1st October 2023. Dome, free to collector.

 

 ~o~

  Sunday 1st 2023. Showers possible. Up at 6.15.

 The news is that some diesel car owners will be banned from. Or fined, for entering certain areas of major European cities. Including Denmark's cities. Some of these older cars can be retrofitted with particle filters but not all. The expense is ridiculous! 

 Remember when diesel cars were being promoted and subsidised by governments via lower taxes and fuel prices? Anybody would think the EU was a Communist Dictatorship! Couldn't organise a piss-up in a brewery!

8.00. I had better go for a walk!

8.40 I made it to my turning point and returned. It was miserably grey, slightly cool and boring. At least my back stopped hurting. 

 The morning was spent trying to publicise my 4.3m, home made, observatory dome, as widely as possible. For removal free of charge. If I charge anything it might intimidate somebody from collecting it. Or make a new owner think I owe them something. Because they lack the skill to finish the project. 

 Nearly eighteen months after my wife's death I still cannot summon up the inspiration. To continue with the project. Or even astronomy in general. It just reminds me of my wife being indoors. Suffering in silence. While I played with my expensive toys outside in the sunshine.

 Unknown to me, she lay in agony on the cold, kitchen floor, after a fall. While I captured images of the sun and chatted online. It took hours to get her onto something warm. Though I quickly covered her in down duvets. 

 Her face was contorted with pain every time I tried to lift or even move her. She was lying with her head in the corner when I found her. I needed to get her turned around and onto something warm. It was late March and the kitchen was largely unheated. The floor must have felt like ice! She had no idea how long she had lain there but was in obvious pain.

I used her fall as a final, desperate lever to get the doctor involved. Against her wishes. She was diagnosed only days later and dead in under two weeks. From untreatable cancer. She had kept it all to herself. Until it was much too late. 

 I kept asking her to see the doctor as she lost weight, but she would not. I would ring the doctor from the car and weep into the phone. Desperately keeping it a secret from her. To avoid her getting angry with me again. She was still in complete denial. Until the nightmare of going into hospital. With worse to follow on being completely abandoned. The weekend after checking herself out. To escape from their torment.

 16.45 I have just returned from visiting my friend. Where I drove in the Morris Minor. Which I am now, slowly getting used to. 

 Dinner was chips and a fish pastie. I had to bake the pastie for an extra 10 minutes. It came out white after 20 minutes in the mini oven. The chips were close to being overdone after 20 minutes. The oven is not getting hot enough. Except directly under the grill.

~o~