Tuesday 10th September 2024

 

I'm reading this book at the moment, a fictional account of Cassandra Austen, it's very good. However the impetus for today's post was £10. I'd just reached the point in the book where Jane Austen is feeling dejected. She'd received £10 for her novel Susan, but the publisher has thus far failed to publish it. Jane's father had recently passed away and in chased financial states Jane felt low and worthless. Cassandra tried to console her. I'd put the book down before realising two ten pound notes, depicting Jane herself were next to it. I wonder what Jane may have made of this? Not only that her image adorned notes of the Realm, but those two £10 notes were Julie's from an hour gardening (before being stung 10 times by a wasp). In Jane's day £10 was a considerable amount of money. Jane may have reached thirty and feeling as though she'd failed in life, but two hundred years later, she is loved and revered around the World. 

Monday 9th September 2024

 It was quite strange being back at work today. After all that's gone on over the last few weeks and ten days away I returned to an empty building. No activity but everything was the same. We move ourselves through life, a process of endless change minute by minute, but a lot of what surrounds us remains static and frozen in time. This notice board in the communal kitchen is a good example. Everything hanging there, except the sieve, I've placed there, including the badly spelt instructions to not put coffee granules down the sink. At the bottom right there's a dispenser saying leave in room 18. That's my writing and it harks back to the COVID pandemic year of 2020 when this room was my office. Four years later that hand gel is still there, but does anyone actually use it now? The John Moore leaflets are more recent, placed there not long after I'd attended the John Moore AGM last month. There were three, now only two. Has one been taken by an interested colleague to join the Society? I'll probably never know. It struck me though. I've changed over these last few months, I think differently to the beginning of the year, but these objects remind me there is permanence, albeit temporary in nature.

Sunday 8th September 2024

 

I maybe should worry about what is going on, but on balance it's best not to. Went to see friends today in Thornbury. The lady of the house knitted Mr Bumblegnome on the right for my 60th Birthday but said she could see improvements were possible so could I bring him with me. I did, also taking up a Halloween gnome as a gift. We've called that Brett. I have now left Mr Bumblegnome in Gloucestershire and he already seems chummy with Brett. Meanwhile Julie is happier that Mr Bumblegnome has left our house, though I'm suffering separation anxiety. Tough times ahead.

Saturday 7th September 2024

Two images from the garden today. I wasn't having a great day, restless and tired. The torrential rain had stopped but everything was sodden. Julie went to have her hair done, so I decided to go and do some gardening, shaping the bay shrub and cutting back a honeysuckle which was rampaging. Mid session I heard the tune from Ezzy's ice cream van. Well it would be rude not to support a local business. I was going to just have a tub but the family in front of me all had sundaes' I pushed the boat out with an After Eight mint chocolate sundae. It was blooming delicious and gave me renewed energy to finish off. Which is more than can be said about my helper Treacle. She never moved off the shed the entire time I was out there.

Friday 6th September 2024

It was a trip to Salisbury today. Julie and I had a longish invite to visit my late uncle's widow Ann. She was his second wife after Lilla died in 1994. Ann and Ken were married in 1998 through to his death in 2020. It would have been his 95th birthday yesterday. We went by train, with a lovely 50 minutes connection time at Bristol Temple Meads, where the above image was taken. With our railcards the two day returns cost £40.30, a bargain of £10 each, each way. And I like train travel anyway. But a downside on a day like this is the weather. The rain was torrential, meaning the walk from Salisbury station to Ann's soaked us. Not to worry. We dried off, and had a good few hours chat, Adrian her son from her first marriage popped over to see us, and we rang dad as he'd not spoken to Ann for months. Julie and I both like Salisbury but it's very busy with traffic. A nice day though, and we do like the house Ann lives in, it's a terrace in a modern mews complex. Very relaxing and only five minutes walk from the Cathedral.

Thursday 5th September 2024

 

In a few days winter has arrived. Only at the weekend did it feel dry and warm, the ground was hard and those occasional showers didn't really do anything. Today though we've descended into full November gloom. This time last year we were having a late heat wave with temperatures nudging the high 20's. Today it was 12 o.C with a cool northerly wind. Suddenly everything was sodden, roads with localised puddles, vegetation hung drenched, birds looked dejected and people walked about in proper wet weather gear. It was dark too, it really did feel like a November day. The view above is of the moor road between Mark and Biddisham. The structure is a mobile milking bale, though this one isn't mobile. These were once common everywhere but today I only know of this example. Julie and I were on our way home from the Hub where we'd gone just to get out the house. While there I met Martin Hughes-Games who'd ridden through the deluge on his new Norton motorbike (though he'd lost his numberplate). It was good to bump into him, though he looked frozen and soaked through to be honest.

Wednesday 4th September 2024

 

Hmmm. We're heading into a spell of wet and unsettled weather for a while. Ian Ferguson on Points West said it might be so bad he could use words not allowed on the BBC. It all starts around 3am tomorrow. We are under a Yellow weather warning from 9pm tonight. It's funny watching a colleague on TV. I normally see him playing table tennis in our rest area, apparently he's quite competitive. Anyway rain is coming, which I knew anyway as Gingernut had adopted the relaxed rain drop pose ahead of the deluge. He's a funny little thing.