end of British Summer Time

The clocks have gone back, and it’s almost winter.  I’ve pretty much reached my targets on keeping healthy, but my weight continues to creep upwards, sadly.

BST target was 5,000 steps, achieved 5,208, which is the most in the last five years. Daily fruit-and-veg averaged 6.1, against a target of 6. Daily calories of 1,822 against a target of 1,800, but that’s closer than 2024, 2023, or 2022. I was on a very restricted intake for 2021, aiming for 1,500 and achieving 1,590, so it’s actually the closest I’ve even come to meeting the goal.

However, weight this morning was 69.6, and it’s largely been 68 point something for the past few months. That’s not good – I do aim to be in the general area of 66 point something. The next couple of months will have to see a bit more effort, before the inevitable Christmas splurge.

pinkness

Indoors, the Schlumbergera cactus is coming into flower – I think of it as the “neither Christmas nor Easter” cactus, as it normally flowers mainly in November and again late February into March. The pink colour scheme continues outdoors, with the last flowers on the scented pelargonium, and a late self-sown cosmos growing from a crack in the concrete path.



ladder of engagement

Facebook has remined me that thirteen years ago today, Neil Laurenson came round to ask me to stand as a paper candidate for the Green Party in the the local elections due the following May. I said yes … setting my feet on the “ladder of engagement”, which has led me to some unexpected places. One of them is the job I’m currently prevaricating about getting round to: replacing the broken mains inlet socket on our Risograph printer. Like me, it’s getting elderly … together, we’ve done about one and half million copies over the nine years since Marjory Bisset persuaded me to adopt it.


yum !

The nights are drawing in, the clocks change at the end of this week, and Halloween approaches. That all means it’s time to make parkin! Best if left in the tin to mature for a few days, but a sample has been removed for quailty control purposes …


getting winter-ready

Due, I think, to my inability to water them twice daily during the drought, it hasn’t been a bumper year for tomatoes. More of a steady trickle, rather than having any gluts, in fact. But yesterday saw the last picking of a ripe tomato for lunch, and today has been rescuing the few remaining fruit, cutting down the plants, and removing and sorting the plastic cover for the tomato house for the winter. The “garden waste” bin is now fairly full of that, and runner bean plants also pulled up, ready for collection early on Thursday.


and so, farewell

Another very difficult night for me. Stressful wakefulness interrupted by short periods of stressful dreaming about Green Mount – the sale of which is due to complete today. I suppose that for me the house has always represented “continuity” and “rootedness”, so it’s understandably traumatic. The first arial photo I have (March 1963) and the most recent (May 2025): it’s not unchanging, but I’ve been part of its evolution for the last six+ decades …


ugh!

Alarm clock set for horribly early tomorrow! Fuel delivery due “between 7.15 and 9” – they usually turn up just before 8. As there’s a risk of rain, and generally damp conditions, I don’t want to risk these being left on the front path … the recyclable paper packs dislike being made soggy! And no – this isn’t just a way of sneaking extra coffee into my life!

The last of the Green Mount quinces

I was over at Green Mount on Tuesday, for the final clearance before we complete on the sale. The quince tree was absolutely laden (after a rather poor last couple of years). That called for picking enough to make a small batch of dulce de membrillo, and some quince jelly. Wednesday I was too shattered to do anything, so yesterday saw the peeling, coring and boiling up, with things left overnight to gently drip. The paste is for membrillo, the liquid for jelly. This morning has been a rather hot and steamy session of boiling things up … but the results look OK.






Goodbye to Green Mount

Yesterday, I went over to supervise the final clearance of what has been the family home for over 63 years. We went there in 1962, when I was a nervous 7-year-old, and there’s something obscurely satisfying in being 70 when we finally say goodbye to it. Much stuff had gone to family members, or to charity shops, but there was two very full van loads of stuff from house, garage, and garden.

The day itself went OK: I was up at 0415 to get there for about 8am, having had a very bad night hovering on the edge of panic attacks and periods of really struggling for breath. However, once we got stuck in to the “doing things” I was fine. My dear friend Clare nobly volunteered to drive over to collect me, and I am extremely grateful for her support! Getting home around 6pm, almost straight to sleep, though I did get up briefly around 8 to have supper and a hot bath (muscles for the unknotting of). Even once I’d knocked off the times I was on trains and in cars, the pedometer showed well over 15 thousand steps – way above my usual “aim for 5 thousand, limit is 10 thousand” steps. So today I am recovering from physical and emotional stresses: the most strenuous thing planned is filling in the Waitrose order.


1970s ?

Back to the 1970s! I’ve finally got around to organising milk deliveries (pasteurised, non-homogenised) from a local farm, in proper glass bottles. It’s part of my continuing efforts to reduce my plastic use, albeit by infinitesimal increments …