Service there with the RAF and I’ve never been so a visit seems overdue.

Last night’s fox action was no fox. It was both cat, variously at 05:49 and 06:22 and muntjac deer at 01:51. I was going to say tiger not cat but it didn’t look anything like a tiger, having no stripes and tiger would have been big news. Imagine catching a tiger on lake cam never to see it again. Where did it go? What happened to it? Were it not on camera nobody would believe me. It wasn’t on camera. Believe you me 🙂 

Today will mostly be spent on my laptop in the snug. The advantages is that I am set up there for the following month. Comfy armchair at the right height, small table to put my tea cup down, stuff like that. On the other hand the shed has two large screens making it a far more useful workstation. Even when looking at your family tree it is useful to be able to jump back and forth between windows. See how I get on. My desk chair is also at the right height but it concerns me that the deck might be a little slippery. 

More in due course, I daresay.

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Aforementioned pea and watercress soup consumed for lunch. Luvly. Fair play. With a crust of brown bread and butter. Never understood why anyone eats bread without butter. The Europeans do. Also our John. Didn’t get it from me. If we are in a restaurant in France or Espanã I usually ask for butter to go with the bread though not if it’s to eat with cheese. Don’t need it then. Especially runny cheese like camembert. Yogi likes French cheese, camemcamem bear. If you know you know.

Now sat back in the snug with THG having to endure the news on the wireless. Streaming on the telly actually but same thing. Only thing is I don’t like listening to the news. Never anything good. Ole Trump’s middle east ceasefire seems not to have held, does it. Bang goes his Nobel Peace Prize. Again. Hey… I guess he will have to move quickly before senility completely takes over. Or has it already? Uhoh.

There is good news about new species found on a remote sea bed. Very good.

The radio is also on in the kitchen where a son is fixing himself some lunch. Now it’s been switched off in the snug. Phew. Replaced by the click of needles of the tricoteuse. I prefer this to the news. Quite relaxing. A far cry from the French revolution and madame la guillotine. A shudder runs down the spine. Clunk. The sound of a head falling off.

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Went for a nap on the bed. Put the heating on. Bloomin cold just sat in a chair. Now I’ve put on a dressing gown and also got a blanket over me legs in the snug. THG will come back from her swim and complain that the house is too hot. Joe is in the shed where the heating will be on. The shed is a nice warm place to hang out. He is working. I’m not. I am drinking too much tea though. Keep having to nip to the loo. Not particularly good when you are on crutches. A mad dash to the toilet is not good on crutches 🙂 Will have to cut down on the liquids.

Ordinarily I mix my time between the shed, workshop, total fitness (pool) and the house which varies my routine. Plus spins out to Waitrose, diy shops and golf. Not so many trips to diy shops. I still haven’t finished sorting out the workshop. The screws are separated onto countersunk and round headed but I still need to arrange them by size and thickness. Something to keep me busy over the winter. For example an M6 screw has a 6mm diameter. I don’t know which screws are which M. It makes sense to have them sorted by both thickness and length. I’m sure that some of my older screws are “imperial” so perhaps that is yet another subdivision. Will have to see. To some extent it is down to which rawplugs to use and which drill size. This is important 🙂 

I might invest in some calipers for this job. There may be some already in the workshop though I don’t think so and I won’t know until I’ve finished with the sorting. I’m pretty sure there aren’t any. The other tools I “need” are a socket set. Maybe just order online. Hang on. Metric or imperial? 🙂 I don’t need these things until I have regained mobility. At least 4 weeks which is when I can drop a crutch. Tuesday 25th November. Fingers crossed the time will go quickly.

I’ve resorted to BBC iPlayer. The Secret Letters of Mary Queen of Scots. Sfine. I prefer historical documentaries to populist stuff.

Not a particularly good sleep. Nurse figured it was because I’d slept a few hours in the afternoon under the anaesthetic. Plausible. Wasn’t helped by sore hip muscles though the soreness is already abating this morning. Been doing a lot of the exercises which are fairly simple at this stage of the game. Very simple. Now waiting for nurse Rachel to come in and run the six am tests. There is also a fairly full “flask” to remove for emptying and replacing. You get to hear it all here 🙂 I’d expect to be able to get up and use the loo from here on. I guess I’ll need to be able to do that if I’m going home, which could happen this pm.

Started listening to the shipping forecast but dumped it as I was neither trying to get back to sleep nor planning a journey by sea. Instead I caught Farming Today. I like listening to Farming Today although the content is often about problems, usually financial related. If you wind the clock back far enough we were all farmers. The problems would have been different but still often financial related. Witness the Rebecca Riots for example. The Peasants Revolt even. The peasants are revolting your majesty. That Rebecca!

So by now I’ve worked out how to use the bed controls. Should have listened to the nurse in the first instance when it came to controlling the lights. I got the how to call assistance bit but the how to switch the light on by simply pressing the yellow button was an instruction I missed. Would have been considered to be multi-tasking and therefore beyond simple me. When another nurse did it in front of my eyes I realised where I’d gone wrong and no longer needed to stretch to switch the light off at the wall. They think of everything innit.

I’m ready for a cup of tea now. At home we take turns in the morning and I was the last to make it but unfortunately for THG there is going to be a month of me not making the tea after I get home from the hospital. She is a trooper. How would I do without her? The garden would turn into a jungle.

Cup of tea is on the way btw. I can’t remember the name of the nurse who came in and offered after the blood pressure etc tests. Wasn’t Rachel. Trouble is I’ve seen so many nurses, each of whom has told me their name, but each of whose name I’d promptly forgotten. They do wear a name badge but the font isn’t big enough for me to read, at least not from my position in bed. Also the lighting is a bit low. Sharon I think. Her name. A Nottingham gal of maturing years. Great patient manner but there again everyone of them has been great.

Today’s important session is with the physio. She is the one who decides that I can go home. If I can get it done this morning then I’ll be able to come home this pm. If she thinks I need a bit more time she can redo the assessment after lunch and I’ll be home this evening. I expect I’ll be ok. All I have to do is walk up and down some stairs correctly and do ten yards or so along the corridor and back. Done it before albeit on the other leg so should be ok. 

The build up to having this second hip replacement has been interesting in that my left leg has always been the stronger one. Ever since I broke my right leg on a school ski trip to the Dolomites aged thirteen. Sapada. I still have the photos of mountains I took on the trip, somewhere. Turns out one mountain looks very much like the next when you look at the pics. Now that the right leg has had to take the brunt of the work because of the arthritic left hip it feels as if it has been getting stronger. It’s all relative of course. I’ve not been bounding up the aforementioned mountains but I’ll take it.

When I broke that leg I was taken to hospital in Cortina and put on a ward with three old blokes. None of them spoke English and my Italian hadn’t progressed beyond Grazie at the time. It now incorporates “due birra per favore” or similar. I have two memories of being on that ward. Firstly the nurse offered me milk, a choice of caldo or fredo. I opted for caldo thinking that was “cold” but it came hot. Strange, I thought so I left it to cool down. Everytime the nurse passed she saw that I hadn’t touched the glass and finally she had to ask whether I wanted it. I explained the sitch which is then the moment I found out that fredo was cold. Not immediately obvious. In fact both caldo and fredo might be interpreted as meaning cold.

The other memory was of the three old guys. They would each get a small bottle of red wine with both lunch and evening meal! On both occasions one of them would open the cupboard door and pur the wine into a large flask already half full of vino. Then during visiting hours their families would bring them more wine. Once the nurses had finished for the day they would open the cupboard and start partying. I declined the offer of a glass. No idea what they were in hospital for that allowed them to drink wine. Hey…

After the skiing was over the other kids went to Venice for the day before flying home but I had to come along later with one of the teachers as I wasn’t deemed agile enough to hop on boats and walk around the city. It was decades later when THG and I finally visited the place.

Back to the present I’ve had a couple of paracetamol and been pumped full of antibiotics through the cannula currently in posish in the back of my right hand. It’s a bit of a faff having it but needs must. At least they’ve removed the tube to the saline drip that has been in since the op yesterday. Hopefully I’ll be able to avoid opiates henceforth Didn’t need them last time and I still have a full bottle of morphine and some pain killing tablets left over from then so will certainly not have to pay for some more. Interestingly the blood thinner, Clopidogrel or simlar, was far more expensive that the morphine whose price is presumably governed by market forces/street price 🙂

Brekkie is not until sometime between eight thirty and nine but there is no rush. I made sure to get brown sauce on the order this time as last time it appeared with no sauce at all and it took five mins or so to bring by which time I’d almost finished eating, despite slowing down the pace. Ya can’t have sausage and bacon without brown sauce. Ketchup in a hot dog is fine but that is not breakfast.

In other news just got an email fromYouTube:

Hi trefor davies,

It looks like Dingus Fucking Khan may not be appropriate for younger audiences under our Community Guidelines.

We placed an age restriction on it.

Our age restrictions are in place to help viewers avoid watching content that they may not feel is acceptable for themselves or for their children. We review content on a case-by-case basis and will make limited exceptions for appropriate educational, documentary, artistic and scientific contexts.

How this impacts you

This video won’t be visible to viewers under the age of 18 or who are not signed in. Otherwise, your channel isn’t affected.

It might be argued that this fitted the above mentioned “artistic context” but I’m not interested enough to ask them to review the case. Wonder if Facebook will do the same. In fact I’ve now changed the name on FB but it should be obvious what the original word was. My stuff is not visible to non friends anyway and I have no kids in my friends list. The original word stays on Philosopherontap.

Sfine. Dingus FK were a band we saw in the late night cabaret at the Latitude festival a few years ago. Their language was atrocious but it was after eleven pm so no kids there and their music was v high intensity. The whole place got up and bopped. The cabaret was for me the best bit of the festival as they had better booze and tables and chairs to sit at. The beer available at the main arena was Tuborg lager which was terrible not to mention expensive. I could put up with the expensive bit if the beer was good but it was like pisswater.

Dingus FK, when we saw them had just returned, presumably by popular demand, from a two year ban by the festival for trashing the portacabin that had been laid on as a changing room. Urination was involved as I recall. Doubt they are still going now. Maybe a reunion tour at some point?

…

Just finished my Full English and now feeling stuffed. Suspect there is still some lingering Mounjaro effect. Will be restarting it next week. 

Tharrldo for now.

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Feels like a bit of a production line does the hospital. This one does anyway. They feed people with something wrong with them in at one end and churn them out fixed at the other. That’s the principle anyway. I daresay there are variations of the theme. Partial fixes. Not sure I’d want to be a doctor. They must get a buzz out of doing the job. The people are all v nice. I think the people are all v nice in the NHS as well but they are under a lot more pressure. Much higher workload.

When I get home I have four weeks of applying only 50% weight to the fixed leg. Whilst it doesn’t mean no walking, and I certainly have been given exercises by Natalie the physio, it will mean sitting down a lot. In my case this means doing a lot of work on my book. Much research has been done that can now be written up. Once I get going it will start to flow. 

The problem is one discovery leads to another and it gets to the point where there is very little written down. You have to start getting creative by looking at sources not directly relevant a particular person or at least not in an immediately obvious way. For example reading wills from certain parishes can reveal a lot – people get left things in wills who aren’t initially obvious when looking at the name of the person whose will it is. 

My 7g grandfather John Jones was left Maesnonni farm by a certain Richard Hughes. John was the son of Richard’s sister Elizabeth. Liz therefore is my 8 g grandmother and must have been married to David Jones. The naming went David ap John ap David etc. This carried on for at least the next century until the male line died off. Presumably it was also the same going back but there are no records from the 17th Century. We really did live in the back end of nowhere. As rural as it comes. Still the same today.

This does mean you have to trawl through a lot of sources to find anything but it is really satisfying when you do come across something relevant.

In other news I dunno whether I’ve ever mentioned it but I really am a messy eater. I therefore decided to tuck my napkin into the top of my shirt before tucking into a bowl of tomato soup. This worked not because the other end of the napkin got dunked into the soup itself. Doh. What’s worse, the act of removing the napkin from the soup resulted in a splodge of tomato soup being spilled onto my tshirt, the very thing I was trying to avoid in the first place. Nice soup mind you. Had the same thing for dinner last night and thought I’d repeat the order flunch.

Woken up at six twenty five by a very cheery Jamaican nurse who knocked and breezed into the room pushing an equipment trolley before her. She did mention her name but my brain was a little fuzzy and it didn’t stick. Ran the usual gamut of tests. Temperature, blood pressure, that kind of stuff. Trying to think what else. That one where they clip something to your finger. Pulse! All good. So now I’m awake and the corridor outside sounds as if it is getting busy. 

Today is the day. No breakfast, no cups of tea and only the very occasional frugal sip of water. Slept well though I did avail myself of the rare opportunity to listen to the shipping forecast when I briefly woke at around three am. Set it on a fifteen minute snooze. 

At three am I also looked up BA reward  flights from Asia to London as I need to book ours in a couple of days. There were two available in business class on the route I’m after. By seven they had gone. I’ll need to be sharp when I come to do it myself later in the week. I’m adding to an existing companion voucher booking and in theory they do make more available for such bookings but I can’t see it if I’m not looking to book using the voucher and I’ve already used it so I can’t, if you see what I mean. Worst case is I cancel the trip if I can’t get the return flight. It’s always been ok in the past so will see how it goze. I have a backup route home.

Had a load of visits after the wake up call. Firstly the on duty night nurse called in to check on me and removed the jug of water from the side of the bed in case I was tempted. I said I could always get some from the tap which engendered a grimace. Not sure why as it is the same stuff they feed into the water fountain which is her preferred source. Then nurse Sheena came in to go through a checklist. Yes I do have an implant  – it’s in the hip that’s already been operated on. Dr Brown the Anaesthetist popped in for a chat and said I could have water. Knockout guy. Finally Mr Manktelow the surgeon swung by and drew a large arrow in black felt pen on the top of my left leg. All good. Need to be in my gown by about eleven. It’s eight now. 

It’s a good job I have my laptop and a book with me. I think if I was stuck in the bedroom for weeks on end it would be a problem. I totes sympathise with people who are in that situation. It’s going to be bad enough sat in our snug for the next month keeping the weight off my leg. They do want you to go for walks as well but you have to keep the weight off the “new” hip then as well. For walk read shuffle. Hey, first world problems. Look out, bus stop sign here I come.

The keeping the weight off  the leg thing is down to the fact that these days the hips are “uncemented” whereby they let the bone naturally bond to the titanium spike. This approach apparently makes it easier to redo the op if required in years to come. Using the old “cemented” method the bond was immediate and you could walk very soon after the op.

Physio just came in with a couple of crutches. I was happy to point to the ones I already had in the corner. Saved me thirty eight quid. I just need the rubber feet changing on the existing crutches which she is going to do whilst I’m under the knife, so to speak.

…

Had a long trail of nurses visiting, each in a different coloured uniform from what I can recall. I guess I’d only really know if I lined them all up and took a pic.

…

Doc swung by seven thirty ish to check up on me. Said it was pretty much a carbon copy of the other hip op which is encouraging as that has to go down as a major success. Even said it was easier to do as I’ve lost a load of timber. Now ten past nine and I’m watching the imps away at bradford.

Just entered a competition to win a used car. Exciting. VW Golf GTI or similar. I should find out by 31st December. Fingers crossed eh?

Having a relatively chilled day of it as we will be setting off for the hospital at around 3 ish. Staying in the night before as they want me in by seven in the morning. The thought of having to get up at 5am to get to Nottingham by seven is somewhat unattractive. Was the same last time. The only difference is that they comped me a night’s stay on that occasion but that must have been an anomaly. This time I saw a different nurse who told me the number crunchers wanted a hundred and seventy five of the king’s finest, paid in advance, before giving me the room key and doling out the cups of tea. Tbh it’s a bargain. Saves a lot of stress before the op.

I am hoping only to stay in for one night post op this time but time will tell. Depends on progress and availability of people like physios to sign me off. They want to see me walking with crutches including up and down stairs. After that I face a month of sitting on my arse with the occasional getting up to do some exercise and walking. I bought a memory foam cushion this time as my backside got somewhat sore with all the sitting down.

The one difference this time around is the fact that I’ll be starting back on Mounjaro after the op which will dramatically reduce my appetite. The first time around I didn’t bother with healthy eating. It was more about recovery. This time the dynamic is different. My use of Mounjaro has been quite successful. I’ve lost at least an inch off the neck, added two holes in my belt and dropped a shirt size. I would like that progress to continue. Had to go off the jab the week before the op but now need to decide when to restart. I quite like the idea of getting in a steak and chips before I do 🙂 We don’t have chips at home very often. Maybe one or twice a year! Home cooked chips are infinitely superior to anything you get in a restaurant. Proper hand cut jobs.

Home sweet home, unpacked, lit the fire, feasted on sausage beans and toast, and now chillin on the sofa in front of said fire. There is news a plenty from the lake but tbh it will wait. It is time to switch off. Was called upon to do a couple of jobs upstairs but they have been sorted.

At 9pm we will watch HIGNFY. One of the few progs I like on telly. In the meantime the dancing fire is sufficient entertainment. Our Jose is working away in the shed. Came home from London Town to help us out next week whilst I am in having hip hop two, fair play but his week is not yet over.

THG is catching up on some of her fave progs in the snug. Tonight will not be a late one.

Every morning when I get up I bundle up my clothes from yesterday and chuck em in the laundry basket. I never miss. Ok I occasionally might if a sock comes free from the bundle. This is true even if I am lying prone in bed. I’ve tested it out. This morning the washbasket has been moved further away – we are moving things around in readiness for the decorating that will happen later this week. Didn’t miss that one either. The answer is not to think about it. Just turn and throw. Bit of sorting to do today. Room clearing in advance of the aforementioned decorating.

Good curry at Castle View last night fair play. Had a lamb madras. Couldn’t quite manage it all as I was full but it was just the right level of heat. Their naan breads are great. We shared a chicken chat starter. In consequence I’m feeling v full this morning. Need to decide whether to delay breakfast or skip it entirely. The moment of decision has not yet arisen as our visitors are still in bed. No rush innit.

Absolutely chucked it down while we were out but fortunately one of us was driving and we got a free parking spot right outside the Strugglers. Result. Felt obliged to have a couple of TT Landlords in the pub before heading for the indian. Twas planned. Don’t get to the pub, any pub, that often these days. How times change.

Very much noticed the AWS outage yesterday. Ancestry was so slow it wasn’t really worth using. Was taking my sister Ann through the results of my research. Realised that this was not a 30 minute job as there is so much to say. How do you describe two hundred and fifty years of time in thirty minutes? You can’t.

The lesson from the AWS incident must be that global platforms can’t rely on one cloud provider even though their cloud pitch is resilience. It is more expensive to have to run two clouds so that’s a difficult call to make. I don’t suppose it really matters when it comes to Ancestry as long as it isn’t a regular occurrence. Not going to get much done this week anyway but will have a month or so of not putting weight on the new hip where I might expect to make some progress.

No fox visits last night. Cat came out on the prowl shortly before three am. Would be interesting to plot the progress of the fox around the area. It must visit most back gardens around us. Not sure what it finds to eat.

It is ten o’clock. THG has gone out running with the Pink Ladies Running Club and I am relaxing. Sbeen a hectic few days. Couple of weeks really. Life is short. Keep it hectic. You do need the occasional break. The entertainment this morning is falling leaves. Don’t have to wait more than about ten seconds to see the next one flutter by. Drift by my window. Relaxing. Leads to work though. The lawn will soon be covered.

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After lunch I made a start on sorting my collection of screwdrivers. The good ones such as Stanleys have been separated into their own box and a great many put in the bottom of the old tool box just in case they are ever needed again. I only threw one, phillips, driver. Should have thrown more really. The bottom of the screwdriver box also revealed miscellaneous screws and bits and bobs, some of which have been tidied away and others put in a different tray for further analysis. The Allen keys are now in their own box. I have a goodly collection of Allen keys.

Also mowed the lawn, packed for tomorrow and finished moving all the clothes out of my wardrobe.

Heard an owl last night and then a flock of geese flew noisily by this morning. I assume they were geese as I only heard them. No eyeballs were involved. The owl was definitely an owl. A distinctive toowhittowoo if that is how you spell it. Dunno.

Anyway, a bacon roll has assuaged the raging hunger beast and I am now drinking tea. Wasn’t that hungry really. Just said that for effect. Sat in the great outdoors at the Woodhall Country Park. The Petwood Hotel is just down the road. Good to know in case of dire emergency. Actually under the extreme and hitherto non existent circumstances of dire emergency it would be easy enough to drive home.

Some person invisible has just bumped in to a friend. “Hello hello fancy seeing you here”. Her voice carried from afar. It is unlikely that I will ever find out who she was or who she bumped in to there being hedges several between us. I won’t lose any sleep over it.

Slept very well. I’ve just discovered that gin has that effect on me. Or maybe it was the tonic. I dunno. Maybe I was dog tired.

The butcher’s block in the kitchen lies heavy with camping equipment. Actually the butcher’s block itself is quite heavy, being as it is a large chunk of wood on wheels. Also I was applying artistic license in describing the camping equipment as weighty. In fact it is a plastic crate full of our camping cooking equipment and plastic crockery and not really that heavy. All the gear was handily put in the crate so that whenever we go away in the van all we have to do is lift and shift, so to speak. On this occasion we aren’t even going to unpack the crate. Certainly not before going. We might decide to do so once settled into the lush verdance of the Woodhall Country Park.

While I’m talking about the kitchen, which I was before moving to Woodhall Spa, it is breakfast time but I am not feeling hungry. This is because upon the return of THG from the smoke last night we had a very excellent beef stew. I’m a dab hand at making stews even though I say so myself. This particular concoction was lacking something when tasted during the cooking process but the addition of Worcestershire Sauce soon sorted that out. I even treated myself to a slice of bread and butter to mop up the gravy, it was that good.

As a result I am not, as stated, feeling hungry and am therefore going to delay breakfast until later this morning where it might then be called brunch. I did have a glass of milk and am now enjoying a cup of tea. Dunno why I tell you all this stuff. I like sitting on the sofa in the snug after breakfast, tapping away and drinking tea. On this occasion, as you know, I skipped the actual breakfast bit and have just gone straight for the tea on the sofa.

The bulk of the preparation for the trip has been done. Drinks chilling in the fridge and most things ready to go in the van. All I really need to do is throw a few items of clothing into a bag and transfer the bacon into the cool box.

I was pondering hitting the pool before going as we don’t need to set off until after lunchtime but I haven’t yet made my mind up on that one. I’ve been every day this week so it won’t hurt to miss one sesh. See how I get on with stuff this morning. I don’t like to rush things.

On a different subject did anyone see the sumo wrestling from the Albert Hall last night. I watched the first half. It was mesmerising, fascinating. The problem is ten bouts only lasted about half an hour if that and most of that was the time spent lining up in the ring standing on one leg and slapping thighs. I looked up the ticket prices. The event is sold out but if you are desperate you can still get tickets on viagogo for just under a grand. Unfortunately I can’t go (phew) because as you know we are going camping. These camping trips are great fun and not to be missed.

The life expectancy of a sumo wrestler is estimated to be between 60 and 65 years apaz. This compares with the average Japanese male’s life expectancy of 81–87 years. I’m glad I didn’t become a sumo wrestler. I’d only have just over a year to go. My birthday is in December. Same date as Donny Osmond but I think he is a year or two older than me. This year I’ll be sixty four and I’ve been thinking about a trip to the Isle of Wight next summer. Rent a cottage. Don’t want to make it a regular thing. Already been there three times. Twice by yacht and once by ferry but went sailing when I got there thanks to Adam Beaumont. While ago now. Also went up in a microlite with Danial Subhani which was a great experience. A great trip overall. I must take a look on AirBnB.

Anyway gotta go. My cup is empty and I have a day to get on with.

Ciao bebes.

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At ten oh seven I am feeling peckish and sense that a bacon sandwich might be in the offing. I’ve sorted my gear out including finding my green Timberland lumberjack shirt, ideal for camping expeditions. I will go nicely with a warm beanie. Gotta look the part innit. 

In the shed I remembered that I was going to take my Sonos Move2 speaker so that is now all bagged up and ready to party. Not that we are a noisy lot of campers. One has to respect the calm of the countryside, the enjoyment of the outdoors of other campers. This assumes there will be other campers. To some extent you need your head examined to go camping at this time of year. It’s all very well for our pals who have motorhomes. Squeezing in to a 1971 Volkswagen T2 Bay is a little less luxurious. Much cooler though and we do have the heater which can stay plugged in.

The scene around the lake this morning is serene. No fox action to report from last night. Nowt. Not even a cat. Lakecam doesn’t pick up mice movements.

Bit of a Tref day today. THG is off to the smoke with a pal and I have some jobs to be getting on with. Prepping campervan Betty for the weekend, bit of cooking, stuff like that. Quite looking forward to it. Might even start on my “coffee” table top for the shed. My biggest issue with this one is that I am using some original stuff to decorate the table. Gig tickets, boarding passes etc. Using PVA glue doesn’t protect them very well. It’s ok when using printed copies of things as is the case with the round table top as I can easily redo them but I want my Paul McCartney ticket, for example, to be protected and to endure. Was toying with the idea of using resin but that seems complicated and I might have to settle for varnish. If anyone has any suggestions feel free to fire my way.

As I have to drop THG off at the stayshun early I am already up and dressed for breakfast. This is not normal. When there is no rush to get ready I don’t rush. This isn’t to say I just sit on my arse doing nothing but if it is doable in my pajamas as is the case when tapping in philosopherontap posts then that is ok innit.

The sky outside is quite light. I got the impression from the wireless that it was going to be cloudy. One of them didn’t listen to the other – the weather and the BBC that is. Maybe one of them didn’t look out of the window or maybe they did and it was cloudy where they were. Maybe I didn’t listen to the weather forecast properly. Wouldn’t surprise me. At all.

In the jardin d’THG one pink dahlia adds a bit of colour by the decking. That particular flower has been there a while. It has stamina. We planted loads of dahlias for Hannah & George’s wedding but I don’t think they were ready in time. At least they are now there and ready for next season. The plan is to widen the border over the winter. It is overshadowed by the beech hedge and the thought is that a wider border with plants a little further from the hedge will produce more colour. It’s a plan.

You will also want to know that for the first time this autumn I had to switch on the car rear screen demister and the trees en route to the stayshun were very much different hues of brown and rapidly losing their canopies. The summer’s easy living has been left in the rear view mirror.

A pot of tea has been made and I must get busy in the kitchen.