Doing well

Helidon church, March 2024

Looking back, it's exactly three years since Glf the builder did such a good job of restoring and pointing my wall on the pub side. The reason for looking back is that the roofer pictured in the last blog post (newly named Hlf) highlighted that my two chimney stacks badly need pointing. I'm pretty sure that this was mentioned in the survey that was done when I bought the house more than twenty years ago, which just reminds me how far I've come since the time when I'm pretty sure I didn't know what pointing was.

Hlf discussed the options with me, decided that he could do the job without needing scaffolding, and has provided a quotation on that basis (and I only had to chase him twice). I asked Glf to come and have a look too but he wasn't prepared to take it on without scaffolding, and his quote (only one gentle reminder needed) is obviously twice as much as Hlf's. I'll offer it to Hlf, but being accustomed to the ways of the workmen I am very much prepared for him not to follow through, and then I'll fall back on Glf (who can't schedule the job until spring anyway).

Being able to take on workmen and get back to the LTRP has demonstrated that at the moment I am in pretty good shape, physically and mentally. This hasn't been the case for much of this year. Nothing dreadful, nothing specific, but I'd fallen into unhealthy and unhelpful habits which were proving tough to break. Several things have helped: the support of friends and family (often without them knowing about their part in my welfare), but also pulling myself together through meditation and reflection. The retreat in July gave me a really good opportunity to come up with a plan, which was slightly derailed by a couple of things, but is now working quite well. Apart from cutting out the chocolate and Wotsits, I have been seeing a Personal Trainer. Let's call him Muscles.

Muscles is young and fit (obviously) and has been leading me through some fairly gentle preliminary exercises involving what the experts describe as my 'core' muscles - pelvis, bum and abdomen mostly. Having been fairly fit in the past, I now recognise that I had really let myself go, despite playing badminton twice a week. I also recognise that while Muscles is quite an expensive option in comparison to classes at the local leisure centre, it is unlikely that I would achieve the same results under my own initiative.

I feel comfortable paying for Muscles because the payments ended for my orthodontic treatment a while ago, and now the alignment work is complete. It feels very strange to be without the aligners and I now seem to have developed the habit of unconsciously chewing my lips and the inside of my mouth which is very annoying. I have a night-time retainer to wear, and a visit to my new and slightly annoying dental hygienist has resulted in a further plea for additional attention to my night-time brushing routine.

As usual I've been cramming an enormous amount into my days, including the U3A walking and board games groups, a trip to the local Repair Café, my several Buddhist groups (in person and online), and my monthly music group. Leading up to each of the music sessions I inwardly groan about loading all the gear into the car and spending a whole afternoon with the group, but afterwards I'm always on a high for a day or two and ponder whether I've got time to squeeze more music into my life. This term the pieces that have been chosen are really good fun to play but also really hard, particularly for the baritone saxophone, which demands a lot of physical effort to play.

I also went to a comedy night featuring comedian Mark Watson. I was vaguely aware that he attended the same college as I did (many years after my time), but what I didn't know was that Suella Braverman, former Home Secretary and current Evil Gnome, was also there at the same time as him. I rather lost concentration on the comedy material for a few minutes when this became clear.

I'm going to have a bit of time off, with a weekend retreat leading into a week's solitary time. Now it's time to pack.

Mostly difficult stuff going on

September 2024

Recently I visited mum and realised that I'd left one job so long that her email client (Outlook 2007) was going to stop working in less than a week - Microsoft no longer consider it secure because it's so old, and will prevent it from accessing her emails. So I swapped it for an alternative client, and the best part was that I also managed to upload her stored history of emails and her address book, which took a very long time but made me very happy to have achieved it. Then on the next visit I discovered that the new client was also blocked, and I managed to wrestle it to the ground and unblock it, but at the cost of losing all the emails that had arrived within a period of five days. Initially I thought I'd lost the whole Inbox and all the Sent items too, so losing just five days felt like a win.

I managed to go to the RSC to see The Merry Wives of Windsor. Whenever I go there, which is very seldom, I always vow I should go more. It's top quality theatre on my doorstep, so I don't know why I don't. And the roofers and my new glasses arrived on consecutive days in an expensive week. While the roofers were working I did a session of pruning in the garden - only three bags full, much more is needed.

Another thing that's been going on is renewing my car insurance. Over the years I have chosen to use a local broker for many of my policies - car, household, landlord insurance - but it has been well publicised that prices for insurance are rising. Generally what happens is that the broker gives me a quote, I go online and find the same cover at a lower price, and up to now they have managed to reduce their quote to something more acceptable. This time the renewal quote was £200 more than last year and when I went online the lowest quote was £170 less than this. I don't always choose the lowest quote, but the most common amount was still about £150 less than the broker, and they couldn't or wouldn't go anywhere near matching it. I don't quite see how they are going to survive on the High Street.

I've also been on retreat, which went very well - it was aimed at people who don't necessarily know anything about meditation or Buddhism, and so a) was much shorter than the heavy-duty retreats I've been attending and b) was at an introductory level in terms of teaching. But I chose it because it focussed on a topic that I've always found difficult, so I thought that starting from the beginning again might be useful. It was, but not in the way I expected. It was lovely to see people finding something they'd been looking for without knowing it, and to remember what I was like when I went on my first retreat at this centre when I didn't know who I was or what I wanted either. I've come a long way and all for the better.

I was going to carry on northwards for a weekend in York so arranged to drop in on H+B on the way. The York weekend had to be cancelled, but I went to H+B anyway, and talked about dismal things like the Office of the Public Guardian, Enduring Powers of Attorney, Executorship and Probate. But we wandered round the garden too, and admired the brickwork and freshly painted frontage of the house, and marvelled at the flat upstairs which is up for let at an eye-watering monthly sum. H is well, looks good, but is feeling his age (aren't we all). We agreed that the main thing for the avoidance of excruciating administrative entanglement is for H to remain alive for the time being, which thankfully he seems happy to do.