Tag: work

The Year That Was – 2024 Edition

On By TontowilliamsIn Annual Review

It would be easy to look back on the last year and remember some of the things that haven’t gone quite according to plan, not that there particularly was a plan. I’ll try not to do that but…

The year started, the way the previous year ended, with lots of water. Groundwater flooding is a thing here and floodwater started in December last year and carried on until May. It’s the longest length of time I can remember, and the levels were about the worst they’ve ever been and for a good proportion of that period. It doesn’t make for a very comfortable time and at times when pumps are running quite mentally tiring. I have realised over the last few years how much I hate the rain, mentally I find it very tough. This coming season it looks like it might be drier, fingers-crossed.

It doesn’t matter how much people bang on about climate change they always forget about the changes that are already locked into our climate / weather systems and the adaptation that will be required, because they are too busy banging on about cutting carbon. The latter is important, but adaptation will make a significant difference to many peoples lives, probably without them noticing.

We’ve had a change of government, finally the venal tories have been kicked out of office to be replaced by a seemingly lacklustre labour. Whilst its clear that they have a lot to do and it’s early days they are very unimpressive and picking fights over things that don’t really matter whilst boxing themselves into not raising taxes just about anywhere. Modern politicians are so f*****g useless.

I’ve pretty much given up with social media these days. I’ve closed my Twitter account, I’ve been there since sending tweets was something you did via SMS and I feel a bit of a loss about giving up something I’ve had for so long, but honestly the place is the worst of a bad bunch, and I am considering going even further.

LinkedIn is becoming quite the cesspool of trolls too, I am amazed that so many “professionals” can be such a bunch of dicks to one another. As someone who is self-employed I feel I need to maintain a presence there but honestly I find the behaviour of many of the users to be something that wouldn’t be allowed in a work place so shouldn’t be allowed there.

Bluesky appears to be attracting a lot of bot accounts. I’m not very active on there, but seemingly a lot of accounts want to follow me. Many do not seem to be real.

I don’t use Facebook anymore, although I still have an account. I do use Instagram, and will probably continue to for a while at least, even if my posting is sproradic at best.

Mastodon is probably the least used (generally) even though it’s been around a lot longer than some of the others. Possibly second only to Twitter and Facebook.

When #AudioMo comes around in the summer I’ll need to seriously think about what I’m doing.

We ended the year with our dog Sam swallowing a stone and requiring emergency surgery to remove it, followed by a lengthy stay in a veterinary hospital and a hefty bill which will only partly be covered by insurance. I don’t begrudge the unexpected expense but I could do without it.

Overall 2024 has been pretty 5h1t.

Reading

I’ve read a lot this year. We’ve pretty much given up tv as a pastime in the evenings, and reading has pretty much been my No.1 pursuit. Top fiction authors this year include: Craig Thomas, Martin Walker, Stephen King, Robert Harris and Georges Simenon.

Watching

As I mentioned above, not a lot but I did enjoy both Slow Horses and Masters of the Air. I also enjoyed Guy Ritchie’s somewhat ridiculous but very fun, Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare.

Garden

The veg garden has been pretty average this year but we did have a magnificent glut of purple podded mange tout.

Work

The year held a lot of promise at the start, but ended up being quieter than expected. Some promised projects didn’t get started but may come up in 2025, and others became a little more involved. Overall not a bad year, but not the best either.

Outdoors

I spent a lot of time walking in my downtime. I do some of my best thinking when I’m outside and it’s the place that keeps me mentally calmer. I’ve kept a daily wildlife log on these walks too. I plan to continue with this next year.

That’s it. That’s 2024, here’s to 2025.

Mid January Update

On By TontowilliamsIn books, Film, Garden / Allotment, tv, Wildlife/Nature, work

Welcome. If you’re a subscriber to my newsletter (Fifty From Fifty / Life After Fifty) and you missed the last post there I’ve moved you across to my blog as I will be discontinuing my writing there. I hope you’ll stick around but if you don’t want to then there is an unsubscribe link at the bottom of this email. If you did see the last post then you’ll already know what is going on and hopefully you are receiving this.

I noticed that there were a couple of duplicate subscriptions (i.e. people already subscribing here with the same email as the newsletter), and have tried as far as possible to make sure you’re not on the list twice! If however you subscribed to both using different email addresses then it’s possible you will get two copies and will need to unsubscribe from one of them. It’s not a perfect system but overall the move seems to have gone okay.

Right, enough housekeeping.

An Update from the First Couple of Weeks of January

I find it hard to believe that three weeks have passed since Christmas already and I’m not altogether sure what it is I’ve actually done in that time. I know I took some time away from work and pretty much everything for a while to reflect on a not particularly great year gone by and plan for a better one (as much as you can) in 2024.

Life moves forward at a regular pace, but I think sometimes we don’t. We’re either trying to push on ahead or fall behind and I don’t think either of those things are particularly healthy. Time is probably our most valuable commodity, and it was something that I felt like I had less of than I needed in 2023, so some of my decisions for 2024 were to guard it more jealousy. Of course I’ve already found myself challenging that decision when a work offer came in. I have however stuck to my decision and turned it down. It was hard, but on balance it feels like the right thing to have done and honestly it’s unlikely that I’ll ever find out anything differently, so…

Reading

I’ve read a couple of good books so far this year. Holly by Stephen King and Local by Alastair Humphreys. I recommend both.
The Stephen King is more on his crime writing than horror, although some of the crimes in the book are pretty horrific and has the returning character Holly Gibney.
Local is the culmination of Alastair Humphreys year long exploration of his local Ordnance Survey map, visiting on square on the map randomly each week and writing up what he finds. Originally a series of blog posts during the pandemic/post pandemic it’s packed full of his adventures and lots of facts and information about what he discovers. Also recommended.

TV / Film

It seems we really don’t watch much TV anymore but I did sit and watch Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny yesterday. I loved the opening but didn’t love the film as a whole. Raiders and Last Crusade are my two favourites of the series, the others I’m pretty much not interested in. I’ll watch DoD again but I’m not expecting my opinion will change much.

The Garden

Bit too cold for much to be happening out there are the moment. I have however cleaned out the greenhouse in preparation for the growing season and I’m still shocked everytime I walk past and realise how much cleaner it is now. It’s positively shiny! I’ve also sown some tomatoes, chilli and sunflower seeds in a tray in my office – I like to sow something each year on New Year’s Day, to mark the turning of the year, plus chillies have a long growing season and the early you can get them started the better. The sunflowers have already germinated but no sign of the chillies yet.

Work

I think I’ve pretty much covered that above, otherwise I’m just doing some new year admin stuff.

Outside

It’s been a bit of mixed bag weather wise, and I long for the lighter mornings, but being out early and hearing the calls of tawny and little owls is a bit special, as is seeing the eyes of deer light up in the beam of the headtorch.

Well that’s it from me. I hope to write a bit more here this year and I hope that you’ll stick around for the journey. If not however I understand and no hard feelings if you choose to unsubscribe. I’m not sure how frequently these will be coming however and I’m not planning to stick to any schedule, I’d rather write something when I have something to say rather than write something for the sake of a calendar date.

Talk soon…

December 2022 Update

On By TontowilliamsIn books, Dog, Garden / Allotment, tv, walking, Wildlife/Nature, work

I’m not yet sure if this is the end of the year show or whether I’ll do another post looking back across the whole year before the end of the month. I’m feeling very tired at the moment so I suspect that this might be the last one you’ll get here, but you never know a break across Christmas might just revive me enough to write something else.

So why so tired? Just life. It’s been busy, new house, work etc., just things occupying my time. Busy is good but sometimes you think that some things are really surplus.

We’ve been continuing to unpack our stuff and now that we have a bit more sense of what we want and how we want it set up, move furniture about a bit. There’s still a ways to go, particularly with books and ornaments. I suspect we’ll tackle this afresh once the Christmas decorations come down and we don’t have a tree that seems to be in the way.

We’ve had another round of visits to the vet with Wilson, and are about to embark on a change of diet for him. I’ll be honest here and say that I think the vet is grasping for straws, but I’m willing to go along with him for now. He is young and eager and not as old and jaded as me but I’m increasingly feeling that there is no cure and we should be settling for the situation and making the best of what we have. It feels a bit like we are repeating the same things we’ve done before hoping for different results. Wilson is happy enough in himself but perhaps we should just respect that for what it is.

We received the news at the start of this week that the care home where my Mum lives have had another outbreak of Covid. This means that for the third year in a row our Christmas plans have changed. I’m sure we’re not alone in having last minute alterations, particularly if your plans require any sort of travelling, but it is frustrating. For me personally I’m also being careful where I go and what I do as I was in the care home visiting Mum on the day that they undertook the tests revealing the outbreak. Although I was masked and as always careful about hand sanitising etc., I have taken a couple of tests subsequently which have both been negative and am watching for any symptoms.

The farce that is Twitter continues to provide “news” on a nearly daily basis. The manbaby Musk seems to only think that free speech is what he says it is and not what the rest of the world understands it to mean. In fairness he does own the company but it seems to be getting worse. I’m not even sure that him standing down as CEO will make for much difference. I’m sticking with it for now, although mostly staying away, but did create a Mastadon account just in case. I don’t intend to use it unless things get really bad. In the meantime I’m going to be sticking to writing here and using Instagram as my main outlets. Also my newsletter once I’ve decided what I am going to do with it when it reaches it’s originally intended limited run.

Reading

The only thing that I’ve completed this month is Stephen King’s ‘Salem’s Lot which I wrote a newsletter post about. There are a couple of reasons for my lack of reading, firstly there’s being too tired and second I’ve been struggling to find anything that I’ve wanted to get stuck into.

Watching

This is a bit of a similar story to my reading. We’ve barely had the tv on this month, mostly this is down to tiredness and a succession of early nights. I’m hoping that over the Christmas period I might be able to indulge a bit more and having had a look at what’s on there are a couple of things that look interesting so we’ll see.

Garden

I’ve been continuing to do a little bit of tidying and planning for next year. We’ve had a spell of very cold weather with temperatures dropping down to -6°C which put some things on hold while the ground was frozen, but as it’s thawing now I should be able to get back to it in due course.

Work

The start of the month was very busy finalising some reports but now it looks like it will be quiet until the New Year and I’m planning on not being actively chasing things until January. I feel like I need a break and a recharge until then.

Outside

I’m enjoying my daily walks and going further when the time allows. There is much more space for walking here, away from other people and without having to walk alongside roads. This is such a bonus for us, and the dogs enjoy it too.

Well that’s about all I have for this month, as you can see that isn’t much. So I’ll wish you a good break over the forthcoming Christmas and New Year and I’ll catch you again soon. In the meantime stay safe and take care.

September 2022 Update

On By TontowilliamsIn books, Garden / Allotment, work

This month has very much felt like I’ve been playing catch-up after Covid. I’ve still been getting tired much faster than I used to, but this has gotten better as the month progressed, I’d say that I’m nearly back to my normal/abnormal self. There’s some milestones this month, which you can read about below, but otherwise I’ve been focussed quite a bit on some work stuff. Autumn seems to have arrived with a distinct chill in the morning air now and it’s still dark when I get up.

Books.

I’ve read quite a few things this month, a couple of Maigret novels and I’ve now completed the series of Brother Cadfael books, including the prequel novel about how Cadfael came to find himself taking the cowl.

I also read a very intricate crime novel by the late Seichō Matsumoto – Tokyo Express. and subsequently tracked down a second of his novels which I have on the tbr pile. It seems as an author he was prolific, writing somewhere in the region of 450 works but not that many of them appear to have been translated into English so far. I’ll be keeping my eye out for more.

TV / Film

Pretty run of the mill TV this month. Nothing much to report, although we did watch Tenent one evening, which although I enjoyed I found a bit mind bending trying to understand the “time travel” elements of this story. In the end I decided not to bother trying to work it out and just focussed on enjoying the film!

Allotment

The allotment is no more.

On Friday 23rd I handed back my keys, after clearing out my shed and harvesting the final courgette. I wrote about this in a bit more detail in my Fifty from Fifty newsletter here. I feel quite emotional about this. It’s been my plot for over 14 years and now it’s going to be someone else’s.

Of course with the impending house move, it’s the right thing to be doing, there’s a big garden where we’re going, so it won’t be long before I’m back with my hands in the soil again. There’s also a lot to do in the new place so plenty of challenges ahead too I suspect.

Work

Busy month, none of which I can really directly talk about. Suffice to say it’s been paying the bills.

Links

Which Is The Best John le Carré Novel?

Best Selling Author Jeff VanderMeer Finds That Nature Is Stranger Than Fiction

The Daily Routines of Famous Creative People

Well I guess that’s about it for this month, shorter than usual I’m afraid, but then I’ve been focused on a couple of things rather than a lot.

August 2022 Update

On By TontowilliamsIn books, Garden / Allotment, work

After being very careful for well over two years, wearing a mask, social distancing and not going anywhere there are crowds and essentially living like a hermit even after our feckless government has said that it’s all over, Covid19 finally caught up with me. Laying me low for better part of two weeks, and even now still leaving me feeling listless.

Looking back as to where I could possibly have picked up the infection from, the only places I’d visited were our vets (twice), a grocery pick-up, or randomly out walking the dog.

I’m grateful for the vaccines as without them I suspect I would have been significantly sicker than I was. I was still testing positive after ten days.

Consequently this month has been quieter than most. I had hoped to make some significant progress on our house move but that’s been stalled, as have a couple of other things. Nothing much I can do about this other than move forward as soon as feasible.

Books.

I’d thought that if ever I did catch Covid I’d spend my isolation time reading. The first few days of being infected were quite horrible and this really wasn’t possible but after the first week I managed to read a lot more and it did become the thing that mostly occupied the time that I wasn’t sleeping (a lot), coughing (also a lot) and generally feeling miserable.

Right before I got sick I finished reading Smiley’s People by John le Carré which followed me reading A Murder of Quality. I’m slowly reading / rereading my way through John le Carré’s novels in no particular order but I did think I’d read the Smiley series again. I skipped three of them (The Looking Glass War; Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy; and The Honourable Schoolboy) because I had read those recently and have stopped at The Secret Pilgrim because I don’t own a copy and also didn’t want to carry on reading them in my Covid befuddled brain. I’ll pick them up again soon. In the meantime I’ve been reading other things that aren’t as taxing – River of Death by Alistair MacLean and Sharpe’s Rifles by Bernard Cornwell. I’m part way through a reread of The Guns of Navarone by Alistair MacLean, which if you’ve only ever seen the film you really should read the book.

I’m still trying to fill my spare time with reading rather than watching the news or doom-scrolling through social media as I find both of those things quite depressing and let’s face it that doesn’t look like it’s going to change any time soon.

TV / Film

This is one of the things I really haven’t been able to do while I was sick. Watch the tellybox. Just haven’t felt like it. I’ve been recording a few things to watch when I feel like it again but it’s hardly been on, and still isn’t, so nothing much to report. I did however indulge in a little YouTube wildlife cams. There’s something to be said for watching Hummingbirds for two hours straight. Put them up on a big screen if you can and just enjoy.

Allotment

I was harvesting broccoli and cauliflower before I got sick but an enforced break and quarantine meant no visits for a period. Fortunately there has been a little bit of rain at just the right times to keep things from keeling over and I was rewarded by some more broccoli and cauliflower upon my return. I really need to be wrapping up the plot now ahead of the move, fees will be due next month and I’m not renewing, so I need to clear my shed and other things and move on to new pastures.

A Post Covid Harvest

Work

Again not much to report the combination of Covid and the usual summer holiday (clients, not mine) slowdown has meant that I haven’t got much done. I prepared a proposal for one client and we’re going to be discussing that work in the next week or so but otherwise I’m just continuing with a couple of other projects from last month.

Links

Why Free School Meal Recipients Earn Less That Their Peers

The Value of Owning More Books Than You Can Read (Tsunduko)

The Length of Earth’s Days Has Been Increasing and Scientists Don’t Know Why

Well that’s about it for August, I know there’s a few days left but I really don’t think I’m going to do much as I’m still feeling tired and fatigued. Hopefully September will kickstart me a bit with a couple of projects. Whatever you’re up to stay safe and take care.

July 2022 Update

On By TontowilliamsIn books, Garden / Allotment, tv, work

What two words would I use to describe July? Hot and busy.

The temperatures have been intense at times and we’ve not had the worst of it. We’ve escaped the really extreme temperatures and the fires. We’ve been lucky. Out leaders are asleep at the wheel when it comes to climate change, even if they acknowledge that it’s a thing at all, they can’t or perhaps won’t do anything about it for fear of upsetting a small right wing minority that refuse to accept that something has to must be done about it. Yes we have targets – net-zero carbon by 2050 – but there are few actions that will take us there. 2050 is far enough off (I’ll be 78 if I live that long), for the current crop of politicians to think of it as someone else’s problem. Of course we can’t wait that long because there’s already enough climate change locked into the system to make these years high temperatures feel quite mild.

In practical terms the hot weather has meant a change in the pattern of my day. I’ve been getting up early and taking Ruby for a walk before it gets too hot and then coming back to get on with work. Working until lunchtime when it was becoming too hot in my office to be able to think productively. I normally take a break at lunchtime for sustenance and another dog walk, but it was too hot to take any dog out in those temperatures. (If you’re in any doubt, take your shoes and socks off and go and stand on the tarmac. If you can’t stand there for more than a minute it’s too hot for them to be walking on that.) So our lunchtime walk was taken in the evening when the temperatures had dropped and the sun was much lower in the sky.

The days are getting noticeably shorter though so temperatures will start to drop a bit more with less sun.

I’ve also had a lot of work connected with the house move to do, including laying a carpet which I haven’t done for years, so it was good to refresh that skill set.

Work

It’s been a busy work month with multiple projects on the go for one client, they’re all strands of the same master project but need to be worked on separately. I’ve spread the work out a little more than I strictly needed to, but with the high temperatures I really needed to be able to maximise the cooler times of the day.

Allotment

We’ve had a good healthy crop of beetroot coming through which has meant it’s become a bit of a staple vegetable for us over the past month. I posted this public service message which you might want to read if you are similarly thinking of eating a lot of beetroot.

Books

I haven’t had a lot of time for reading this month, but I did finish a couple of books that I started a while ago and for some reason put to one side. I tend to do this occasionally, particularly if I’m not really enjoying the book because my mind isn’t really in the right place to be enjoying it. I’ll come back to them again later and normally finish them, on an odd occasion I might not but it doesn’t happen that often.

So I finished Pharmacopoeia: A Dungeness Notebook by Derek Jarman and The Book of the Raven: Corvids in Art and Legend by Angus Hyland, both very good and I’m unsure why they got sidelined but I’m glad I finished them. I also reread Call for the Dead by John le Carré, which is the first appearance of the character George Smiley and a very different character in some ways to the later books.

TV / Film

I’ve been particularly bad in the past about remember what I’ve watched over the month. So this month I’ve been making a conscious effort to write down what I’ve watched each day. It’s also been interesting to see how much TV we do watch. On average over the last month at least we’ve watched between two and two-and-a-half hours each night. A lot of repeats and a few other things.

We watched a series on Amazon call Totems which is a French (with subtitles) spy story set in the cold war. Really good and I’d recommend it. We also watched Trom which was on BBC4, set on the Faroe Isles and in Faroese and Danish with subtitles. It started out quite well but felt a bit contrived towards the end. Still worth a watch though. We also watched Murder in Provence which I quite enjoyed but you need to suspend your feelings about the lack of French accents. It’s basically English actors pretending to be French but without any trace of an accent or French mannerisms. If you can do that and get over the lead actors have played strong characters in other series it’s good. The accent thing seems to have upset a lot of people but I can think of other series where this hasn’t really been a problem. There have been at least three different adaptations of the Maigret novels with an all English cast and similarly an adaptation of the Zen novels which are set in Italy with and all English cast. I’m not sure why it’s so noticable in Murder in Provence, but it is.

I also watched Beau Miles latest YouTube video and recommend that you do too:

Well that’s about it for July. If I post this soon, it might even still be July wherever you’re reading it. In the meantime take care and stay safe:

June 2022 Update

On By TontowilliamsIn books, Garden / Allotment, work

I’m struggling a little bit with the fact that it’s past the middle of the year, we’re after the summer solstice and the days get shorter from here on out (at least until the winter solstice at any rate). As I look back over the first half of this year I wonder whether I could have progressed projects faster than I did and whether where I am is a true reflection of where I should / could be.

There are some empty pages in one of my notebooks with prompts that I was going to use for longer term planning but I am still thinking about that and really it makes no sense to do that planning until I’ve finished the thinking and come to some conclusions. Of course the longer I think the less gets planned and the less gets done. I really need to just get on with it, but some of it is new and unfamiliar and a little bit scary. I should also be doing a mid year review, and it seems odd to be doing that when I never really finished the planning. Sometimes I think you have to pivot a bit and not think too deeply about targets and just go with the flow.

I know I haven’t been idle, but I wonder whether I could have been more focussed. This month has been busy but more with non-work related projects. We’ve been having a bathroom refitted and have had quite a few problems with the supplier we chose to get the bath, sink etc. from. We have two sinks turn up broken and had to wait for a third. This meant a delay in starting and then having to start, not knowing whether we’d be able to finish the project with a sink properly fitted or not. We were lucky and the project is more or less finished. There are some final decisions to make over finishing touches but they can be made at leisure.

Work
A quiet month workwise. With a big push on one project at the end of last month, this one has been distinctly quieter. Just as well with the other things that have been going on. I wonder a lot whether I am going to continue with this “career” or whether it is time to move on.

Allotment

The allotment has been producing a lot of broad beans and lettuce. Soft fruit is now also coming into its own, with a lot of loganberries to harvest. I dug the first of my potatoes last weekend as a bit of a test to see how they were doing, the results were good so no more shop bought potatoes for a while. The garlic has been really good this year, possibly the best ever, but alongside them the onions have been some of the worst. I did have different varieties of both this year, so will probably be looking to get the same garlic again, but I think I’ll be reverting back to the onions I had in 2021 as they were good. Courgettes and climbing beans are slow to start this year. They’re just sitting there not doing much.

Books

I’ve read a few this month. The stand outs are the fifth and sixth volumes of Spike Milligan’s second world war diaries – Where Have All The Bullets Gone and Goodbye Soldier, and Kim Stanley Robinson’s first non-fiction work – The High Sierra: A Love Story. My aim of reading more is going fairly well, but sometimes I just run out of time during the day or am too tired by the time I get into bed to read more than a couple of pages, so fits and starts probably describes it best. The Spike Milligan’s diaries have been a really interesting read, both in terms of his war time experiences but also his experience with mental health. What we would probably call PTSD now, probably lead to his ongoing battles with mental health later in life.

TV / Film
Nothing really sticks in my memory for this month in terms of TV or films. We have been rewatching the first couple of seasons of Blackadder via BBC iPlayer, and I was given a dvd set of an old ’80’s series “Bulman” for Father’s Day which has bought back some memories. Other than that there hasn’t been anything particularly memorable.

Music / Radio / Podcasts
I thought I’d add this as I listen to quite a lot of podcasts in particular. A new show to me this month has been the Curiously Specific Book Club, which I’ve been enjoying. It’s also been AudioMo this month, so I’ve been putting out a short piece of audio via Twitter each day with the hashtag #AudioMo. If you want to find them, I’ve collected them so far in this post.

Well that’s about it I think for this month. At the moment July is looking quite empty. I was expecting work to pick up again, but at the time of writing I’m not sure that is going to happen. There are plenty of things that I can fill the time with though, so I won’t be idle. Whatever you are up to in the weeks ahead, stay safe and take care.

May 2022 Update

On By TontowilliamsIn books, Dogs, Garden / Allotment, photography, The Week That Was, work
Dad – late 1940’s

I seem to have fallen into monthly updates here, whilst still posting my FiftyFromFifty newsletter over there.

It’s been a busy month work wise (see below), and also in a few other areas. I’ve had my film camera out again and have been working my way through a couple of rolls of film some of the results I’ve posted here and there are more to come. I’ve been looking at buying some more rolls of film as I’ve almost used up the small stock that I have. Unsurprisingly the prices have gone up quite a bit, but I have a couple of ideas of different things that I want to try so I don’t feel like I need to buy large quantities of film at the moment.

I’ve also been breathing new life into old photos and slides, scanning boxes and folders of them in fact. I’ve found quite a few that I’ve never seen before and many of relatives in their younger days. Some are obvious as to who they are, others I’m not 100% sure of, possibly because they died before I was born. Some are labelled, but they are in the minority.

I’ve been able to visit my Mum – as opposed to only speaking to her on the phone – now that her care home is covid-free again. It’s strange that we’re now supposed to be “living with covid” and yet hundreds of people are still dying on a nearly daily basis. It really does feel like the government has failed this country in dealing with this killer virus and continues to do so on daily basis, preferring to pretend that there’s nothing to see. Their favourite phrase seems to be that we “just need to move on”.

We’re still planning our house move, and although it’s still a little way off, I’ve made some significant progress this month in making it happen and there’s more to come hopefully next month.

We’ve had a few issues with Wilson’s health which has resulted in more unplanned trips to the vet. He seems to be doing much better now, but he was a cause for a bit of concern earlier in the month.

Work

This month has been busy with a client project and also having to renegotiate a contract. There’s been an exchange of emails over the content of the contract which at the moment I cannot sign. I’m hopeful that we can reach some middle ground but I’ll have to wait and see what comes back from them by way of revisions before being able to make a decision. In the meantime I have delivered on what I have been doing for them and there’s is potentially more work in the pipeline.

Allotment

It feels very strange knowing that this is probably my last year on the plot with a potential house move imminent. It changes the way you think about things and what you’re going to plant where. At the moment we’re getting a good crop of broad beans and I’m hoping to be able to plant out squash and courgette this week, as well as some climbing beans. I’ve also got some bush tomatoes coming along that look like they are about ready for larger pots or potentially going into the soil.

Books

I’ve read a few books this month, including finally finishing Derek Jarman’s first volume of diaries – Modern Nature – evidently it has taken me nine months to read them and as they’re not very long I’m not sure why. I would definitely like to visit his gardens in Dungeness one day and see just what he was able to do in such an inhospitable space. I’ve since moved on and am reading his Pharmacopoeia: A Dungeness Notebook and a little of his second volume of diaries.

I’ve also read a couple of books that didn’t pass my fifty page rule (or 20% on a kindle if there are no page numbers), I don’t name and shame because I think this can sometimes be as much about personal taste or mood at the time of reading, and I have been known to go back to books that haven’t passed the test and reread and enjoyed them so it’s a rule of the moment rather than to be rigidly applied.

TV / Film

Really not much to report here at all, mostly we’ve been watching repeats, programmes from the 70’s, 80’s and 90’s, programming that fills the time but ultimately means that I spend more time reading with the telly switched off. I have been enjoying Bosch: Legacy which I think is the only bit of new content I’ve been watching but I think that only has 2 episodes left, so probably by the time this goes out will be finished.

Well I don’t think that there’s much more to say this month.

Stay safe and take care.

Tree’s Up TWTW # 154

On By TontowilliamsIn books, Cooking, Garden / Allotment, The Week That Was, tv, work

Well it’s a little windy out there at the moment. I’ve just come back from my morning dog walk and we have a fair breeze blowing. I dare say it’s not the 100mph winds that have been reported for storm Arwen in other parts of the country. Although you can’t see it easily from the photo that blue dot is us, and we’re right on the edge of one of the weather warnings so hopefully will escape the worst. If you’re in one of the other areas then I hope you stay safe and take care if you have to venture outdoors, probably better to stay inside in the warm and dry though if you can.

This week has been mostly been about the work again, trying to move some things forward and finish off others. I’m aiming to take the Christmas and New Year period completely work free, so would like to tie things up before then.

Outside of that I’ve been booking booster jabs, which has proven to be quite a torturous process with the website insisting that the nearest centre with appointments available is on the Isle of Wight which is an expensive ferry ride away. Eventually we managed to get booked in a little closer to home and without the sea crossing.

We also put up our Christmas tree. I suspect we would have done it this weekend anyway so we were probably a few days early but it feels like we should make the most of having it up, rather than putting it up last minute and then taking it down a week later.

So we put on the original Now Christmas album (on vinyl) and decorated the tree. Just need to write Christmas cards now.

I’m also planning to make our Christmas pudding over the weekend at some point. A few years ago I made a video about it here:

Work

As mentioned above I’ve been busy on different projects this week. I was also supposed to be at a couple of workshops yesterday and today, but mysteriously they were cancelled without notice or explanation on Tuesday. My assumption is because of the bad weather but I haven’t been able to contact the organiser to find out the reason. I’m not disappointed that they were cancelled due to the rising Covid numbers, I wasn’t looking forward to being in a room of potentially hostile members of the public.

Allotment

Nothing to report today, I’ll pop down there once the storm has passed to see if there is any damage but it’s probably best to stay away while the wind is so strong.

Reading

I mentioned that I’d started The Small Heart of Things by Julian Hoffman last week, well I finished that in fairly short order. It was a quick but brilliant read and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Given it’s been tucked up in my “to be read” pile for so long it was a delight to read it. I hope there are more of the same in that pile of books. Since then I’ve been reading March Violets by Phillip Kerr, which is a Bernie Gunther mystery novel.

During the week I read an article – which I now can’t find – that said men don’t read much fiction. I initially dismissed this thinking that I read a lot of fiction. Later in the week I was looking through a book list of mine and realised that it was almost entirely non-fiction, so I had a look at the books I’ve read so far this year on GoodReads, and it’s pretty much a fifty-fifty split between fiction and non-fiction at the moment, so maybe there is something to that article after all?

TV

Nothing much to report this week, a lot of the things we have been watching have come to the end of their run, and Shetland finished this week. So not sure whether there’ll be much to report over the coming weeks.

Well that’s it for this week. As mentioned I’m off to be boosted next week, otherwise I’ll probably be working on client things. Whatever you’re up to Stay Safe and Take Care.

Boots Made for Walking TWTW # 151

On By TontowilliamsIn books, Cooking, Garden / Allotment, The Week That Was, tv, walking, work1 Comment

I wear boots a lot of the time. Hiking boots, wellingtons, steel toe safety boots. In fact when I’m out of the house I’m most likely to be wearing a pair of boots rather than any other type of footwear.

This week has been a bit of a disaster when it comes to boot wearing. Firstly at the start of the week I noticed that my wellingtons had sprung a leak. In time honoured fashion I discovered this when I had to wade through a large puddle and realised that my foot was wet. They’d split on the seam and in an awkward place which made even a temporary repair impossible. Then on Friday I noticed that my hiking boots had also had a failure, this time the sole had split across not just on one boot but on both. I hadn’t realised but now suspect they might have been like this for a while and possibly explain why an old injury had been causing me problems.

So now I need to get replacement boots – two pairs. New wellingtons will be here on Monday, but I’m having trouble finding hiking boots in my size.

Given the amount I wear them I’m not surprised that they wear out, they cover a lot of miles in a week.

Reading

I’ve been reading and finished Diary of a War Artist by Edward Ardizzone and The Potter’s Field by Ellis Peters this week. I often pick up an Ellis Peter’s Brother Cadfael mystery when I’m between books and don’t know what to read next. I’ve only got a couple more in the series to read and then I’ll have to find something else that fills that role. I don’t have any idea what that might be. For now I’ve pivoted back to non-fiction and am reading Daily Rituals by Mason Currey – all about the daily habits of famous figures across history. There’s some interesting habits in there, some quite curious and others that aren’t all that unusual and are the sort of thing that many people do today.

There’s lots of discussion on the internet about the new kindle paperwhite this week. I’ve been looking at some of it even though I certainly don’t need a new kindle. I’ve had my current one, which is the previous generation, for nearly two-and-a-half years. It’s been a workhorse for me, but the new version doesn’t look like a significant step forward to justify a purchase I don’t really need. I’ll be sticking with what I’ve got.

Watching

More Foundation and Invasion watching this week, I’m really not sure where the former series is going, and there’s only two episodes left (I think) in this season and I can’t see how they’re going to bring it all together in a satisfying way – then I suppose they don’t need to if they’re going to be making more. As for the latter, I feel like I could stop watching it now and not miss it. I did read a review that said it didn’t get going until episode 5, and we’re only at episode 4, so I might watch one more, but if it doesn’t then I can’t see that we’ll watch the rest of it.

We also watched the new Tom Hanks movie – Finch which was okay but didn’t really do much more than that. All of these are Apple TV+ which I got a free subscription for when I upgraded my iPad earlier this year, however I can’t see that we’ll stick with the paid version when my freebie runs out.

Work

I’ve mostly been focussed on one client’s work this week. When I can working on something in a concentrated way works best for me, so to be able to spend some extended time in this way has delivered real dividends both for me and hopefully also the client. I’ve only got a few more days allocated to this particular piece of work and it looks like I’ll complete it on time and budget.

Allotment

It looks like my onion sets are starting to germinate but no sign of my broad beans as yet. I harvested some leeks this week and we’ve had a lovely leek, brussel sprout, cheese and mashed potato pie over a couple of nights.

Links

Pumpkin and Spinach Lasagne recipe

Do Not Eat, Touch, Or Even Inhale the Air Around the Manchineel Tree

Ridley Scott Films – Ranked

Well that’s it for this week, there’s nothing much in my diary for the week ahead, so I’ll be cracking on with client work and trying to get things finished perhaps a little earlier than I might otherwise. Whatever you’re up to stay safe and take care.