Yes, i’ve been out of the apartment twice today!
But then again, anyone who has spent any length of time with me will know that taking to the communal waste disposal area here the kind of rubbish that I produce is a matter of extreme urgency, although many others will argue just as strongly that I ought to wait another day and let the rubbish walk there on its own.
As I mentioned yesterday, today was the day when I was going to do some tidying up. And while it was not as thorough as I might have liked, the kitchen worktop is empty and clean, the floor in the kitchen and dining area has been vacuumed and the floor has been washed.
That’s progress of a sort, I suppose.
But going back to the question of the rubbish, it’s quite true that since I came back from the High Arctic in October full of new resolutions, the amount of plastic waste here has fallen dramatically.
On the other hand, the amount of compostable waste that I’m creating with all of this cooking and freezing of vegetables that I’m doing is astonishing. I hope that what goes into the compostable bin really is composted by the local authority.
What else might be considered progress was that I struggled to my feet with just seconds to spare before the alarm went off. A close call, but then a miss is as good as a mile.
Nothing on the dictaphone either – I had a quiet night by the looks of things – and with no music to digitalise until my new hi-fi arrives (whenever that might be), I cracked on with the next radio project.
By the time I knocked off too, at 18:00, I’d chosen all of the music, combined the tracks in pairs, found a speech for my guest, written the text, recorded it and edited half of it.
Had I put my mind to it, I might even have finished it. But there was
- breakfast
- lunch
- an hour or two off for a little personal distraction
- the tidying up in the kitchen and dining area
- a little … errr … relax
As for the lunch, my home-made bread was a great improvement on the previous loaf, although I have a lot to learn before it’s as good as I might like. But if I don’t keep trying, I won’t improve.
And for the relax, it wasn’t actually a sleep – I managed to fight it off, but not to the extent of being able to do anything for 15 minutes. As the Duke of Wellington once said about another occasion, it was “the nearest run thing you ever saw in your life”.
The good news is that the memory sticks that I ordered (from China!) that have been in quarantine in a plastic bag on my windowsill can come out on Wednesday. No opportunity for social distancing though – they are all in it together.
And when they are out, I can move a pile of digitalised music out of the holding directory and merge it into the mainstream.
But I’ve been thinking (and isn’t that dangerous?) that with splitting up the music as I have done into random directories to rotate them through the radio programmes without playing the same artist in adjacent or near-adjacent radio shows, there’s a lot of stuff that is in these directories that will never be played on my programmes.
What I’m going to do therefore is to start another directory off with “miscellaneous” albums and so on, perhaps record it on a different memory stick and keep it in Caliburn to listen to while I’m driving.
There was a thoroughly enjoyable hour on the guitars this evening too and then I went to attack tea.
Having moved the oven rack up a notch for the bread, unfortunately the base of the pie wasn’t cooked as well as I was hoping. So my slice of pie (I cut it into 8) went into the oven to warm up upside-down, along with a couple of small potatoes and the apple turnover.
While it was cooking I tried to fit the rest of the pie into the freezer but I only managed to fit half of it in. The freezer is now jam-packed full.
The other half is in the fridge until tomorrow. If I have a curry out of the freezer tomorrow with a pile of veg, there might just be enough room to fit it in then. The only reason that I managed to fit some of the pie in today was that I had some veg out of there to go with my potatoes and pie.
How I’m bitterly regretting not having bought a bigger freezer but then I suppose that I would have filled it with other stuff and I would have just the same problem, only on a different scale.
There was only me out there tonight on my run. I’ve no idea where everyone else was.
There was quite a strong wind again, but this time it was behind me when I set off so running up the hill to the top of the hedge wasn’t quite as strenuous as it might have been, although it’s still finishing me off.
There was nothing doing out in the English Channel tonight but there was a fishing boat with its lights on, presumably because it was working, out in the Baie de Mont Saint Michel over on the Brittany side. They are giving that side of the bay a good going-over right now.
It was quite pleasant to stand there and watch it, but I didn’t stay out there for long because of the wind.
My run along the top of the cliffs on the other side of the headland was a struggle with the wind but I kept on going.
But something caught my eye down in the chantier navale and I didn’t know what it was. It looked different in there tonight and I’ve no idea why. I took a photo of it to compare it with a photo from a week ago, and there was no significant difference.
But it was weird, whatever it was
My run all the way down the Boulevard Vaufleury and round the corner was quite a struggle. It’s the longest of the runs that I do and this evening it was into a headwind as well and that took the wind out of my ails.
The last hundred or so metres were agony.
Once I’d stopped for a breather, I walked back down to the viewpoint overlooking the port to see what was happening.
Nothing of any excitement going on down there, although I don’t recall seeing Chausiais moored up over there for a day or two, so I didn’t hang around.
At the viewpoint at the Rue du Nord there was nothing happening at all so I ran on back home.
As I was going in through the door, one of my neighbours was going out so we had a chat for a while then I came up here.
Now that I’ve finished my notes, I’m off to bed. It’s earlier than some times just recently but I need it. Tomorrow I’ll finish off the radio project and maybe restart the website updating that I was doing before I went on my transatlantic sail at the end of June last year, not to mention the photo updating from that four-month trip.
So I need my beauty sleep. All that I can get.
And before I forget, I hope that you all had a good Star Wars Day today. May the Fourth be with you.
