Having listened to what my heart/guts/instinct/conscience was/were telling me I did make a start on clearing my desk yesterday and it is amazing the difference that it has made. I did some knitting! I knitted the pattern cuff section of Warriston’s second sleeve, and it will progress on the ferry when next I sail – which will hopefully be sooner rather than later.
It was a good job that I began the clear up because I found my call for Jury Service in the heap on my desk – I had conveniently forgotten all about it and might well have been in trouble a week on Monday, especially as Mr L has booked leave for that week.
Notice now pinned in a prominent position.
My instinct about forsaking Facebook was also apparently a good and timely one as today I felt that final straw being loaded upon my back. I am done. I am out of there. I cannot bear any longer the small-mindedness and lack of thinking exhibited by far too many individuals. I feel diminished by it, dirtied… sullied but by far the larger factor is that I cannot bear to see all that meanness. I do not want to be exposed to it. I am convinced that such daily exposure will erode my attitudes, principles and outlook and I do not want that to happen.
I suppose that I shall leave my account where it is and that this blog and other sites may well flag up activity via my feed, but I hope very much that I shall not be an active user. I should like to say that it has been an interesting experiment but really? No. It has not. It has been all that I expected and worse: dull, repetitive and boring, and representative of much that is the worst in Human nature.
Let us move on.
Yesterday we completed cutting Teddy’s toenails, with only a single injury each. It was quick and easy and I wish that I had known how to do it years ago. I simply laid him on his back in my arms, like a baby, and tickled his chin – leaving Mr L to grab each completely relaxed digit and snip. It was only the dew claws that caused any wriggling at all and I put this down to the fact that Mr L might have twisted limbs in unfamiliar directions. So, that was that, no bath towels involved and no sticky plasters required.
This morning I completed readying Brunhilde and have vacuumed and washed the floor. Mr L fitted some LED strip lights last night in place of the fluorescent tube over the kitchen area. We have had three new tubes in the 12 months that we have had the van. We fit a new one, go for a ride and it quickly fails and leaves me cooking by lantern light. We had less than half an hour out of the last one. Let us trust and hope that things will go better next time.
Not fasting today as we did that yesterday. I had a Piri Piri Chicken ready dish that offered quite a low calorie count. I added a few new potatoes and virtually calorie-free courgettes, leaving room for some corn on the cob. It did not look very appetising and I feared that it would not be nice without buttered veg but it was actually very tasty and enjoyable. The small amount of juices in the chicken dish were enough to add moisture and flavour to the potatoes and courgettes. The sweetcorn was exactly that – sweet.
I have recently discovered the delights of cooking corn on the cob in foil. Don’t look at me like that. Yes, I know, it has taken me a long time to do so but I was taught to boil it, adding sugar to the water and I suppose I never questioned the directions given at mother’s knee. I don’t know why; I long ago disregarded most of the crap that she drilled into me. Anyway, corn rubbed with a few drops of low-cal olive oil spray and seasoned with salt and black pepper before being wrapped in foil and baked for 10 minutes on the floor of the Aga oven yields a very delicious mouthful indeed. Better still, it seems to cook the cob to a state where I can eat it more easily. Due to a major overbite I have never been able to clean a corn cob in the past and managed only to get about half the kernel off. When baked in foil, I magically manage to get every last bit of goodness.
You live and you learn. Is that not wonderful? I often wonder why some individuals appear to enjoy being stuck in their rut – are even proud of being “old-fashioned” and change-resistant. One might as well be dead if not learning daily, accepting change and evolving as the years pass. It is the secret to eternal youthfulness, if not Youth itself.
Yes, you have noticed: learning is much on my mind this week. I am all niggly inside, deeply unsettled because I am feeling so turgid. I need a project and I need it soon. It need not be a large one, I just need exposure to something new.
Luckily, the Orkney International Science Festival is almost upon us. We have yet to buy any tickets and I fear that all the good ones will be gone by now. It is nothing to do with a lack of will, just a plethora of choice. It’s not a matter of finding something that we want to go to, more one of teasing out some from the many events that we should like to attend. Every time that I sit down to look at the web site I abandon the effort because I cannot hold it all in my head.
Of course, the looming Jury Service also affects what I can do that week. Is it wrong of me to hope for a cancellation letter such as the one that Mr L received a week before he was due to attend.
Addendum: the yarn that I purchased from Turkey on Tuesday night has cleared customs at East Midlands. That is incredible service. Bet it takes twice as long to travel from EM to Sanday as it did to arrive in the UK from Turkey!
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