AUGUST, on reflection

Not sure how I’ve ended up working another Bank Holiday Monday, but there we are. Should be quite quiet, and I get Thursday and Friday off in lieu, so we can have a nice long family weekend next week.

Hard to believe we’re on the eve of September already. I know it’s a recurring theme of this blog that I get overwhelmed by the incessant passing of time, so I shan’t bore you with it again. But, really, eight months gone in 2020 already???

On a good note, we’re two-thirds of the way through the year and I’ve already posted 181 separate posts (including this one). That means, if I keep up this rate of writing for the rest of the year, I’ll have posted 270+ times by the end of December, thereby shattering my previous record and setting a mark that I will probably never get near again.

 

I have a few self-set targets to aim for as we steam our way into Autumn. I have every intention of doing a BBQ at least once a month, regardless of warmth or weather conditions. I want to keep up my cycling, to keep up my fitness, and will be trying to go out twice a week at least. I’d like to do more, but with my work hours basically taking up the entirety of our Winter daylight, that’s not something I think I can sustain, so I’m being realistic for a change and aiming for twice a week. I would also like to find something new to study. I keep dipping back into the Bible, and I’m still wrangling with the harmonica, but I feel like really studying something – by which I mean, getting an official qualification in it. My long-term plan is still to commence a teacher training year in September 2021, and I think it will be good preparation for the studies ahead to be committing myself to learning something new this Autumn.

And finally, I am intending to let the rest of the year pass without getting stuck in my own insanity. There may be another lockdown, there may be another pregnancy, there will certainly be darker evenings, but I want to try and just deal with it all as it happens, and not propel myself into panic by trying to prepare for it all.  I crave an acceptance of my daily situation, and the ability to navigate it calmly.

RC 31-8-20

How I Spent My Rainy Saturday

These are the movies I watched yesterday, and my thoughts on them:

 

GRAVITY – It is still one of the few regrets I have in life, that I did not go and see this movie in a cinema. Good to watch it again anyway, and the story itself (when you are not being distracted by the effects) is not as bad as I had remembered it to be.

 

THE MERCY – Director James Marsh followed up ‘The Theory of Everything’ with this, another true-life account of a British man. Colin Firth stars as Donald Crowhurst, perpetrator of one of the most audacious hoaxes of the 1960s – claiming to be sailing round the world while in reality drifting hopelessly around the Atlantic, falsifying daily reports and slowly going crazy. It’s not a brilliant film, but it’s a fascinating story if you decide to do a bit of your own research. I also have a suspicion that Mr Firth may have been genuinely seasick during some of the at-sea filming, as there are scenes where he almost looks as green as Kermit.

RC 30-8-20

So much for Summer

I have to say that this week has not exactly felt like the end of August. As I type this, there is driving drizzle slamming into our kitchen window, and I can see the trees in our neighbour’s garden waving jauntily in the wind. There is a distinct Wintry feel to the outside world and I must confess I am tempted to turn our heating on. It’s a day to stay indoors, play with your children, eat lots of food and watch a movie or two.

RC 29-8-20

Drum, cycle, game, repeat

I’ve been trying to find a new hobby to obsess about, but I think I should concentrate instead on the ones I already have and try to get better at them. Yes – Winter in Britain is a long and painful slog through darkness and it’s good to have distractions, but I already have lots to keep me occupied. Mathew is getting more and more active and requires more and more interaction. Virus-permitting, the NFL season kicks off in two weeks, so I’ll be spending lots of time watching live games, listening to podcasts and indulging myself in statistics. Hopefully, we’ll be able to do lots of weekend visits to family members and friends (which was sorely missed during lockdown). All that stuff is good, but they’re all things that I used to feel guilty about doing and enjoying. This year has taught me the lesson that the voice inside me that says ‘You shouldn’t be doing THIS, you SHOULD be doing something else; something productive or work-related’ is a voice that needs to be ignored.

RC 27-8-20

The new Plague, Inc?

I don’t say this very often, but today was a really fun day at work.

Myself and several of my same-level colleagues were asked to have an afternoon virtual get-together, to swap ideas for upcoming ‘keymark dates’ and to brainstorm ways to make Those Above Us and their shareholders yet more money. Personally, I’d like to see the back of the Summer holidays before having to think about Hallowe’en and Christmas, but there we are…

Anyway, by way of protest, or simply through sheer laziness, or maybe because we’re all childish, we spent 80% of the time playing an online game. We were unsupervised, because Head Office decided ‘leaving you to converse without input from us will, we believe, bring a more open-minded honesty to the discussion and ultimately benefit the company forthwith’. They probably couldn’t be bothered, quite frankly, and had chosen to spend the day changing their hair colour or furthering their knowledge of local spas or wineries. Either way, they left us to get on with it, so we ended up ignoring what we were supposed to be doing and played a really fun game called “CODENAMES” instead. It’s quite hard to describe, but basically you have two teams working against each other. There are a list of ‘code words’ onscreen, half of which belong to one team and half of which apply to the others. Each team has one ‘Spy Master’ who knows which words are applicable to their team, and their job is to help them guess which they are by giving them a one-word clue that links two or more of the words. I feel as if I’ve lost the thread there a bit in explaining it, so I would urge you to look it up yourselves because there are lots of explanatory videos available, and long YouTube clips of American gamers playing it. (I know because I spent the rest of the day, post-meeting, watching them).

We had a blast. We swapped around a lot, but I think the team I was on won at least as many times as it lost, and I will forever be proud of myself for using the word POTTER to link the words PHOENIX and STONE. Unfortunately, my teammates were not on my wavelength and we lost that game.  But still…

I have already suggested we have a game with Ted and Beryl’s various offsprings, instead of another Zoom quiz, and I thoroughly intend to put the board game version on my Christmas/birthday list.  In the meantime, my fellow sub-division-under-managers and I are planning to have a weekly game every Tuesday afternoon for the foreseeable future. We see it as a team-building exercise, a great way to bond between different workplaces, and a necessary break from the drudgery of our daily tasks. Well - that’s what we plan to say when Head Office get a flag up from their IT department and find out how we’ve been spending our ‘Meeting’ time….

RC 25-8-20

Too far forward?

I have found myself thinking about Christmas today.

I’m not sure why. Probably because we’re a week away from the end of this month, and it’s normally the early part of September when our higher-ups in the company start hassling us to put maximum December profits at the top of our thought processes.  Might also be down to the fact that I looked at my on-desk calendar and realised that 4 months from today will be Christmas Eve. It gave me, I must confess, a weird unexpected rush of excitement. The thought of the date itself gave rise to some of the feelings I experience on that most-enjoyable day of every year.

But should I be looking ahead to it already?

What is lacking in my life today, on this quiet Monday, that forces me to forecast into the future and anticipate niceness and contentment?

Maybe I’m overthinking it there, but I do feel rather lacking of in-the-moment serenity and joy. Being stuck in my little office dealing with dozens of Head Office e-mails, staffing issues and constantly-crashing ordering software is giving me a bit of an irritated wick. So projecting to the Yuletide season and imagining another great collection of offspring birthday, wedding anniversary and family get-togethers is lightening my mood and tickling my soul.

If 2020 has taught us one thing, however, it is that planning ahead and expecting things to be the same as before are really bad moves. And maybe that’s why I’m thinking about it. We just don’t know what sort of state we’ll all be in when Winter comes winging around. There could be local lockdowns aplenty, there could be less restrictions, there could be a National Curfew in place, or any combination of weird regulations sitting somewhere in between those three scenarios. We just don’t know. But we WANT to know. We want to turn our backs on this weird year of shiteness and feel comfort in the fact that Christmas will be just what Christmas always is – a time of love, hugs, family and giving; not a time of avoiding, distancing, coughing and Zoom.

 

Actually – forget all that shit I just typed. I think the reason I’m thinking about Christmas is simply this: I noticed last night that I had to close our curtains and turn our lights on by 8.30pm. That to me is a sign that Summer is running away from us and the dark nights are closing in quick. I frigging hate the lack of sunlight in Winter, and I’m already seeing the blackness closing in around me. The only highlight/respite from all that depressing dark is the spinkly, tinkly weeks around Xmas. So, in my head, I am already reaching for that far-flung island of brightly-coloured, beautifully-wrapped festivity and trying to ignore the swollen sea of Winter that we are inexorably sailing into.

 

God, it’s hard being me sometimes.

RC 24-8-20

Shig and Shizzle - Aug two-thirds gone already?

God, my life is weird.

Working today, but only until 4pm. Been quite quiet onsite really. I’m covering one of my employees who has a family wedding, but I’m also extra-manager on-call for the store, so if anyone drops dead or someone turns up with a knife and threatens the girl in the tobacco booth (for example) I have to drop everything and rush over. Which is ridiculous, because then I would be leaving the garage understaffed, which is the very scenario I’m here to help avoid in the first place, but this is a company that will very quickly take advantage of a situation if it saves them a few quid. ‘What’s that you say? Rory is onsite already? Well – goodio – if we bend our own rules, he can fill two roles and we’re covered without paying another wage! Hurrah! Pass me another expensive bottle of water to celebrate with and let’s all pat ourselves on our management backs!’

Anyway – by distracting myself with that waffle, I have now forgotten what it was that I was finding so weird about my life, that I wanted to write about.

Which shows you just how weird I am.

RC 22-8-20

A day of different dickwads

Today has been a festering shit of steamy turd-based arseholery.

I know that sentence makes no sense, but I was trying to express my frustration and anger without using the words f*** or c***.

Sometimes, unfortunately, there just aren’t enough swearwords in existence to allow you to say how you feel.

But you know what? I’m going to leave all that there and make myself change the subject. The world is a wonderful place, and it’s full of beautiful people, and I don’t need to drag myself down by climbing in a pool with the gittiest.

 

So let me tell you instead that I have spoken to our delightful GP, and feel better for it. He allayed my fears about the needs for invasive investigations while convincing me I need to be careful, and I now feel prepared without being patronised, and wary without being worried.

Most of the conversation was about my least favourite word of all time “stress”. He pointed out that many symptoms of digestive problems surface during times of emotional upheaval or a heavy workload. Once I told him I had been working throughout the lockdown, coping with constantly changing parameters and dealing with a daily altering workforce, he smiled (it was a video call consultation) and suggested we may have found the root of the issue. I found it confusing that I had no real problems during the months of March to July, and that I had recently had a very relaxing week off, but he said that was an indicator that we were on the right track, not a point of confusion. Often, said he, you don’t realise how strung out you are until you have a break, and the fact that this has all kicked off since my return to my role is almost certainly a big clue.

So, we talked a bit about finding ways to switch off, and it may be that smashing the hell out of a drumkit twice a week might not be as beneficial as a quiet walk in the country or some yoga. I agreed to keep a food diary, and a sleep diary and a diary of my bowel movements (yummy!) and we’re speaking again next week.

And the strange thing is, my appetite has come back this evening, and the good thing is that Philippa has stopped looking at me like I might be terminally ill.

RC 20-8-20

I Feel Bullied

Philippa is insisting I go to the doctors tomorrow. She is worried my ‘weird weakness’ is a sign of some horrible disease that is festering away in my innards and she wants me to get it checked out. I’m not particularly enamoured with the idea of having my intestinal tract visited by various specialists, so I’d like to give it a few days for my body to right itself and recover. Philippa does not see this as a good idea. She threw a list of rapidly-researched autoimmune conditions at me, citing the dangers of having an ‘underlying condition’ in these present times, where coronavirus is still active in society and the risks of an early death are enhanced by other undiagnosed problems. That was a real shame, because we’d actually gone a few days without Covid19 being mentioned, and I for one was enjoying that.

Anyway, we reached a compromise of sorts where I agreed to call the surgery for an over-the-phone consultation, and she agreed to leave the subject alone for the rest of the evening.

Now I’m just hoping to wake up feeing fine, so the whole sorry thing can be forgotten.

RC 19-8-20

2140 BST

I Feel Weak

Not been an enjoyable week so far, all told.

After the unpleasantness of Monday’s ‘acid bowel’ scenario, I decided to eat as little as possible yesterday, hoping I could flush out whatever toxins, additives or viruses might be causing my abdominal discomfort. So I had a dish of ‘melon medley’ for breakfast (a pre-packed side order of chunks of four different types of melon, available from our ‘Deli To Go’ aisle in the supermarket), nothing for lunch, then a simple chicken salad for tea. I also drank roughly 14 litres of water throughout the course of the day.

I slept well last night, but today I feel as if I’m at the tail-end of a three-day sickness and diarrhoea bug. I have no energy, I’m exhausted and I’m more washed-out than a sock that’s been lodged in a washing machine drum and has been through 64 spin cycles.  That’s my way of saying I feel empty and eviscerated.

I don’t know what to do for the best now. Keep it going to try and give my system a reboot, or go straight back onto the carbs and protein intake I usually get through and see how my body responds? I feel simultaneously nauseous and hungry and my underfed mind is confusing me. I might just go for some simple eggs on toast and wait for some kind of reaction.

RC 19-8-20

Watermelon enema

I have been passing the time by putting two random words together into internet search engines and seeing what pops up…

 

‘Watermelon enema’ sounded such a brilliant phrase, so I started with that. Nothing about it exists online, but there is an EP called ‘Melon Enema’ by a band called ‘Eat Me’. I had a listen, and it’s not great. Quite punky, but not brilliantly produced.

‘Dinosaur catheter’ just brings up a list of NHS info leaflets about living with a urinary catheter. (Which in itself sounds like a bizarre set-up for a sitcom – “When Jack advertised for a room-mate, he didn’t expect this! Join us for ‘Living With A Urinary Catheter’ Fridays on Channel 4. It’s like The Odd Couple meets Scrubs”)

‘Cummerbund repartee’ took me to a specialist website that can provide official matching cummerbunds and bowties for any known regiment in the armed forces.

And ‘Culinary aftershock’ just gave me loads of information about an online game called RuneScape.

 

So I have learned nothing of any interest or benefit, but I have at least wasted 4 hours that I’m getting paid for.

RC 18-8-20

Another week, another worry

I’m not sure what I ate yesterday that has disagreed with me, but this morning I rather feel like someone has lit a bonfire in my bowels. Normally, digestion happens without us being aware of it, but today I can actually feel stuff moving through my lower intestine, and every bit of it feels like broken glass. I should probably speak to a doctor, but I’m a British man in his thirties so obviously that won’t happen. I’ll suffer in silence, expect it to get better on its own, refuse to ‘bother the medical profession with my insignificant ailments’ and then moan like hell when it worsens.

 

I just did something I normally never do, and normally criticise other people for doing, and I’ve used an online ‘symptom checker’ to try and ascertain what the problem is. I was honest about my age, gender and typical daily diet, and it has come up with a list of possible causes including prostitis, ulcerative colitis and a perforated colon.

Then I did a fart that sounded like a hippo exploding underwater, and suddenly I don’t feel so bad.

RC 17-8-20

I Love A Good Storm (a poem)

The Heat breaks

Water pours from the sky

Respite from the clammy nights

 

Flashes and bangs

Cats yelp and panic

Horses rear up and rampage

Small dogs cower

 

Solid ground holds firm

Rainfall pools and torrents

Hard soil refuses to yield

Rivers arrive on roadways

 

A month’s rain in an hour

Enough electric to power a town

Enormous city-sized clouds

All last no more than an hour

 

The calm behind

Atmosphere fizzling with aftermath

Summer blasted away

RC 14-8-20

Thursday the Thirteenth

Yesterday’s blog was exactly 250 words in length. That gave me quite an erection, I must be honest. It wasn’t planned, it just happened, and I just happened to check what the word count was, and it was thrilling. But then I decided to add Ted’s quote in, and that took it up to 296. So even when life goes unexpectedly well for me, I find a way to sabotage it.

In less word-perverse news, Philippa is not interested in my idea to fly abroad somewhere for a cheap, few-days-in-the-Sun, possibly-scuppered-by-Covid holiday break in a couple of months’ time. I did say it might make us both more relaxed and therefore far more likely to conceive again, so who knows – she may be persuaded. But for now, she seems to think I might as well suggest going to volunteer in a respirator unit at a hospital and not wearing any PPE. She gave me a look that said “Do you WANT to kill our whole family?”

I suppose I can understand her reticence. Two weeks ago I was reiterating my desire to be as socially distanced as possible from as much of society as possible, preaching that over-cautious is better than nonchalant, and now here I am trying to drag her abroad to a potential coronavirus Hot Zone where we might end up getting quarantined and spending God knows how many thousands getting home again.

But still – a holiday would be nice, right?

RC 13-8-20

Midweek catch-up foursome

I was very sensible last night and refused to give into my urges to gorge on something, but this morning I deliberately avoided breakfast, so that I would have an excuse to order a nice sausage and scrambled egg bap from the staff canteen.

So I guess I still have some work to do on the mental side of weight control.

 

In other things to think about, I’m still finding it very hard to get back into the work mode I was in during lockdown. The extra challenges and changes really had me buzzing, but then I had some time off, and now I really feel like I can’t be arsed at all.

I guess the heat doesn’t help. We Caucasian, Northern-Hemisphere, British folk aren’t used to moving around in thirty degrees Celsius. As soon as we have a proper Summer we start overheating and shutting down. Out internal thermometers tell us we’re far too hot to be working, or moving, or thinking, and our brains react by slowing us down to the energy levels of a comatose sloth.

 

I am seriously looking at booking us another holiday. There are bargains to be had. It’s risky, because I’m thinking about October, and it’s impossible to know which areas of which countries will be quarantined, or in local lockdown, or under any other kind of restriction you might wish to give a name to, but still. Three hundred Euros for a four-night stay in Southern Spain? Tempting, to say the least.

 

A quote from Ted, about this year’s World Snooker Championship, that I don’t understand, but which may be amusing to fans of snooker:

“I can’t stand watching Mark Selby play. It’s so safe and boring. He spends more time on the table than my favourite fork.”

RC 12-8-20

Using the oven? Are you mad?

I came home from another balls-deep-in-sweat day at work to find Philippa cooking a lasagne in our kitchen.

Jesus, that woman makes some bad decisions sometimes.

The kitchen was hotter than a Saharan sauna.

I retreated into the bathroom and stood beneath a cooling shower, washing off the dust and debris of another shift. (Metaphorically speaking, of course, it’s not as if one gets covered in grime while sitting in an air-conditioned office planning staff rotas.) The food, I have to say, was delicious. I’ve always been a fan of Italian food, but cut back on it back in my ‘losing weight and eating well’ phase. The Mediterranean diet is supposed to be the healthiest, but not when you attack it the way I did. Pasta dishes are already full of carbohydrates, you don’t need to have garlic bread as a side dish, especially a whole stick of it that is supposed to feed eight people.

Ah, memories.

These days I try and maintain better control over my food portions. Sometimes I succeed, sometimes I fail, but at least every waking moment isn’t an onslaught of poor-quality snack shit into my intestines, the way it used to be back in my early twenties. I’d rather have a piece of fruit than a biscuit or chocolate bar (most of the time) and I stick very carefully to set meal times, not allowing myself to graze all day.

Having said all that – I ate a ridiculous amount at teatime tonight, and yet all this typing about food has made me peckish….

RC 11-8-20

I could fry an egg on my buttocks

Hot today, no?

I feel far too sweaty, clammy, uncomfortable, confused, exhausted, overheated and weary to compose a long, considered blog posting. I’m not complaining, by the way, I’m loving it. I don’t see how I can moan about being cold and depressed in February, then moan again about being too warm in August. I know I’m British, but I still refuse to act like it. I get sick of people who sound like Goldilocks when it comes to our climate – constantly bitching that ‘it’s too hot’, ‘if only it were TWO DEGREES cooler’, ‘I like snow, but not snow that lays on the ground, that annoys me’. Shut up and deal with it or emigrate.

RC 10-8-20

Confusingly confused

I probably shouldn’t confess this on here, but I’ll have to work on the assumption that none of you will pass this onto my bosses: It had been my intention to resign by now. Over the Winter, Philippa and I had another chat about my situation, and my future, and whether it was getting to the stage that I should think of a career I wanted to pursue, rather than settling for the one I’ve accidentally landed in. Sorry – quite a lot to digest there. I’ve given you, in one sentence, the dotted highlights of about three weeks’ worth of conversations.

Anyway, the bottom line was, and is, that the idea of teaching has never really left me, ever since I first looked into it years ago. Philippa had always said she was happy to be the main breadwinner for a year while I did the necessary training and qualifications, but then she got pregnant and became a mum. So I just carried on doing what I was doing. My job position changed, of course. I ended up with more responsibilities, and more money, while bizarrely getting nicer hours, and it just all worked so well. But, as I’m sure you’ve noticed now-and-then with the way I write about my employers, I haven’t exactly been as happy as a pig in a blanket all the time.

So – to cut a long story short – I was going to make the jump this year. Give up the position at the garages and launch myself down the road towards becoming “Mr Chesworth” in a classroom.

Then coronavirus happened, and everything went a bit skewish.

I don’t want to use it as an excuse, but everything was so uncertain and unusual that the idea of turning my life upside-down while also working full-time through a never-before-encountered worldwide scenario seemed ludicrous and terrifying. So, again, I have just carried on doing what I’m doing.

And now it’s August.

Part of me is relieved it’s too late to set it in motion now; part of me is disappointed I didn’t see the plan through. But either way – it is what it is, and I am where I am, and I will be for at least another year. Hopefully, by next early Spring, we’ll know where we are with this ‘fun virus thing’ and I might be able to crack on. Whatever happens, children will still need to be educated, and teachers will still be retiring every year, so there will still be a need for new people, right?

My only fear is that the longer this goes on, the more likely I am to settle for what I have; to get stuck in that rut that people either dread or accept. I have never wanted to wake up at sixty and realise I have spent my life doing something I despise, just to earn money that I didn’t spent wisely anyway. But let’s not dwell on that now. Let’s also try not to think about how plans and attitudes might change if Philippa falls pregnant in the next 9 months or so. She is dead keen on Mathew having a sibling, and doesn’t want to leave it too long, so there isn’t a big age gap between them. But if she is back on maternity leave, how can I possibly consider chucking in my job to re-train, and how would I be able to dedicate enough time to the coursework with another baby in the house?  I’m trying not to slip back into pessimistic thinking, but it may be that this year was the only chance I had to do this, and it’s passed me by in a corona-powered whirlwind of distraction.

Oh, well. What will be will be, and I feel much better for typing all that shit out rather than having it swirl around inside my head, so thanks.

RC 7-8-20

Happily happy

I prayed last night for God to only send me people who had a positive outlook on life. I don’t think for one second that ‘He’ was listening and responded, but I have certainly had a more pleasant, less pessimistic day today, thankfully. The customers I spoke to were all cheery, pleased to be back at work and looking forward to the rest of the day and the weekend. It’s given me such a lift, after yesterday’s onslaught of unhappiness.

I relaxed enough to enjoy an evening cycle, and my spell on the drums was light-hearted and frivolous, rather than an angry, get-it-out-of-your-system abusing of the drumkit.

Maybe I should try this prayer thing more often…

RC 5-8-20

Negatively negative

I seem to be surrounded by some very pessimistic people at work today. I’m not sure why. They seem convinced that the upturn in virus cases, and the decrease in the level of lockdown easing, means we’re all doomed and Winter will be a five-month long struggle of isolation, death and bankruptcies.  I’m not sure where it’s all come from, but then I do my very best to ignore the News channels, so my bet would be that might have something to do with it. There was always going to be an upturn in cases once more people were back at work and visiting shops and socialising. No-one ever said different, did they? The lockdown wasn’t about getting rid of the virus, it was about managing it so the initial slew of cases didn’t overwhelm us. Now that’s done, it’s about allowing some kind of return to an everyday life, balanced against the threat of another National outbreak. This thing hasn’t gone, it’s just less prominent than it was back in April. So of course cases were going to rise again.  Everyone I’ve spoken to today seems to have been thinking that it was all over and done with, that Covid 19 had been banished to the history books and that we could all go back to existing how we were back in February.

I don’t remember anyone official ever saying that would be the scenario.

Maybe I misread the whole thing. As I said earlier, I avoid as much of it all as possible, to keep my last few atoms of sanity intact.

Either way, I’ve found myself getting dragged down with them today. There are only so many times you can smile at people and put a positive spin on things before you start feeling yourself plummet into their pit with them.

Thank God I have Philippa and Mathew to go home to…..

RC 4-8-20

Distractingly distracted

I seem to be doing less and less work in work time.

I’ve gone back to an obsession from earlier this year and got back into studying The Bible. NOT, may I remind you, from a ‘finding-the-word-of-God’ born-again Christian viewpoint, but from an ‘Interesting Past Document’ puzzle-solving stance. I really loved looking at it back in the Winter months, but there’s so much to look at, and the more you research the more there is, that I got a bit overwhelmed and then a bit lethargic. So I put my notes in a drawer and parked the whole thing in a quiet corner of my mind. But now – bored with my work situation and lacking any urges to do something creative – I’ve got back into it again.

At the moment, I’m reading an interesting article about the Tree of Knowledge in the Garden of Eden. I was always taught that there was an apple – the ‘forbidden fruit’ – that Satan persuaded Adam and Eve to munch on, and that brought about the Fall of Man, as they had gone against God’s wishes, and from then on it all went to shit for us humans and it’s been a ten-thousand-year decline ever since.

But apparently – according to what I’ve been reading – in the language that the early stories from the Old Testament were originally written in, the words for ‘APPLE’ and ‘EVIL’ are incredibly similar, so it may have all been mistranslated and there wasn’t any fruit involved at all.  Interesting stuff, in a ‘we’ll never know one way or another anyway, so what’s the point?’ kind of way. It just means that maybe we’ve got the whole thing wrong, and that my fire-and-brimstone Catholic RE teacher at school may have scared me with completely the wrong imagery.

It also means that maybe I can enjoy a Red Delicious without having to feel guilty.

RC 3-8-20

Aromas

We had a lovely walk today. Nice to get out and about around the local footpaths and enjoy the warmth. Only one downside - we’ve reached the unfortunate time of year where the recently-harvested fields get covered in shit. And for those of you not familiar with life in an area dominated by farmland, I mean ACTUALLY covered in shit. There is something in effluent that is good for the soil, so anytime they’re due to be ploughing, farmers hire a tanker full of silage to be dumped on their land. It’s alright for them – they’re in an air-conditioned tractor while they’re spreading it, and they probably live miles away. Those of us with homes near the fields, and utilising the paths around them, are the ones who suffer.

Mathew was not impressed. It’s hard to explain the necessities and complexities of ‘working the land’ to an 18-month old child, but I did my best. “Poo-poo make food grow” seemed quite a good way to start to me, but he didn’t seem pacified, and Philippa asked me to stop talking and to start taking photos, while she distracted him with butterflies and ears of corn.

It all meant I had to change my plan for tea. Out went the BBQ (I really did not fancy standing outside for an hour cooking with the smell of raw sewage wafting through the garden), but we’d already got everything out, defrosted, marinated and prepared. So, being resourceful and being an adaptive kind of guy, I just fired up the grill and did an indoor barbecue instead. Not quite the same, but an enjoyable feast nonetheless.

RC 2-8-20