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My first attempt at something like this so it should be an interesting ride. |
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Tuesday (I think) 28th April 2020 I think it’s quite amusing that now we are all restricted to our homes and having to entertain ourselves, we start writing about our lives but the only thing going on is that we are locked up in our own homes with nothing going on. I have been off work since the 23rd March and it seems a lot longer than that. Going from a forty-hour work week to a week of trying to keep busy is a bit of a culture shock. This is the longest spell that I have ever had out of work in my adult life. (I’m 62) Luckily, I am healthy and fit enough to go on a daily bike ride. That usually eats up at least two hours of my day. Then I try to keep busy writing emails and playing Football Manager 2020. If anyone reading this plays FM20 please let me know. That game is so addictive. |
| Blog Prompt What do you do you relax and unwind in the evening? Paint us a picture of your ideal relaxation. The pedals slowly turn as my legs begin to get up to the pace. The first mile of cycling is quite flat, no hills yet. I squint my eyes heading into a setting sun. No main roads, I stay away from inattentive drivers who don’t know the pleasure of exercise after a stressful day at work. I turn right to cycle past the lake and the lady power walking gives me wave. We have seen each other five evenings a week for the last three years and only ever said “Hello.” I must stop one day and introduce myself without appearing as a dangerous cycling weirdo. Now I hit the big hill. Its difficult to explain to people why it feels so good. The energy needed to get up the hill is driven by some of the frustrations of my working day. On a good day, the hill will take me about nine minutes. I used to take note of the time but now I just enjoy the ride. Some nights are faster than others. And of course; what goes up must come down. There are probably car drivers in San Diego who tell people that they drove past a cyclist who was screaming “Weeeeeeeeeeeeee!” as he rode his bike down a hill. They might think I was mad. But it was me that was having all the fun. |
| Blog Prompt What one fictional character would most like to meet and talk to? Why? What would you like to ask? One of my favourite fictional characters is Claire Beauchamp in the Outlander series of books. She is smart, attractive, feisty and she drinks whisky! Is it possible to have a crush on a character in a book? I believe that there is now a tv series on Starz. I am scared to watch because I know that the character in my head and the character on screen will not be the same person. Which will probably leave me disappointed. If you don’t know the premise of the books; Claire travels in time from the 1940’s to the 1740’s. Not deliberately! The idea of time travel always interests me. The idea of going back in time causes so many rabbit holes to disappear down. I would love to have a “time travel” conversation with Claire and go over how her time in the past can change, or not change, the future. There are some parts in the books when the time travel vortex can be a mind bender but that is why I like them so much. I found the books by accident. A few years ago, I was on a three-week hiking trip in Washington. I had finished the book that I had with me and was looking for another read. I arrived at a small camping hut in the mountains and on a dusty shelf another hiker had left a tatty old book for anyone who wanted it. That turned out to be the first book in the Outlander series and the more I read about Claire the more I fell into her world. Yes, I would like to share a bottle of whisky with Claire. |
| Blog Prompt; Tell us something uplifting! We need good news now more than ever. What is something positive that happened or is about to happen in your life? What has made you smile recently? Its usually the small things that amuse us or make us happy. This week I took delivery from Amazon of a brand-new shiny set of hair clippers! Oh, the joy of giving myself a DIY haircut. There was enough hair to stuff a small pillow. But don’t look too closely. There are a couple of spots where I got a little too enthusiastic. Ho hum it should all grow back. For my normal monthly haircut, (when the world is sort of normal) I go to a local barber. It’s a proper barber like the place my grandad used to take me many years ago. Old black and white tiles on the floor. Photographs and adverts on the walls from nineteen dot. A sign saying that all haircuts are free tomorrow. And the biggest plus is that there are no young kids holding up the line because they are getting all kinds of fancy lines shaved across their skulls. My barber is a little old Chinese man. He doesn’t speak much English, but he understands “a number two all over please.” I don’t know his name. In my mind I call him Willy Wong. He’s about a year younger than God’s dog. When he starts cutting my hair, I shut my eyes. It prevents me from seeing his hands shaking as he goes to it with his hair clippers. To be fair to him, Old Willy has never given me a bad haircut. Although he tends to leave more grey hairs on my head than I had when I sat in his chair. I don’t know if I’ll go back to him. Maybe my DIY haircuts will keep me going in the foreseeable future. |
| 30th April Prompt Shelters are seeing an increase in adoption and fostering rates right now since nobody wants to be #SaferAtHome alone! Tell us about your pet. If you don’t have one, tell us about your ideal pet! This prompt was the first e mail that I read this morning. You know that way that you scan a sentence and don’t really take it in properly? What? There is a surge in adopting kids? How come in the world we have now? All that went through my mind before I got to the word “pet”. Ha, I had that totally wrong. Its been a long time since there was a pet in my life. Do tropical fish count as pets? I had some of them about 40 years ago. I had a dog at around about the same time. She was a lovely Doberman. I only had her for about a year. Because of family commitments I had to find a good home for her. I like the idea of having a dog, but I live in a shared house with four guys and a dog wouldn’t be a good addition to our household. And it wouldn’t be fair on the dog, if/when I go back to work and leave it at home alone all day. But when I retire, I think I would like a canine companion. Not a cat, they are just too spooky! The idea of walking on the beach with a chocolate Labrador sounds appealing to me. They are such a loyal breed of dog and would mix well with my young grandkids. We had a dog when I was about ten years old. Her name was Lucky, my brother and I named her after one of the puppies in One Hundred and One Dalmatians. That was near the end of the sixties. Lucky followed us everywhere, she would run after a ball or a stick that we threw all day. My grandad always used to say that we would kill that poor dog one day! Yes, so it will be a chocolate Labrador for me. That sounds like fun. Woof! |
| Any day, the 12th of never Week 1 of my isolation was quite easy to keep up with the days. Week 2 I lost a Tuesday. I don’t know where it went. It’s out there somewhere. Week 3 I realized that I didn’t need to know what day it was. If I forgot that it was Saturday, there was no live sport to miss. It didn’t matter if I went to Walmart on a Thursday instead of Friday. Netflix doesn’t have a fixed schedule so I can watch a movie at 9am on a Monday or 10pm on a Friday. Week 4 I can’t remember that week. Week 5 I needed to claim unemployment benefit, so I had to refer to a calendar. That got me back to taking note of what day it was and building some kind of new structure in this unfathomable world. Week 6 I was glad I was taking note of what day it was because my brother’s sixtieth birthday had snuck up on me. Now that I have a good handle on the days, I have to keep a check of time. I live in San Diego so obviously I’m on Pacific time. My daughter lives in England on British summer time. And my son and his family live in Perth Australia on some time in the future! So, if I want to talk to my daughter, I must make sure that I don’t call after 1400 Pacific because she will probably be sleeping after that time. If I want to speak to my son his wife and my grandkids I must call after 1600 Pacific. Because of the time difference they live in the future. We often joke that my today is his yesterday and his today is my tomorrow. Time, it’s all relative. |
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