April 16, 2021

Public Service Announcement: If you're making DIY toothpaste using a half-remembered recipe where you know the ingredients are bicarbonate of soda, peppermint oil and water, but in what proportions you cannot recall, do not first attempt to make the paste with peppermint oil and bicarb alone. 

This is my advice to you.

If you do do it this way, you will find that your toothpaste is quite refreshing:

And your teeth will feel clean, but for all the wrong reasons:

Water first, chaps, for consistency, then add peppermint oil for flavouring, and not the other way round.

Today's Photo: Tree Leaves (aka Soon My View Will Disappear)

April 15, 2021

I needed to be outside in the sunshine more than I needed a degree today.

This is how I ended up skimming stones at a peaceful spot on the River Rhymney for a while. 

 

 

It was very therapeutic. 

 

The stroll through Rumney Hill Gardens to get down to the river wasn't too shabby either:

 

 

I missed a tutorial, but never mind. It was good to have a day away from the laptop, it cleared my head. I feel I can actually tackle some uni work now.

 

Today's Photo: Beautiful Bluebells

 

April 14, 2021

These articles have helped me feel less alone with how I'm feeling:

Brain Fog: how trauma, uncertainty and isolation have affected our minds and memory (Moya Sarner - The Guardian)

What Does Feeling Okay Even Feel Like Anymore? (Susan Orlean - Medium)

We Have Hit A Wall (Sarah Lyall - New York Times)

Meanwhile I'm still experimenting with being in denial about being at university. Turns out that without that pressure I can still manage to have a pleasant and almost-productive day, even when burdened with anhedonia and the attention span of a wet spaniel.

Today's Photo: Singing His Heart Out

April 13, 2021

Not the best mental health day today. I pretended university didn't exist, and concentrated on getting through the hours as gently as possible instead.

Some minor key highlights:

A helicopter landed on the rec again. That's twice in one year now. You wait for ages and then they all come along etc etc.

A herring gull arrived to have a look at the food I leave out on the windowsill for the robin and magpie neighbours, and the magpie came and chased it off. I love that it felt proprietorial - that means we're friends now.

It cost £30 to send a small parcel of very belated Christmas gifts to a friend in New Zealand. I was just glad I'd finally summoned the energy to wrap and post them and write a little note to go inside. Sorry Matt but I've barely been functioning since about July. It's a lockdown thing - be extremely grateful you don't understand.

I went in a shop that wasn't a supermarket just because I could but I didn't buy anything.

Then I went in a shop that was a supermarket and bought a Wellwoman MAX vitabiotics triple pack and some chocolate and a pack of ten black biros.

Then to wrap it all up, another evening walk to watch the last light fade from the sky.

Tomorrow is another day.

Today's Photo: "If we winter this one out, we can summer anywhere."

April 12, 2021

More travel nostalgia today thanks to Eva Wiseman's lovely article in the Graun about airports, and a chapter in the book I'm reading, The Way The World Works by Nicholson Baker, that made me miss the whole business of flying:

Usually I don't become interested in the wing until the plane has taken off. Before that there are plenty of other things to look at - the joking baggage handlers pulling back the curtain on the first car of a three-car suitcase train; the half-height service trucks lowering their conveyors; the beleaguered patches of dry grass making a go of it between two runways; the drooped windsock. As you turn onto the runway, you sometimes get a glimpse of it stretching ahead, and sometimes you can even see the plane that was in line ahead of you dipping up, lifting its neck as it begins to grab the air. Before the forward pull that begins a takeoff, the cabin lights and the air pressure come on, as if the pilot had awakened to the full measure of his responsibility; and then, looking down, you see the black tire marks on the asphalt sliding past, traces of heavier-than-usual landings. (It still feels faintly worrisome that the same runway can be used for takeoffs and landings.) Some of the black rubber-marks are on a slight bias to the straightway, and there are more and more of them, a sudden crowding that looks like Japanese calligraphy, and then fewer again as you heave past the place where most incoming planes land. You're gaining speed now. Fat yellow lines swoop in and join the center yellow line of your runway, like the curves on the end of LP records. And finally you're up: you may see a clump of service buildings, or a lake, or many tiny blue swimming pools, or a long, straight bridge, and then you go higher until there is nothing but distant earth padded here and there with cloud. Then, out of a pleasant sort of loneliness, ignoring the person who is sitting next to you, you begin to want to get to know the wing and its engine.

The chapter is called No Step and Baker goes on to list all the esoteric messages he's seen stencilled onto the wings of aeroplanes over the years. Here, truly, is a man after my own heart; my own notebooks are full of stuff like that and my favourite activity on any flight, after eating and sleeping, is staring agog out of the window. 

It was a bit of a horror day today university-wise, so stressful I had to stop and do breathing exercises on several occasions. Four breaths in, hold for four, seven breaths out, repeat until calm.

To decompress, in the evening I got a fish & chip supper and drove up to Caerphilly Mountain to stuff my face then walk it off while the sun went down.

After that, I wandered round Caerphilly town centre. If you look caerphilly (geddit?) you might spot the castle in this picture taken from the top of the mountain:

Caerphilly is the largest castle in Wales and was built in 1271, which is pretty incredible when you think about it. However, I'm no historian so obviously I prefer the Tommy Cooper statue across the road:

I sometimes forget that interesting places are on my doorstep; instead of longing for far-flung places I can't currently get to I should make more of an effort to go out and explore the nearby.

Today's Photo: Orange Sunset

 

April 11, 2021

It was Paul Theroux's birthday yesterday.

 

 

A tweet from Louis tonight led me to Paul's Twitter account.

A link there led me to a Boston Magazine article where Matt Paul Catalano's accompanying photo led me to google 'does Paul Theroux have a tattoo on his hand'.

Paul Theroux DOES have a tattoo on his hand! The 2011 Irish Times article Have Notebook Will Travel tells us what it is (you can't find it via an image search because you all you get is a whole load of Justin's) and also that the author of the article couldn't stop staring at it, a detail I find wonderful.

After growing out of Enid Blyton I moved on to Dick Francis and then Desmond Bagley. After I grew out of those, James Herriot and a serial killer biography phase heralded the start of a love affair with non-fiction that continues to this day. 

Some time in my early 20s - probably when I was working at a public library, I can't think how I would've come across it otherwise - I picked up a copy of The Great Railway Bazaar, and my world was blown apart. I'd discovered travel writing. I'd discovered travel - my understanding of holidays up to that point had been British campsites with my mum and dad. 

Desmond Bagley had vaguely made me want to visit Iceland, but now I had to take a train across the Russian Steppes. HAD to.

It took a while, but in July 1997 when we were just into our 30s, me and my fella stood on a station platform in Moscow and boarded the Trans-Siberian Express. 

Cabin no.5 was our home for a week. This was not as glamorous as it sounds. The scenery of the Russian Steppes starts to look a bit samey after the first few days.

Nevertheless, that journey began a pretty standard, but epic-for-us, backpacking adventure through Asia, the Pacific, and back home through the States. And that led to emigration to New Zealand, a new life, a new me.

And all of that came from Paul Theroux putting ideas into my head.

In the Boston Magazine article, he summarises why I hate the internet so much:

“In every case it interferes with my travels,” he sighs. “I think it’s great when you’re out of touch. It’s great when someone simply disappears and makes his or her own way in the world. If you’re in touch all the time, you’ve never really left home. I lived in Africa for six years and never once made a phonecall.

“Having the ability to communicate gives you a false sense of security. It reduces your sense of being alone to the point where you may not go out and make friends. You may not go out and learn the language. It becomes your lifeline. It’s like being in a swimming pool and keeping your toe on the bottom all the time instead of taking your toe off the bottom and floating.”

In the 12 years I lived offline in New Zealand, I thrived. In the 12 years I've been back in the UK I've had on-tap internet and all I've done is stare at a screen and get fat and depressed.

From the Irish Times article:

Paul Theroux’s Essential Tao of Travel

1. Leave home

2. Go alone

3. Travel light

4. Bring a map

5. Go by land

6. Walk across a national frontier

7. Keep a journal

8. Read a novel that has no relation to the place you’re in

9. If you must bring a cell phone, avoid using it.

10. Make a friend

Yes to all of those, except the only friends I make these days are cats - everyone else is too busy staring at their phone.

I'm glad Paul Theroux popped up on my Twitter feed this weekend; I need reminding of this stuff.

Today's Photo: A Dream of Distant Shores

April 10, 2021

Receiving The Teatles book no.8 in the post this morning set me up for the day:

It's from an account I found on Twitter only recently, when I unfollowed all the political tweeps and replaced them with Beatles and cats for the sake of my mental health. Just look at the postcard that came with it! It went straight in a frame:

 

 

I've been burned by fan club fare in the past, but this was so brilliant I need all the back issues now. 

 

It inspired me to dig out the vinyl and give it a spin:

 

(Yes that is just Beatles - I keep the other vinyl at a respectful distance.)

Because life felt happy and normal for once, I got loads of other housework and admin stuff done too, not least a ton of shredding: old lecture and essay notes, receipts from online book purchases, a million letters from SSE begging me to get a smart meter. A diary of the year. 

If The Beatles are at the pinnacle of the 'things that make me happy' list, shredding old paperwork is at least in the top five.

Today's Photo: Most Satisfactory

April 9, 2021

Situation escalated from tea and kittens to emergency mashed potato today. 

But the mashed potato did the trick, and I felt miles better after.

Friday is laundry day, and I took the greatest 80s YouTube playlist ever into the bathroom with me for some music while I worked.

Some water splashed on the screen, and the beautiful colours trapped in the droplets reminded me of when I was a kid, squashing my face up against the telly to gaze in wonder at the little RGB dots that appeared when you got close enough.

I'm still easily entertained - trying to get a photo of the colours in the droplet kept me happy for a good half hour. 

I wish I had a decent camera with a proper macro lens. The minutae, the detail, is where I'm at.

Today's Photo: Yes

April 8, 2021

Today was the start of the final semester of my first year at university and thank god for that.

I'm not enjoying it and today was confusing and demoralising. A tea and kittens sort of day.

I'm not studying anthropology this year, despite it being the subject I signed up to do, because the entire first year is now 'interdisciplinary' and one third of it (40 credits) is taken up with two bullshit 'graduate attribute' modules that set out to equip what is mostly a year of tired, jaded seniors like me who have had quite enough of that bollocks already thank you, with 'employability skills'. 

Any anthropology I'm getting is being crammed into one-hour-a-week tutorials, with modules like 'Introduction to Fieldwork' - you know, all that irrelevant stuff - dropped to make room for the graduate attribute crap.

The problem is they didn't tell the 2020 intake about the switch to interdisciplinary/graduate attribute modules until after everybody had enrolled and the year was underway. The prospectus, the website, still had the previous year's information. Literally, nobody knew they would not be studying the subjects they signed up for until it was too late. 

When the complaints started rolling in, the university said students had been consulted, everybody was happy, now please shut up and go away - and they haven't deviated from that line since.

The module we started this morning was a graduate attribute module and it was a fucking shambles. Sixty miserable and resentful students with no idea what was going on and a sergeant major classics tutor determined to shout down any questions and force us through regardless.

It's the Creative Writing students I feel sorriest for. Instead of being taught Creative Writing, they're receiving a wonderful grounding in disparate humanities subjects and vapid corporate employability videos. 

The one good thing to come out of it is seeing how organised, tenacious and focused in their outrage some the younger students are. They are not taking this lying down. Gives me hope for the future, that does.

Only took one photo today, of my dusty bookshelf, when I realised it was getting dark and I hadn't taken a picture yet. It caught my eye on the way to put the kettle on.

Today's Photo: The Kitten Shelf

 

April 7, 2021

"Like an arrow from the bow the great horse sprang away. Even as they looked he was gone: a flash of silver in the sunset, a wind over the grass, a shadow that fled and passed from sight."

Behold the works of David Marriott, who quite understandably built a horse and full cowboy regalia out of paper bags while stuck in a quarantine hotel in Australia:

                                                        (photo credit: David Marriott via The Guardian)

(Behold also the magnificent Dick King-Smith HQ tweet from which I stole the Tolkien quote.)

Behold the nuthatch I saw this morning in Roath Park:

(I would have to say it also very much saw me.)

Uni resumes tomorrow with a 10am tutorial, then a lecture 11-1, then another lecture 2-4. Hurrah!

Behold the Walt Whitman poem, When I Heard The Learn'd Astronomer:

When I heard the learn’d astronomer,

When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me,

When I was shown the charts and diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them,

When I sitting heard the astronomer where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room,

How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick,

Till rising and gliding out I wander’d off by myself,

In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,

Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars.

(Yes I am still on a Breaking Bad binge, what about it?)

Today's Photo: Ophelia

 

 

April 6, 2021

There really is nothing to say about today. 

I was tired, I stayed in bed, I read a book.

Here's a picture of a levitating dog instead.

 Today's Photo: The World Out There

April 5, 2021

A colleague from the job I'm taking a career break from to do the degree invited me round to her house today, to sit in the sunny back garden and drink coffee and chat.

It was the first IRL social encounter I've had since I walked round the park with my friend Sam last November (apart from gossiping with the handymen at my other job).

How wonderful it was just to speak to a human - to while away an afternoon talking about everything and nothing in particular. 

No masks required so actual, moving faces, too.

She has an ancient cat; deaf and blind and so decrepit I thought the poor thing was going to die right there in front of us on the lawn.

What a darling, though. She came and sat with us, on very wobbly legs, so fragile. 

When she wasn't stretched out warming her bones in the sun (and looking likely to snuff it at any moment), she was turning her head from side to side to sniff the air, keeping tabs on what was going on the only way she could. 

But even when my hand came out of nowhere, she still responded to strokes with pleasure, delighted at the unexpected fuss.

I'll not lie: it was even more wonderful to be in the company of a cat for a whole afternoon.

Today's Photo: I Love You, Decrepit Cat x

 

April 4, 2021

Happy Easter.

Today I learned about Jelly Drops.

Some lad's nan with dementia was hospitalised for dehydration and he realised it's hard to get people with dementia to drink enough water. So he invented Jelly Drops, which are amazing and this kid is a bona fide genius. Here's the TED talk:

Honestly, sometimes people are just so outstandingly wonderful.

Today's Photo: Bench Study #82

April 3, 2021

Had a half-day holiday today.

Went somewhere new, topped up the vitamin D levels, and even packed pyjamas in case I fancied staying out in the van... but then the forecast was for freezing or below, so thought fish & chips on my sofa with central heating might be a better bet.

Sure does get pretty 30 miles out from Cardiff.

The big views are from The Blorenge (yes it does rhyme with orange) and around Keepers Pond, the canal is at Govilon at the foot of the mountain.

It's been a long time since I heard skylarks: they are very good for the soul.

Today's Photo: Same Old Same Old

April 2, 2021

Today the side effects are good and bad.

Good in that my brain feels 'normal' (doesn't happen often; I made the most of it by diving into housework, laundry and admin this morning), and bad in that my body's now welcoming the vaccine in the following ways:

1) left-arm weirdness

2) tightness in the chest, slight sore throat, bit of a cough

3) fatigue

Walked to the library to return some books and was totally knackered before I even got there. 10,000 steps never felt that long before.

On the plus side, it was a blue sky day and I got lots of obligatory blossom photos:

Detoured through the cemetery to avoid the busy road; found a good crow and a beautiful carving:

And on the way home I saw some great shadows. As Charlotte said on Twitter that time, "We should all do a Book of Shadows someday."

Today's Photo: Cheerful Municipal Flower Bed Is Cheerful

 

April 1, 2021

Lost the day to vaccine side effects.

The chills started last night - had to put a jumper on to go to bed in. Running a temperature led to a very disturbed night's sleep.

The fever had gone by the morning, but instead I felt like I'd been pummelled with an iron bar. Everything was sore or tight or tender. My body hurt. My lungs hurt. My skin hurt. The light was too bright; I had to close the curtains. Even my hands felt weird - stiff and aching on the inside.

Symptoms have all gone now, but I still feel like a proper floppy Betty. Feeling under the weather when you're on your own is no fun at all. 

Still, I didn't get the nausea or headache and I'm doing way better than an awful lot of other people so this is not a complaint, merely a report.

Today's Photo: Nope