~o~
A perfect day for a ride? This is a far more important question than mere escape form my chores. I have already noticed I am becoming depressed and apathetic. Autumn is already handing over the darker nights and shorter days to winter. Clearly visible in the mess I am leaving both indoors and out. Unfinished projects are backing up. Lethargy is creeping in.
Getting out on my bike is important therapy. No dark glasses against the blinding, low sun either. This is why my walk is so important to me. Exposure to daylight is vital. I could never get my wife to go for a walk. Her vintage bike hadn't been ridden in decades.
Up at 7.15 after a busy night. Saved by dropping off again. After the dustbin lorry lit the room with its blinking, orange lights around 5am.
I must concentrate on closing off the gap around the bedroom window. The new window was a meter square. Which I inset three years ago into a much larger and wider "picture" window opening. I covered the rockwool around the new window with tar paper. Simply stapled into place but never covered and protected. It slowly became [very] untidy over the passing years. Not helped by birds looking for nesting sites.
Now I am determined to finish the job but to do it properly this time. With grooved exterior plywood cladding. To hide and protect the newly fixed paper. I am using my Japanese tripod ladders. To reach the area on the 1st floor of the eastern, gable end. Simply rested against the building.
The very wide bases, metal feet and doubled rungs. Provide stability and safety ordinary ladders can only squint at. I have fallen off enough ladders over the years. To know the very real dangers. If I fell off here, on the end of the long, rural drive. Nobody would find me for ages.
8.45 Time for my walk. Smoke from a house on the road is drifting low for hundreds of meters. Through the trees and out across the fields in no detectable wind.
9.10 Back again. It was much chillier today. More lorries than cars. The stink of agricultural, muck spreading hung on the air. A small seaplane went over. I don't think I have ever seen one in flight before today.
The black kite flew through the trees and quickly out of sight. The neighbours' horses were standing in deep shadow of their vast building. With their heads bowed. They looked up and fidgeted as I approached. I was nearly taken out by a speeding lorry. On the blind bend at the end of the drive. If they drove within their safe braking distance the roads would be much quieter.
YouTube had a video on government plans to end vintage cars on the UK roads.
12.40 Back from a 29km ride. I visited a builder's merchant looking for aluminium profiles. To protect the window from rain running down the facade. The nearby supermarket wasn't offering discounts on my usual marmalade. Far from it! They had raised the price to a ridiculous level. I'll have to find an alternative. I won't encourage their daylight robbery! later I passed two tractors spraying roadside fields. Another field had a stationary shit container and pump. With a huge hose snaking over the brow of the hill.
I rode back along the quiet lanes. Then decided to take a short cut through the forest. Where I have walked hundreds of times. I was suddenly struck by nostalgia and melancholy. Because I hadn't been back there since my wife died. It was much later than my habitual morning walks. So the blazing sun was in completely the wrong direction.
I had better drive into town. To collect a sheet of cladding plywood.
15.20 Returning from town with the plywood in the trailer.
Dinner was cheese on toast. No tomatoes again. So I added half a tin of tomato soup. To make a proper meal.
~o~
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