19 Mar 2024

19.03.2024 Security detail for hospital visit.

 ~o~

 Tuesday 19th 37F/3C. Smudgy overcast moving quickly from the south. Up at 6.40 after lying awake for ages. 

 I have to be at the city hospital after lunch for a heart scan. It is 30km/20 miles by my usual, rural, cycle route. No cycle paths are provided on the direct, main road. With speeding being extremely commonplace and the traffic always busy. 

 I shall allow myself an extra half hour to avoid overdoing it. Or, worse, being late. Having been stung by a crooked parking company in the past. I dare not drive there in the old car. The Morris is still sulking at the specialist Morris workshop.

 The hospital is a huge site with multiple buildings but no map was provided. Just an address. So I am using Google Earth and Street View to locate the entrance I need. No problem and there is a cycle rack near the entrance. I always anchor the bike to a rack or street furniture. To avoid it being lifted bodily into a van or pickup. I shall take both ABUS Granite U-locks. To avoid 2-legged city rats getting a free fix at my expense.

 The next problem is carrying the twin Ortlieb panniers with the spare battery. While I can padlock the panniers to the rear rack The carrying handles could be cut. Or the bags simply opened. So I will have to drag the whole lot down to the cellar heart clinic with me. The spare battery weighs 3.6kg or 7lbs. It's lucky I am only 76! Until next month. When I can become an even sillier, old fart. 😎

8.15 There is no excuse not to go for walk. My back was killing me when I finally got up.

 8.45 I only walked far enough to be rid of my lower back pain. There was a cold, blustery SE wind already. Expecting to gust up to 11m/s later. Fortunately that will be at right angles to my direction of travel. Though the speed of my e-bike makes every journey feel like a headwind. 

 The temperature will peak below 5C/41F today at 14.00. With light rain possible on my return journey. Experience strongly suggests I wear warm clothes, cap and gloves. Long thermal underwear. A jumper under the rain jacket over a racing jersey. To keep sweat at bay. Never wear a T-shirt! A GripGrab "Aviator" medieval cap under my ABUS helmet. This covers the ears and is warm despite the wind. Probably worth wearing the GripGrab split mitts from the very start. Fingered gloves are just too marginal at these temperatures and wind chill factor on an e-bike.

 

~o~ 

18 Mar 2024

18.03.2024 16 tons and wadya get?

 

 ~o~

  Monday 18th 35F/2C. Quite bright with overall smudgy cloud.

 Up at 7am. I was up earlier from 4-5.15. Having woken and couldn't get back to sleep. Wasted the night hours on the news and YouTube. No ill effects from yesterday's ride. 

 8.00 After a walk I shall continue throwing rubble. From the edge of the parking area into the lower area beyond. There isn't much rubble left. So I shall need more material to build up the area properly. There is a pile of demolition rubble next door. 

 How to get it from 150m away without exhausting myself? Nor wasting time barrowing it. I could fill my trailer but it's tiring and far too slow to pick it up from the ground. I have already discovered this with the modest amount of rubble I have moved already. Which varies from fist sized to over football size. Mostly concrete from the former "patio." Which I began to break up with a pick and sledge hammer. Until I ran out of energy and momentum. With only 2/3 removed. I left enough for a front doormat and somewhere to park the three big recycling bins. 

 The village sand and gravel man's full sized, tipper lorry is going to struggle to reach the right spot. There is very little room to turn. The drive is narrow beside house. Which probably means bringing the material one load at a time using my own trailer. 

 Or, having him dump the material as near as he can get. Leaving me with barrowing it from the huge heap. Which is exhausting work at my age. It also makes the parking area inaccessible until I finish. 

 Hiring somebody with a front loader?  A few minutes work for a JCB. A little longer for a skid steer. I could pay the gravel man to drive his huge front loader to my place. To move a big heap of self stabilizing gravel into the sunken area. That would be fast and effective. If he was willing. 

 Instead of a walk I decided to exhaust myself by finishing the rubble tossing. I keep getting breathless and tired. I just don't have the strength or stamina I used to have. I managed to move the dome segments further away. Using a mixture of rocking and rowing. Where I did not have the strength to drag them bodily. Let alone lift them. 

 There is now a clear shot for a tipper lorry to reach the area. Only after I dig up the cables carrying electricity to the dome. They are much too shallow now that I have cleared the approach. They used to be safely buried in a high quality, yellow hose. Running around under the hedges I have since removed. 

 The green hose contains a low voltage time signal to the big clock dial on the shed. That too was disconnected after my wife died. I lost all interest in my lifetime passion [obsession] for electrical horology.

 I see from the image that I still have a lot of clearing up to do in the background. My wife's worm farms are still lying about after I released their contents into the wild. She used to feed them with kitchen waste. Producing vast quantities of worms. In their big, inverted water butts with the tops cut off. 

 I never saw her use any of the compost they produced. I would bring it home in bags. From the garden centre or supermarket. She was very fussy about quality and complained for years. That she could no longer buy John Innes. All the bagged compost over here is/was peat based.

 My DeWalt chainsaw keeps shedding its chain. Probably because the chain has stretched. So I can't cut down all the trees and stumps. I'll have to order a chain [or two] online. The steel post once held a huge satellite dish. For receiving British TV from Astra 2. Before they got greedy and killed it for European reception. I dug a deep hole and set the post in concrete. Now it's in the way. It is also perfectly vertical. The slope is entirely the effect of phone camera distortion. Note how the observatory building on the right is upright.

 9.45 41F/5C. Still sunny. Now I am dripping with sweat and sneezing. With a runny nose again. I need a rest and will make morning coffee. 

 10.30 It has clouded over. No more sunshine. Had a rest. Now what? Go and fetch a new chain for the saw? A nice little ride along the lanes. The sun is trying to come out again. I had better save my energy for tomorrow's 50km round trip to the hospital. The weather forecast is dry but grey and windy from the south. So I will be fighting the wind more on the way home. Probably using the second battery by then.

 12.00 Overcast. I have returned, in the car and fitted the new chain to the DeWalt chainsaw. Topped up the chain oil to be certain. The skinny chains are prone to burning. I'll start by tidying up the yellow, willow saplings and stumps. Which might come up again from beneath my rubble and gravel landfill. It is already beginning to feel more spacious. Even before it is all brought to the same level. 

 I am really not sure how far to go back. If I remove too many trees I shall be able to see Scrapman's multiple carbuncles. If only in winter when the trees are bare. Not that people in glass houses shouldn't keep their own place much more tidy! The camera doesn't lie. It just doesn't get pointed that way.

 12.30 Early lunch over. Time to get cracking. Hopefully the chainsaw will behave itself now.

 13.30 Sunny periods. Time for another rest. Why do I get so hot and breathless? All the stumps and small trees have gone. At least as far out as I am likely to expand the car parking area. Another heaped trailer load of branches for the recycling yard. The saw worked fine on the new chain. Making short work of willow stems up to 6"/15cm Ø. 

 It doesn't look like hours and hours of tiring work, does it? My wife assembled a lot of the bricks visible on the right. I found her crouched down there one day. Not long after the chimney was demolished. She was naturally, highly skilled at dry stone walling. So the bricks must have been quite easy for her to stack in layered steps. The gravel on top has flowed down in the intervening couple of years. Hiding most of her work. Thee was no spare rubble until the chimney was demolished.

 She also helped to move all the gravel built up under the observatory. When a local contractor abandoned us. After promising to send a skid-steer, front loader and driver that morning. We had to move about 22 tons around 30 meters by shovel and wheelbarrow alone. While in our early 70s. 

 My wife discovered she could lean a barrow against the vast heap. Then rake the gravel down to fill the barrow. It was easier than her shoveling. While I pottered back and forth. Pushing the other barrow full and tipping it into the drop. She was only a tiny 5'/1.5 meters. 

 18.30 Lit the stove. It has been hovering around 61F/16C indoors. So I am wearing a fleece jacket for warmth. The cheapest and most efficient energy is that you don't produce. There are no losses. Except marginal comfort.

 Dinner was poached eggs on toast. There was nothing else left.


  ~o~

17 Mar 2024

17.03.2024 67km means a late lunch.

 ~o~

  Sunday 17th 31F/-1C Bright and sunny. White frost. No visible wind in the trees.

 Up at 6.45 after a reasonable night. I seemed to be lying there awake for ages but wasn't. More like shallow dreaming. Lower back pain as usual and a runny nose. My upper chest continues to feel thick. Having to clear my throat at frequent intervals. Unhealthy stove dust, ash, smoke and gases? Or it's all the tap water I keep drinking.

 Butterburs look more colourful in bright sunshine.

 There is a story on the DR news website. About the huge difference in survival rates of the Danes. Depending on wealth. A country which only pretends to enjoy the greatest equality. Particularly where health is concerned. Published in a major new survey by a Danish University. 

 The country was divided up into parishes. The chances of surviving to 75 being reduced by up to 81% for some areas. Compared with only 13% for a wealthy area. The lower educated being particularly susceptible to early death. Smoking? Obesity? Poor housing? Drug abuse? Stress? Diet? Lack of physical activity. Their type of employment? 

 Every new bunch of politicooze promises to fix the problem. If only empty election promises actually worked in reality. The Danish news is constantly discussing the appalling waiting times for treatment. With many exceeding the legal time-wasting allowance. So that many patients are able to get quicker private treatment at taxpayer's expense. Every new hospital build runs years late and billions over budget. 

 Either Windows or the FF browser is broken. I can't do a simple swipe, Copy and Paste! Paste is greyed out! I have tried repeatedly. It's Firefox! Copy and Paste work as normal in Chrome on editing my blog. Ok. I Refreshed Firefox. Normal editing service has been resumed.

 8.15. Time for a walk. 63F/17C in the room. I won't light the stove. There should be free heat from the greenhouse later. BTW: Don't buy BAY digital thermometers. They eat CR2025 button cells! I bought half a dozen of these thermometers and spend my days replacing the batteries. My digital thermometers, which use AAA batteries, last for years between battery replacements. BAY obvious chose button cells to allow a thinner body. 

 9.15 Back from my walk. I made it to the village. I haven't walked that far in some time. Cold on my hands but I was warm in a jumper and fleece jacket. Lots of birds about. I saw my first wagtail of this year. Sharing the ridge of a roadside house with a noisy sparrow. Though the loudest voices at this time of year are usually the chaffinches. There was a very strange sound from a larger bird this morning. Hiding somewhere in the shelter belt of trees to my west. Alarm call or song? The nearest song/alarm online is a Willow Ptarmigan. How likely is that? It had to be a large bird for so deep a range. I have heard thousands of pheasants over the years and it certainly wasn't one of those. 

 10.00 38F/3.3C. It is determined to be sunny today. Light easterly winds suggest a ride. No phone call from the supposed buyer of my big green dome. Nor any other response to my Facebook advert. 

 10.30. Off I go. 

 14.30 43F/6C. Returned from a freezing 67km/42 mile ride. I headed north. Leaving at about 11am by the time I was ready. I hoped I would avoid a cold headwind. I was wrong. There was a headwind every inch of the way. Regardless of my direction of travel. A lovely ride though. Mostly on narrow, rural lanes. Deliberately so, to avoid main road traffic. 

 Luckily I took a warmer pair of gloves. Even then, the well padded GripGrab gloves weren't really warm enough. So my hands recovered after the change but then became cold again. I should have taken the split mitts. It was daft not to take them. Nothing comes close for warmth.

 Following the same idiotic optimism I wore thin socks and my lightest trainers. So my feet became steadily colder. Without any means to alter the situation. It's not as if  don't have masses of room in the panniers. I took a spare jumper and warmer, medieval cycling cap but didn't really need the jumper. I should have changed caps but didn't want to stop just for that. After a while I forgot I had it with me.

 I wore a pair of thin, stretchy trousers over padded DHB racing shorts. Probably ten years old by now. I had decided to leave the tights off today. So I stayed comfortably seated until about 50km. Then became progressively more saddle sore. Pee stops helped to relieve the discomfort. Since they gave me a break from sitting on the B67. The tights must increase friction by adding more layers.  

 I chewed my way way through four micro Korny bars, but didn't touch the mini apple juice cartons. I saw loads of birds of prey. A buzzard circling over every copse and wood. Plovers having an aerial scrap. Perhaps a courtship routine? Whooper swans nestling beside many flooded fields. A jay flying ahead of me until it veered off. Kestrels hovering.

 15.00 Lunch over. I have the greenhouse door and internal windows open to warm the house but it isn't helping much. Or is very slow. 64F to start in the room but only 65F after half an hour. [18C] While the kitchen has risen from 63F to 68F. [17-20C] 

 I must have got colder than I realised. I am suddenly feeling really cold. So l put on on a jumper and fleece jacket. Plus a warm cap and thick socks. I can't have my afternoon nap in my warm bed because I am full of lunch! I have changed into thermal tights and fleece trousers. Still feeling cold.

 18.00 I waited until after 17.00 for a nap. Felt much better afterwards.

 Dinner was fish fingers and chips with peas. It was that. Or [more] toast! 

 

 ~o~