Spent yesterday shopping, getting in food for when the family – 1 Son, 2 Daughters, 1 (honourary) Son-in-Law – arrive on Sunday.
Got home, knackered. Went to the garage to put stuff away in the freezer, turned around and tripped over the wood-chopping block. Went cartwheeling, landed with a crunch in front of the coal bunker. Hit my neck on the sharp edge of the coal shovel, which jammed up against the garage door. That bit could have been nasty, but I was still wearing my jacket with the collar up, so the shovel-edge dug into that instead.
Lay there like a stunned fish, flapping a bit as I deciphered status messages from distant limbs. There didn’t seem to be anything badly broken, so I decided I didn’t especially want to lie there in the coal-dust when I didn’t have to. Tried to get up – knees totally useless for the job of getting me upright, as they always are these days. Started swearing – at the chopping-block, at the gods, at fate, at my useless eyesight, at my useless knees. B heard me and came rushing in, pulled me up, rushed me into the kitchen, cleaned me up, inspected my emerging bruises, made me a cup of tea, made me sit down.
I’ve been falling over like this all my life – I’m nearly blind in my right eye and my left eye is fairly hopless as well. So things like steps and kerbs and lamposts tend to leap out and snag themselves on me. It didn’t used to matter when I was young and healthy – I would simply get back on my feet, brush off the mud/blood and carry on walking. But now, it’s not so nice. I was shaky and aching all evening and still am aching quite a lot, all over.
….but only for a while. I’m so busy this week (getting the 2007 Elfin Diary done, getting the next Transit out in time for Yule, getting my computer sorted etc.) that I’m not likely to have any time left for messing about on the internet.
I’ll still be checking emails, but that’s all for the time being. If you have anything to say, I’ll be pleased to hear from you.
Went to see the hospital cardio specialist today – he says I may not have angina after all. My heart is fine, my blood pressure’s exactly what it should be, my blood tests OK, I’m not getting typical angina symptoms of chest pains (just the pains in one arm, which he didn’t see as significant.)
“So why do I keep getting breathless? Why don’t I have any energy? Why do I get exhausted from just sweeping the bloody floor?” I wanted to know.
He was honest enough to say that he didn’t know. “We must try to find out.” So I’ll be going back for more bloody tests. Blahhh. Bloody Neptune, I suppose…..
One of two other things have been happening to make me feel not very good about myself. It’s times like these I really need a good friend to tell me how stupid I’m being and give me a kick in the behind for it.
And it’s dark and raining. No moon to look at, no stars. It’s just gone 9pm now, and it will be at least another ten hours before I see any light at all outside. There’s buggerall on the TV to watch, i don’t feel like reading….
I just feel blahhhhh….
The Minotaur by Barbara Vine
I have been a long-time fan of Barbara Vine (who also writes as Ruth Rendell). Her novels deal with mytseries and secrets and the dark things that hide behind surbuban faces – especially English suburban faces. They often aren’t entirely successful; in particular, she has constant problems making her working-class characters believable – all too often they appear to be taken from Dickens or the latest Daily Mail headlines. But her books are rarely complete stinkers.
But here, in her latest book, Vine sticks to safe ground with her familiar mix of uptight middle-class English families with something to hide, and with nearly all the action set in the 1960s. Safe ground again; seemingly never very comfortable with contemporary settings, most of what I consider to be her best books are set in the past.
Kirsten Kvist,a young Swedish woman (Swedish references recur through Vine’s novels), takes up a nursing post in an ancient mansion deep in the Essex countryside. The Cosway family are immediately revealed as a very odd lot – a widowed dictatorial matriarch, her assorted adult daughters. And her adult son John, who is supposed to be mentally ill, but who turns out to be saner than any of them. Another intriguing character (almost as well-drawn as the human characters) is the house itself, which hides some surprising secrets of its own.
The twists and turns of the plot clearly mirror the maze which is at the heart of the story – every chapter brings some new suprise. Vine manages to keep it all going very nicely, with hardly a ball dropped; I really couldn’t put this one down, and the ending was indeed unexpected, as it ought to be.
However, I was left rather unsatisfied. For such an accomplished story-teller, the plotting has some rather large holes. For instance, what happened to the police murder investigation? And, although Kirsten married into a local family with a gossipy mother-in-law (as Vine pointed out a number of times), it took more than three decades for her to hear about the highly gossip-worthy local developments that ensued after her departure.
And then there is the question of John Cosway’s hair. As part of the 60s scene-setting, Vine has her narrator make a point of commenting on it if a male character has below-the-ears hair (correctly, as long hair on men was unusual at that time). However, as she says nothing at all about John’s hair, we must assume he had the short-back-and-sides that men usually wore then. Now, John is so touch-phobic that he will not allow anybody, even members of his own family, to touch him at all. And, for the first part of the book, he is too stupefied with drugs to handle scissors. So – who cut his hair, and how?
Apart from these small plotting gripes (none of which were insurmountable), though, it’s an excellent and gripping read.
From SchNews
Just when you thought it could get no worse, Neo Labour goes nuclear. The whispering campaign around the push for nuclear power has been gaining momentum since last year. Until then Britain’s nuclear programme seemed to have been largely written off as the costly and dangerous failure it was. Nobody even knows how to safely decommission the power stations already built or store the radioactive waste already produced. Britain’s nuclear power programme was historically dogged with safety issues, radioactive contamination and, of course, massive overspend. And yet now we’re supposed to sit back and swallow the construction of a few more of these toxic dumps. How’re they going sell this to the British public?
You have to stand back and admire the propaganda. In the face of a potentially very cold winter, Neo Labour is using their own incompetence in not securing sufficient energy supplies or efficiency to go round saying, “Do you want Granny to shiver alone at Christmas? Do you want to have to rely on gas pumped thousands of miles across steppes haunted only by bearded jihadists every time you want a cup of tea? So come on! What’s a little radioactive waste between friends?”
This glowing bombshell is being slipped in under the umbrella of a “wide ranging review of all Britain’s energy needs”. But Tony’s think-tanks have come to the conclusion that wind turbines in marginal countryside constituencies are big vote losers and it’s the intoxicating power of
I’m going to be a granny. For the third time. No. 3 Daughter has just rung with the news. The big day is next June.
It doesn’t sound like it, but yes, I’m happy!
Up here in the wilds we are not immune from modern progress. Castle Douglas is getting a Tesco’s supermarket; planning permission was granted in spite of strong local opposition and accusations of malpractice. So from next year we fully expect to see the many vibrant local shops and town centre businesses start closing down, and a unique, characterful and diverse little town turned into Everytown, complete with rows of boarded-up shops. Sigh.
It would appear that Tescos’ determination to be the only shop in every town in the land will eventually bring it down; already the other supermarket chains are getting nervous and there is much talk about bringing in the Monopolies Commission to cut the giant down to size. But that will all come far too late for this wonderful little community.
Another sign of progress is a proposal to build wind turbines atop Blackcraig, a nearby hill. You’d think that any intitative towards renewable energy production would be welcomed, but some people don’t like it. As soon as the plan was announced last year, a group called GLARE was set up with the single-minded aim of stopping the windfarm. They are extremely vocal in their objections, which all seem to boil down to “We don’t like it and it will look horrible”. Oh, they’ve come up with all sorts of figures that appear to show that wind generation is not as good as claimed; they’ve claimed that wind turbines will permanently damage the hill and, once installed, will be impossible to remove (eh?);they’ve claimed that the turbines will be a hazard to the Golden Eagles in Galloway (the one Golden Eagle in this area has its range some twenty miles north). And so on. But no real arguments for not having wind turbines.
When they started up, they very nearly shot themselves in the foot, by inviting Dr David Bellamy to join in their campaign; for those who don’t know what the venerable old naturalist has been getting into lately, he is now busy denying that there is such a thing as global warming and climate change. They must have been delighted when he obligingly wrote for their newsletter and spoke at a couple of their meetings, claiming that there was no need for developing renewable energy sources such as wind farms. Unfortunately, somebody in the group had just enough sense to realise what a PR liability he was; his name, and his climate-change denials, are now conspicously absent from their leaflets.
One of their latest tactics was to plaster the local area with large notices saying “No wind turbines here”. They nailed these up on fenceposts, telegraph poles and the like, all without asking anyone’s permission (I know because one of them appeared overnight on the pole outside our group of houses). When irate residents and landowners started taking the notices down, GLARE went whinging to the local press about “vandalism” and “suppression of free speech”. That was some three weeks ago, and the signs have continued disappearing. Driving around the other day, I counted just six of them. One is on the house of GLARE’s founder and two of the others are on different sides of another property. So it would appear that GLARE doesn’t have as much local support as they would like.They evidently have lots of resources – enough to produce full-colour leaflets and mass mailouts and buy full-clour press ads. They undoubtedly work very hard and are passionate about what they believe in. I really, really wish they could have put those resources, and that passion, towards fighting Tescos instead.
…for a while. Won’t bore you with my problems, though. I haven’t heard back from Doc G about my blood test. He said he contact me only if there was a problem; that was 10 days ago, so I can probably assume that there is no problem and that my tiredness is due to my medication. Blah.
Winter has really set in here – this will be the third night of below freezing temperatures and there’s more to come.
We really have to get some supplies in – all the signs are for a hard winter. This far into the rural North power cuts are already frequent, and any real snow will cut us off for days. We already have plenty of coal and wood for heating, plus the camping stove in our caravan will do nicely for emergency cooking. But the power cuts earlier this week used up quite a lot of our candles and we could use another camping gas light; we have to get in meat for freezing, and food staples like flour and tinned stuff.
But we don’t have the money, as yet. Just too many bills coming in at once, so the winter stocking-up will have to be postposed for at least a week. Let’s hope the winter weather will be postponed as well!
I’ve started reading Steven Saylor‘s historical mystery novels. They’re set in Rome, at the time of the tumultous civil war between Pompey and Caesar. Featuring a Roman ‘PI’ called Giordanus the Finder, not only are they cracking good reads, but they’re historically accurate as well – Saylor really knows his Roman history. They’re just the thing to go with the Rome series on the TV (which Saylor generally praises for accuracy, except for the coming Cleopatra episode).
Will probably be changing this blog theme again. There are just too many bugs in it. I’ve only just discovered that neither the comments nor the contact form were working, so no-one could get in touch with me. I sorted the contact form bug, but the comments bug remains intractable. And despite much trying, I cannot get the archives page to work either so it’s difficult to get to previous posts. This K2 theme is a beta, so I expected some bugs. I really like K2’s features, so I’ve put up with the bugs so far and decided to wait for the final, bug-free, version. But that seems to be taking forever. I’ve seen one or two new themes that have the essential features that I want 0 such as an archives page – so I might try out one of those.
…is the transit that’s hitting me now. Well, ‘thumping’ is probably more exact. I have never felt so tired, so bone-weary as I do right now. The tiredeness has been building up up for weeks; my anigina has also been getting worse. To the point where doing simple household activites like sweeping the kitchen floor and carrying in a bucket of coal exhausts me for the rest of the day.
I saw Doc G last Teusday and he took some blood for testing – haven’t heard the results yet. It could be a reaction to my medication, or I might need more Thyroxine. Or it might be anaemia. Or it might some whole new ailment to deal with. Whatever, I’m even too tired to worry!
Yesterday we went to Dumfries to have my computer checked over, and to do some shopping. After 45 minutes of walking around the town and thirty minutes of walking around Morrisons, I was feeling so ill I had to give myself a squirt of my angina spray before setting offf for the drive home.
We were approaching Crocketford when I remembered that we had left my computer in the shop, instead of picking it up. “We’ll go back for it tomorrow” said B firmly, “Let’s just get you home and rested.”
So this morning, we set off early, at eight, to avoid the Saturday crowds. I still felt like death lightly defrosted, but I resolved I would stay in the car. It was a beautiful bright autumn morning – the loch was at its prettiest, with autumn colour still in the trees and the calm water reflecting the pale blue sky. Up to Castle Douglas, the road was empty – just a few crows breakfasting off the roadkill; even after that, traffic was light. And once in Dumfries, there was plenty of parking still.
As to the computer – it was OK! But there was no hardware fault – what had actually happened was that I had put in the motherboard wrongly, so that the cards couldn’t slot in properly. It was that that had produced all the faults. Nothing to do with any faulty memory, as I had thought! I was glad that it had been B who went in and picked it up. I was crimson with embarrassment just thinking about it. O well, I’ll know better next time.
And coming back along the Lauriston road and cresting the bridge before Mossdale, we saw a complete rainbow arch framing the village and the hills…
…I’m back online. Computer problems, as usual – a duff memory stick, to be precise. But it gave me to chance to have a satisfyingly butt-kicking telephone conversation with the shop who sold it to me three months ago. The man actually tried to wriggle out of it with some lame excuse about diagnostic software causing the damage – oh boy, what a joy to be a computer-savvy woman when faced with that sort of male flim-flammery!
Anyhoo, I’ll be getting a new memory stick tomorrow – for the time being, I’ve connected up my HD into B’s machine.