18.12.2022 Whoooooops!!!!!!!!!!

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 Sunday 18th -1C/30F. Up at 6am. Lower back hurting. Upstairs 13C/55F, lounge 11C/52F, kitchen 10C/50F, bathroom 7C/45. Freezer -5C/23F. 

Token winter scene. Not my house!
  Phone image [resized.] 

 7am Lit the stove. There are green flames coming from the firewood. Commercial split beech logs. Green is copper. Why would there be copper in firewood?  

 Had a long and useful chat on WhatsApp with my British friend. He continues to update my smartphone and computer use. His familiarity with tech is immensely helpful. It is highly unlikely I would stumble across many of his invaluable upgrades.

 10.30 Back from a walk to the lanes. I was much too warm in my poshest [ex-charity shop] down jacket. The roads were clear but the verges remain deep in snow. The first bird I saw was probably a harrier. 

 I am now using my new phone for photography instead of the Lumix TZ7. Again, there is  steep leaning curve. Guess who took a load of burst shots of the same scene? Best of three? The phone does burst exposures by default. A simple tap is all that is required. Deliberate [camera style] presses easily lead to a dozen images! Whoops!!!!

 The hosts of yesterday's neighbourhood party came around with their lovely little dogs. I couldn't offer them coffee because the Coop has run out their own coffee! I was in the middle of trimming my beard when the dogs came dashing along the drive in veiled but still blinding sunshine. I'm afraid I was beginning to look like Father Xmas. Which put me at severe risk of being accosted by young ladies demanding a pony for Xmas! Or elderly men demanding a PS7.5 with menaces. Or whatever.

 My progress in accustoming myself to being a mobile phone [ab]user is gathering pace. I am going to ask [the real] Santa for one of those special pens with a rubber pointy bit [technical term] on one end. For even faster one finger typing but without so many typos! 75-years-old is probably pushing it a bit, for developing tools, but needs must. 

I have just seen my blog on a phone for the first time. I even managed to bookmark it. It can be shrunk and squashed even in landscape mode. Which is useful in avoiding a microscope to read the text. Hmm. I still think I prefer my 28" PC monitor. 

 The freezer in the fridge has sunk from yesterday's high of -5C to a more comfortable -18C. I feared for the contents as temperatures soared in the ice box. My ]supposedly] frozen bread was almost soft last night. I was contemplating having to eat half a kilo of oven ready chips and 10 fish fingers at one sitting. And I kid you not! 😋

 Dinner was chips, peas and only 5 fish fingers.

 I just caught up with two day's worth of washing up. I cut my little finger on a tin. So I had to search for the only rubber gloves I could get over my large hands. The gloves were so tight I may never walk quite the same way again. 

 The recidivist fridge is going to be moved into the corner opposite the preparation area. It should be slightly warmer there. The door to the front hall will obscure it when it is wide open in the summer. Not a major problem and there is plenty of clearance and new electrical sockets installed.

 The fridge could easily be moved back to where it was behind the door to the rear entrance hall. When want to leave all the internal doors open. Moving the fridge will free up the wider area at the far end of the kitchen. Where there is an alcove stealing space from the bathroom. 

 Just had a first WhatsApp chat to catch up with my eldest sister in the UK. They have quite a crowd there for Christmas. We'll chat again tomorrow. It's good to keep in touch. 

 She and her husband visited me in the summer in their camper van. Which saved me having to find beds for them. When the house was an even worse tip than it is now!

 Wide angle image captured by the phone by artificial light. Deformed in PhotoFiltre 7 to [almost] straighten the verticals, rotated clockwise by 1º and then cropped.

  I moved the fridge-freezer and the mini-oven to their new position in the corner. The fridge door is so much more convenient opening to the room. Instead of blocking access. I would much prefer the freezer on the bottom. With the fridge at the top. The dresser bottom half is temporary. When complete, it won't fit under the exposed larder shelves above.

 The mini-oven is very convenient at this height. Saving ducking down to peer into the darkness within. The light is much better in that corner than at the other end of the room. The old, yellow wallpaper is going to be stripped. Then the internal walls patched up, where needed and painted white. The outside wall [behind the camera] badly need insulation.

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