I’ve been very lax on the actual work front this week. I keep getting distracted by things that seem to be out of my control. For 2 days I’ve been mithering over the ebook situation, and I’ve also been getting cross with software developers getting hissy with the people they keep asking for donations to keep them going. On Wednesday, I needed to put all of that behind me and step away.
First thing in the morning, I did my 3 chair exercises and my 1 step exercise. I caught up with the news over my dirty cuppa. And I got the car out again to run another errand. This time it was a mid-week shop. I drove to Morrison’s in Balby (pronounced Bol-be). Yes, I’d love to support local businesses, if we had local greengrocers, bakers, fishmongers, etc, but I also like to support local employees and help them keep their jobs. So I go to Morrison’s, and I use the human cashiers.
It meant another day of real clothes, fresh air, body movement, and people. Even a little people who kept escaping from his adult. I bought a ‘smaller’ pie dish that I now think is the same size as the ‘big’ one it’s replacing, fresh fish for tea, a fresh loaf of bread, fresh milk, fresh cherries for a crumble because they didn’t have any rhubarb* and because the plums had travelled further than the cherries, and fresh bananas.
*Rhubarb. Yorkshire is well known for rhubarb, particularly West Yorkshire. It’s the rhubarb capital of the world, apparently. From January to March, rhubarb is in season, locally. Early in the year it’s forced rhubarb, with delicate pink stems. Later in the year it’s more woody. Yet for the past 3 weeks, since rhubarb came into season, they’ve not had any at Morrison’s, the supermarket that champions local farmers. Last week we got some at Tesco, but when they didn’t have it again at Morrison’s, I had a chat with one of the workers in fresh produce, who agreed that they should have it, but that he hadn’t seen any.
He thought it might be likely there hadn’t been any supplied, due to bad weather. I pointed out that they had it in Tesco, but that I’d far rather get it from Morrison’s if I could. (Nothing against Tesco, I just like that Morrison’s, well, champion local farmers…) He agreed with me and promised to feed it back, maybe find out why they hadn’t had any. A cherry crumble will be…interesting. But we do like a rhubarb crumble in our house.
When we had our own rhubarb plants, we had 2 lots of harvest from it, one lot throughout the spring, then another couple just before autumn. The mother-in-law has a plant that’s about ready for splitting, so we may go and get some of that. It might be in time for the autumn harvest, but we’ll miss the spring one.
I also bought a pack of slimline shopping list pads, 3 very small notepads that fit in my handbag or in the dashboard cupboard in the campervan, a box of throat lozenges, a box of ‘cold and flu nurse’ capsules, and 2 packets of anti-bacterial hand wipes – one for the picnic bag and one for the bathroom in the campervan.
On my way back I saw 2 of our buzzards on their favourite perches. The most we’ve seen in one go along the edge of one of the quarries is 3, but yesterday I saw only 2 plus a pigeon. We also have red kites living close to our quarries and we’ve seen those hunting or sitting in trees. But I haven’t seen any kites yet this year.
When I got home and put the shopping away, it was past time for my breakfast. So I made that and sat at the dining table reading my Kobo. I was delighted to see Scruffy magpie and what I presume is his (or her!) new mate. I thought I’d seen him with another magpie the day before, but after they went I thought it was possible I’d imagined it or he wasn’t the other half of the pair. Yesterday, he was definitely with another magpie, as well as his 2 jackdaw friends, the latter of which also seem to be hanging out with jackdaw #3 at the moment.
Scruffy’s ‘broken’ wing seems to be healing. He’s not carrying it so low over his leg and the feathers look new. Plus he keeps twitching them. Fingers crossed he’ll continue visiting the garden throughout the spring and summer, and maybe he’ll bring his own kids to visit too. While I was writing this, I saw 5 jackdaws in and around the garden. We also seem to have a resident wren and 2 resident robins. With more than 10 blackbirds too, and dozens of sparrows and pigeons, we are so privileged.
For the rest of the day I was roughly an hour behind. The clock on my desk has been slowing down, even though it has fresh batteries in it, and it keeps on catching me out. While I’d managed to avoid the ebook scandal for most of the day, I still seem to have spent most of my time faffing. By the time I realised the time it was too late for me to start anything big. so I finished today’s post and scheduled it, and moved into the living room with my Kobo and my headphones. The poet was already home, feeling a bit shit (he cancelled this evening’s band practice due to a sore throat and not wanting to push it), and watching the telly, so I decided to catch up on some reading.
I have a lot to get through today, once I’ve been to the butcher’s for today’s errand.
Sounds like a solid day. The stress of the constant chaos here makes it hard to concentrate on anything.
I hope the poet feels better soon.
what a lively garden you have!
All you can do is all that you’re doing behind the scenes, plus you’re being pro-active.
Thank you. He does get a lot of colds but, hey, he’s still drinking his Throat Coat! He has it with a spoon of honey and later asks me if I used the same cup to give him a cup of tea! (That’ll be the Throat Coat coating his throat!)
We have hedgehogs and grey squirrels in the garden too, and recently we had 2 new cat visitors on 2 different occasions, one black, one tortoiseshell. I’m amazed I ever get anything done with that lot distracting me all the time.