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I keep thinking about the everyday things and am tormented by flashbacks to the past. Lighting the open fire as the only heat in the entire house when we were children. Ice on the living room windows. So hard you couldn't draw or even scrape letters with a fingernail. Going to bed to an ice cold bed and bedroom. First step outside in the morning. Where it was so cold that it hurt my nose and lungs so badly that my eyes streamed.
Walking to school in the snow. Where the hard crust made my bare knees bleed on the way. So that female members of staff rescued me from the psychopathic "Bird's Nest" Carr. A teacher [loose term] who's life's work was to [leather] strap the hand of any small child. Who was even seconds late on arrival.
Painful snow packed inside my tiny Wellington boots within yards of any journey. Shorts were compulsory until one was around fourteen years old back then. Third year in the senior school if I remember clearly, but don't.
I was a tiny child until I started cycling. Then put on a late spurt denied me for years. Alas too late to have avoided a decade of bullying. The two scourges of my last senior school both went straight to jail. Natural justice had certainly found one of them. I came across my worst bully in a local pub. He was a drug addict and alcoholic by then and looked as if he had only days to live. The walking dead. Half a century before his time.
Only a short walk this morning. I need to shower before I leave. Blowing hard! I lit the stove and it is going well.
13.15 Home again after a morning of literally hard labour. We drove to town. To dig up massive paving slabs. For laying in the machine house extension at the farm museum. Concrete slabs 60x60x7cm. Or roughly 24x24x3". Each weighing approximately 56kg!
The slabs had been lying in/on the ground for decades. So were well bedded in. With plants and weeds growing over many of them. One person lifted each slab slightly with a shovel. Far enough for the next helper to get a hand under them. To lift each one upright. So they could be wheeled away on sack trucks.
120 of these slabs were stacked onto pallets in the car park. Twelve pallets with ten slabs on each. Ready for a lorry with a crane to come and collect them later.
Somewhat ironically, the place were were working was a garden centre. Where my wife and I worked briefly. When we first came to Denmark. We visited the garden centre repeatedly over the next two decades. The garden centre is closing down. The extensive grounds are to be redeveloped into light industrial units.
17.00 I have completed the last of the tile grouting in the hall. It needs to be left for a while before I start wiping away the excess with a damp sponge.
17.50 The tiles have been wiped clean several times with fresh water. While repeatedly squeezing out the sponge. A thin, grey film will be left on the tiles but that can easily be removed later.
18.00 45F/7C with south-easterly gales. Though I can't hear anything indoors. Probably thanks to the new window. Dinner is calling for my attention. I am thinking of boiled potatoes and cod in batter with organic, frozen peas. Or oven ready chips and cod in batter. Again with peas.
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