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Sunday 15th 23F/-5C. Overcast but another cold, sunny day is promised. 59F/ 15C in the room. 36F/2.2C in the heavily frosted greenhouse. I'll have to light the stove. Using chestnut logs. I am pre-drying them on top of the stove. It is clad in soapstone so isn't a fire risk. I didn't keep the stove alight overnight due to a lack of fuel.
Up at 7.30 after a typical night. I woke from another dream about wandering another city I didn't know. Trying to find my way back. Presumably to my parked car. A familiar subject matter. Incredibly detailed. Even the "extras" in the dream had characters, relationships and moods.
It must all have been imagination and often completely illogical. Or completely at odds with reality. It seemed every place, surface and item had texture and meaning. I was even discussing tools I had just found with my late wife. They say that dreams are sifting through memories. Perhaps to sort, or to discard overfull memory banks. Where they no longer have value.
Perhaps these dreams are suggestive of dementia? I seem able to remember far more images of my childhood as time passes. Often just random glimpses in picture form. If this were true, then I must, quite literally, have remembered everything which has ever happened to me. Albeit at random in usually involuntary flashes of incredible detail.
Which is ironic given my appalling memory. Sitting in exams and not being able to remember the simplest of things. A whole lifetime of collecting hundreds of text books. Just to remember Pythagoras Theorem. I tried to write in my youth but couldn't remember my own character's names!
Being sent to buy salmon and coming back with spam. With a completely blank memory of the sole purpose of my trip to the local shop. Until I started writing full lists. Otherwise I would stand in the shop or supermarket without a clue what I was supposed to buy.
More recently I can move freely through the village supermarket and pick items on my way purely by habit. Which probably explains my lack of imagination when it comes to diet. Even then I am often leaving my basket by the checkout. To fetch the vitally important item I had walked blindly past twice or three times.
Intelligence and creativity, without a functioning memory, is a torment. It often feels as if everything I do has to be reinvented from scratch. Every single time. I spend countless hours rehearsing what I'll do or say. Then completely forget everything in the meantime. Yet I am fairly good at remembering places. Though never by name. A lifetime of fascination/obsession with astronomy. Yet unable to reliably recognize more than three constellations. Or the dimensions of the members of the Solar System. It's no wonder I made observatories and telescopes instead.
9.00 It is brightening. Blue sky visible. The chestnut logs seem to be burning well. Even without the pre-heating. That's a relief! I can go for a walk now. No point in coming back to a cold stove and colder house!
9.30 27F/-3C. Back from my walk. Just a loop of the neighbours' drives. Bright sunshine with a cold breeze. Still only 59F/15C in the room.
10.30 I am going to try and clear a path along the drive. So the car can reach the main drive. Where the snow has been flattened by vehicles coming and going. Except for the junction. Where is all ploughed up by somebody reversing into my section of drive.
10.50 29F/-2C. Bright sunshine. I have made a track on one side. Just under 100m. Using a large plastic snow shovel. Taking the snow down to about 5cm from at least 15cm. The snow is crunchy and becomes stiffer the deeper I go. Now I am completely breathless.
I may be able to use another tool to reach the ground beneath the snow. A garden rake? That will warm the ground in the sunshine and help the snow to thaw. Despite the frost. My breathlessness has already passed. So I'll go out and work on the other side of the drive in a minute or two.
11.40 A second path is cleared. The snow was even stiffer than the other side of the drive. I am not only breathless again but my wrist is hurting. It is also blowing a gale! My eyes are watering and it is freezing. The wind has gone more southerly. So it is blowing straight down the drive.
So I went to the other end and worked with my back to it. At least I didn't get hot. I'd like to clear more snow in the middle of the drive. If I have the strength. That would help to accelerate the thaw. It is very heavy work. With the snow lifting as slabs. Rather than powder. I need a rest before I do any more. The parking area is still covered to a depth of between 15 and 20cm.
I keep hearing sirens. I hope it isn't unfit people having strokes and heart attacks while clearing snow!
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