Going out, bafflement and idiocy

Vajraloka, May 2022

I've been enjoying being less busy than during the summer, now that I've cut back on all the volunteering. So what I've been doing is much more ordinary, but it's been fun doing some of it with UJ.

We both enjoy watching films at home, but this week we went to the cinema - UJ is pretty good at following the English but she does miss a few bits. She also came with me to the tiny local cafe/music venue for some stand-up live comedy, which was pretty good, and I took her to see one of my Buddhist friends and we had a walk with another to set up a support network so she isn't entirely reliant on me. She's been going swimming and has joined the gym, she volunteers for a local food bank where I think she meets a few other Ukrainians, and she has one other friend locally, but I think life must be a little unexciting for her most of the time.

I went to the same small venue with another friend to to see Tom Robinson - big star at the end of the 1970's but disappeared and emerged many years later as a DJ on BBC 6 Music. His voice and face both show the passing of the years but he is very entertaining and played the hits for us along with a few new songs. Most notable happening for this evening was when someone on the floor above our basement dropped a drink directly above me and a considerable amount found its way through the floorboards onto my head.

I have been given another new project by Mr MXF. I did ask him whether any of the multiple unfinished projects he has given me have actually contributed anything to the greater good, and he reassured me that despite not having finished anything, the work I had done was good enough to bring in work from customers, so that's nice. 

This job is about using a tool called Hugo to build a static website to display the document I'd previously successfully converted to markdown format. If you don't understand any of that, which is very likely, then you will be as baffled as I was when after succeeding (after a fashion) on my laptop I tried to do the same thing using a cloud environment called Gitlab. I managed to create a website, but try as I might I couldn't get it to display my content, not even using the incomprehensible documentation and all the powers of YouTube. We have spent more than an hour on a Zoom call today, which I recorded, and the next step is to review the recording to see if I understand more after the second (or third) time round.

Sister D claimed her second birthday outing, to Batsford Arboretum. The trees were stunning and so was the weather - wind, warm sunshine, pouring rain and almost everything in between. And then it was time to return to London for more house-sitting - yes, Lola II and Mr M are still globe-trotting - but in an uncharacteristically idiotic moment I had driven as far as Uxbridge before realising with a jolt that I hadn't brought the keys, nor the contact details for the local people who had them, and it was already 11 p.m. The only way it could have been worse was if I had followed my initial plan and forgotten the keys while coming by train - but that plan was defeated by strikes. UJ wasn't in the car to witness my incompetence as she has stayed at home in order to meet her JobCentre coach, but she may arrive for more touristic activity at the weekend, strikes permitting.