where art collides philosoperontap

Good breakfast. Stroll to shed. A time for relaxation. Ease into the day. Easement would have been a good word for this but it has already been bagged and has connotations inconsistent with the sentiment.

Ahead, a day of meditation, spiritual and bodily improvement. By this I mean I’m going to pluck some partridges, fix the loft ladder and then go for a swim 🙂 .

Interesting to consider that like many repetitive exercises swimming has a strong element of meditation. Detached focus on the job in hand. I may occasionally think of things when swimming but mostly I think of nothing. 

I do occasionally look up and check the pool clock. This is not as straightforward as you might think because I’m pretty blind without my specs and although I have prescription swimming goggles they are so scratched to be almost non functional as such. They still keep water out of my eyes.

The shed is a perfect place for mediation. In the deepest days of lockdown, with the circling covid horde baying for victims, the shed was not only a workplace but also somewhere to throw down your yoga mat. In the shed you could be at one with the world around you.

Those days are long gone. The freedoms that came with the summer and shed doors wide open to the garden disappeared when freezing temperatures forced closed those doors.

We should not keep looking over our shoulders. Look ahead. Heads up and eyes on the horizon. Just writing that brought a smile to my face. The power of positive thinking. Wow.

Children walking to school outside the front of the house. An icy cold morning. In my infinite wisdom I suggested to Steve who lives around the corner that we could go on a bike ride. Hmm. I regretted it almost as soon as I’d said it but hey, these things have to be done. I have also booked lane swimming at 3pm for the rest of the week.

Steve has to be in Nottingham first thing but will be back at around 11am. Plenty of time to get sorted and to get my head in the right space.

It is all about getting into a routine. I have no problem in booking swimming slots now that I am back in the swing of it. It is quite handy being able to choose the last slot of the afternoon session as it is typically relatively quiet. Most people are chained to their desks at that time obvs.

I do like cold days. It helps having heating in the house. A couple of winters ago this was not the case and in the following spring we ended up replacing most of the radiators and the boiler. Pretty much a complete new central heating system. This January we are having the windows at the front of the house replaced and we will then be fully double glazed. 

Some might think it strange that this is not already the case but the house was built in 1939 before the inventor of double glazing had come up with the idea. I don’t now the inventor’s name but you can just picture that Eureka moment when the idea came up. Perhaps they had accidentally made twice the amount of glass for the job and decided to use it all seeing as it was there.

However it was invented it is surely a good idea Shirley.

…

Started on the fence post installation. Don’t want to rush this although the weather is turning after today so they need to be in really. The metal post receptacles or supports or whatever they are called are 60% in place and now need the sledgehammer to finish off. Stopped off at the shed as an interim act as I need to head back to the garage for the sledgehammer and the stepladder needed to hammer the actual posts in from on high. They are ten footers. Or similar.

I assume that the use of imperial measurements will now return to mainstream in today’s dysfunctional society even though you have to be my age really to refer to them with any regularity. I doubt kids talk in yards, feet and inches when a centimetre will suffice. You can picture the scheme in the playground (yard?!). “Anyone got five bob I can borrow. Two and six would do. I’m taking Doreen to the pictures later” Snorrapnin.

I do find it a little odd when building materials are quoted in millimetres. 2,400 mm when it is clearly 2.4m. Or ten feet. Or 3 yards 1 foot.

The other thing I find odd is the continental way of swapping commas and decimal points in numbers but that is another story.

Gorrago. Fenceposts don’t put themselves up yanow.

On hold now for over two minutes. I’m half expecting this to be an hour’s job as it is British Airways but we shall see. It’s an I want a refund not a voucher job. It was a reward flight but the tax must have been around £1,400. I want both points and tax back. 

Their music on hold gets a little tedious after a while. The first few times you hear it it isn’t too bad. A bit of classical geetar. Now I want them to change the record. Never mind.

En route to the shed this morning the tree was dispatched through the conservatory door. Still needs relocating to the woodpile which itself needs a big tidy up. A morning with the chainsaw.

Part of the BA irritation is that the music occasionally stops making you think you are about to be put through to a person but what you get is the same “all of our agents are busy message”. The irony is that their website where I have the page open on my booking times out before anyone answers.

I was downgraded from gold to silver a couple of weeks before they extended everyone’s status last year, or was it the year before. Had I still been gold they would quite possibly have already answered the phone by now. Ah well.

We were going on a big trip but the continuation of the pandemic makes it too risky. The risk, apart from perhaps finding lots of places closed on our trip, is that of catching covid and having to isolate in a (expensive) hotel room somewhere in the Caribbean or USA. We were going to 4 destinations.

We will reschedule the trip.

Fifteen minutes. At least I get time to write this. As I write back in the house the decorations are being boxed up for another year. I quite like the relative austerity of January although the first two months of the year do quickly get tedious with their low light levels. 

Today, as it happens, is not a low light day. Perfect for getting out in the fresh air, were I not on hold to BA. Needs must. After the BA I need to cancel an American Airlines internal flight. I’ll have to see how that goes. I booked a fully flexible fare in case of this eventuality and they have also change the flight time, fwiw so it is likely to be just the hassle of calling them. Might be able to do it online. Who knows?

All this hassle does bode well for our campervan rental business Anne’s Vans. It is likely to be a lot easier to continue holidaying in the UK. Advanced bookings are up 78% year on year and that’s before we add the fourth van to the roster. Might do that this weekend although it is still undergoing internal refurbishment and we are short on photos.

Thirty minutes.

Fifty minutes and it is all done, at least the BA flight. An espresso made on top of the stove and now onto American.

First impressions. Poor quality line and appalling music on hold. It’s Caribbean steel band music which together with the poor line grates.

In other news my Caravan & Motorhome club membership renewal email arrived yesterday. “It’s only £56*, when you think about the great adventures you can start planning and booking, we think that’s well worth it.”

I joined a year ago in order to book a trip with some pals this coming April. You need to be a member to use the particular site we are headed to. Not used it since then and haven’t even had the stay yet! 🙂 There was a time where I wouldn’t have been seen dead being a member of such an organisation but the “motorhome” bit justifies it. When I joined they gave me “Count” as an option instead of Mr, Mrs etc so I adopted that title, at least for use in exploring the great outdoors presented to us by the club.

Meanwhile American Airlines are focussed on providing me with excellent service and are working very hard to be with me as soon as possible and appreciate my patience. Huh! Thirteen minutes. The musical interlude between these statements seems to be even shorter than with BA. They must have done some research on the subject. 

The science of music on hold. Music is still crap. I think the poor line is that connecting to the music on hold media server. The message that keeps being injected into the music stream is pretty clear.

In forty minutes I need to take Hannah to the station. I would hope this is finished by then. It will have taken an hour. I dunno.

Twenty five minutes. I should have brought a book. I do have a few here in the shed, “History of the Adjustable Spanner” being a notable volume. However I don’t want to get distracted from the task in hand of being there when the music finally stops and they will give me a limited window to actually say something. This whole process is stupefying. It would at least be nice to know someone was going to answer the phone if I stayed on long enough.

They should start paying me/callers if they don’t answer the phone within a certain time. That would soon get their staffing levels sorted. I know these are extraordinary times, which actually is why I’m cancelling the trip.

On track to be on hold for longer than BA. Not much of a claim to fame is it, for either company. Sounded like the BA call centre was in India. Any bets on where AA’s is? 55 minutes.

At least I’ve done a little job that needed doing in the shed. Put my Gudbye T Jane vinyl single clock birthday present up again. I did originally stick it up but needed to change the command strip arrangement for reasons with which I won’t bore you. I now also have a DVD player on my desk, solely for the purpose of playing the 50th Anniversary of Recordiau Sain triple CD that my friend Nest gave me, again for my birthday. Lots of good old numbers on there. My amp doesn’t have a DVD/CD player or a USB port otherwise that would have been the obvious place to leave it permanently.

Lunchtime has arrived. One hour and two minutes into the hold. One hour and six minutes and I’ve started looking up AA hold times on tinterweb. Anything between two and 12 hours. This does not bode well. I’ll give it another ten mins and then bail. The flight isn’t for ten weeks or so. Next time I’ll call using my mobile and whilst wearing headphones so that I can move around and do stuff.

BREAKING NEWS: One hour and ten minutes and someone has answered the phone. Now I’m back on hold whilst she consults the tariff department. Always a bit of a worry 🙂 Being put on hold that is. The number of times I’ve been in this situation and the line has dropped is not funny. Just hope there isn’t such a long wait for their internal calls.

Must have taken nigh on 90 mins for the whole process including filling out a bureaucratic refund request form online but I got there in the end. Collapses into an amorphous state. That’s a couple of grand’s worth of refunds and a morning spent on hold.

That’s all folks.

I think I understand why the 1st of January is when it is but it would make more sense for a new year to start at the winter solstice. I’d like to bet that in pre history this was far more the marking of the end of the annual cycle than the day we now use. Afaik they didn’t number the years. Probably used the number of years that king Og had been in power. Stuff like that.

Can’t see why we wouldn’t want to change it. This has been done several times over the centuries. Look it up. I don’t need to explain here. Under the new rule we would already be ten days in to 2022 and already on dry January and eating sensibly.

At the same time we could get rid of time zones and the very arbitrary move to daylight saving in the spring. Would feel a lot more natural.

The need for dates is clear. Without a calendar and clocks our society would disintegrate. “Let’s do lunch”. “Lovely when?”. “Day 233 when the sun is at its zenith”. Would be somewhat a relaxed affair when the sun doesn’t get very high and is often hidden behind clouds. One person is bound to get there a lot earlier than the other. Be on their second cup of tea.

Even in summer it would be difficult to be particularly precise. Every lunch would be a long one as you would need to factor in waiting time. Might as well open that second bottle straight away to let it breathe…

My suggestions are unlikely to be adopted. A prophet is never recognised in his own country. I am right though.

Who would you tell anyway. Not much point telling the government as there is nothing in it for them. Unless there were spinoff business opportunities as yet unrevealed. Could be I suppose. We would need to brainstorm it.

The new calendar would also need a name. I am not for one minute suggesting the Treforian calendar which would be narcissistic in the extreme. That suggestion would in any case need to come from someone else and I would not actively support it. Obvs.

Those are my thoughts at the beginning of the new year. A year that for all of us comes with high expectations, or at least high hopes. A new dawn. 

It’s funny that I can say this even at a time when the latest covid infection rates are skyrocketing. 190k people yesterday. If, as scientists were originally saying, the rates of infection double every two days then in ten days time six million people will test positive. Twelve million in twelve days! 24 million people being infected in less than a fortnight. Now that is “going viral”

The pandemic will be over by the end of January. One way or another. The world’s infrastructure will either have collapsed or be well on its way to recovery.

As we are taking an optimistic approach to 2022 I am saying the latter. Hope your 2022 is good. Big hugs…

…

Now sat in the car in a car park whilst a household member does the park run. I’d need to build up to the park run. On the one occasion I did it I managed two laps in the same time as her three. I was nursing an injury though! Will see if I can build up to it in 2022. That’s not a resolution. I don’t believe in such things.

I am parked next to a church with a yew tree in the graveyard. This feels right. I don’t know who is buried there. Most of the graves will be long forgotten although I do see one or two with fresh flowers.

I have occasionally give some thought to the concept of burial. I quite like the idea of my bones being in the ground. Cremation seems too final to me. I realise that death is a very final act whether you choose cremation or bones in ground but the latter feels more traditional. I’m not a Hindu. I’m not a Christian either so whether a church would accept me into its graveyard is another thing. 

Mam and dad were both cremated and are buried in a wonderful spot next to the golf club in Peel in the Isle of Man. The views are great. It is a fitting place for them to be put to rest as much of their social lives revolved around golf. There is nowhere quite like it in Lincoln. Their grave will not have flowers today but we are going over in June on a pilgrimage. For the TT races.

Runner just turned up. 25 mins late. Bounded towards the park carrying a large bottle of water which seems a bit over the top but who am I to say. He was a tall guy if that makes any difference. At the same time the pack leaders have finished and are just starting to walk back to their cars.

Woman just walked past with a large dog called Mabel which was clearly being subjected to obedience training. Looked as if Mabel was only about half way through the course. Both dog and trainer will need to persist. 

More runners now coming through and cars starting to leave the car park. I am parked on the grass. It’s a rare off road treat for the Defender. It’s interesting to just sit here watching people. The runners look to have far more vitality than those who are just off out for a stroll in the park. We should all aspire to such vitality. The strollers have uninteresting faces. Part of life’s rich tapestry but only the beige bits. Try not to be beige.

The lawn is at its lowest ebb in the flow of the seasons. Appearance unloved, forlorn. Staring at it engenders the shutdown of the brain as any real thoughts are smothered by the seemingly hopeless disposition of the grass. Were it frozen there would be some mitigation, justification of the sitch.

In the house Handel’s Messiah is playing quietly. Neville Marriner. A few jobs have been ticked off and I’m taking advantage of the opportunity for a quiet sit down in front of the fire. The fire is set but not yet lit. I’m hoping it will light naturally from the embers. Save a match 🙂 Normally catches light eventually.

It is the day after Boxing Day. The feasting has been in full fling for a few days and a slight toning down is called for, especially as I was asleep by 9pm last night. Again. There is plenty to keep us entertained and I have a swim booked for 1pm. I’m in two minds about this. It will undoubtedly do me good but is certainly a great contrast with what has gone before it for the past few days. There is time yet to decide.

This is the first Christmas with none of our parents around. Last year we had dad here and I sensed it might be his last. He was getting very weak and awash with the problems of old age. It was really fantastic that we were able to have him here. A great contrast with the subsequent “covid” isolation that ultimately did for him.

The passing of parents should send out a strong signal to get on with life. Just having turned 60 I am fortunate to be able to make fundamental directional changes to my own path. In 2022 I shall only be a part timer in the world of telecommunications and internet and have time to devote to side projects, some of which are already becoming mainstream.

Anne’s Vans is such an entity. Having started with one van 5 of 6 years ago we will be going into the 2022 season with four. This will merit me spending more time on that business. It is a very rewarding activity. Customers bring vans back and tell us what a fantastic time they have had. What’s not to like?

I also want to spend more time writing. I have one or two projects in mind that will soak up the days. See how I get on. The other activity is getting out and about more, exercising. I have the pool, the bike and want to do more walking.

Telecoms will still very much be there but I’ve decided to focus more on the bits that I like doing. Hence part time. 6 days a month is the notional plan. It’s all about taking the stress out of life and maximising the fulfilment. I like the people at Netaxis which is a company on a nice trajectory so it will be good to maintain links in there.

That’s it for the mo. I could probably fit something else in if the right offer came along but it isn’t something I’m particularly chasing.

The nice thing about this plan is that it leaves room for ad hoc activities. For example we are eyeing up a trip to see My Fair Lady in May or June sometime. Nice little mid week trip to town. There is here an element of risk. To make sure of seats you have to book early but at this stage the hotels are expensive. They will come down in price, presumably. 

The other curveball is that I am organising a conference in Antwerp (as you do) sometime in the spring. Not nailed the dates yet. Feels as if this is something I need to get on with during the first week in January. It’s an incentive innit.

Nothing feels guaranteed or straightforward these days, certainly from a planning travel perspective. In February Anne and I are looking at a nice little trip to Brussels (work), Antwerp (work and play) and Amsterdam (total self indulgence at the Waldorf Astoria) but this is entirely contingent on these countries being amenable to our turning up without having to isolate in our hotel rooms for the whole trip.

When I booked the Waldorf I was immediately asked for our travel plans and arrival time. I told them this was a little ambitious at this early stage. Amsterdam is handy though as it is a short hop home from there via Humberside, particularly in comparison to the 8 or so hours elapsed time when travelling to Brussels. My gut tells me we won’t be going but the next two or three weeks will give us more of a feel.

Time for a swim. Anne tells me there were only four people in the pool when she went…