Winter wait

Monday and Tuesday, I didn't leave the house once, it was just too cold, overcast and grey even to venture out with a camera to find new subjects to explore. I just pottered around doing nothing important, scanning old photo negatives, re-installing an ancient edition of Photoshop on the big laptop which now serves as my office work station - still getting used to it. I had to rediscover how to increase virtual memory in Windows. It's so long since I last had to do this. I even sat and read a proper book for the first time in ages. Nothing to go out for really. I feel that I'm lack a sense of purpose, some creative project to give me focus at the moment. It's back to the same question - what should I be doing next?

Today was better. We had a visit from a green energy consultant in the morning, to survey the house with a view to installing renewable energy sources, either solar panels or heat pump. He was a very honest straightforward and capable engineer, and confirmed after spending a short time in the garden looking up at the roof, what I had expected. Even with the most efficient of technologies the roof and upper walls of the house spend too much time of any day in the shade, winter or summer, to make an investment cost effective even in the very long term. The orientation of the terrace, and the fact that we are right in the middle of the terrace, leaves us short of light levels worth exploiting. How sad!

Then an afternoon spent in the CBS office with several tasks to complete, and getting them all done. That felt much more satisfactory. Clare told me she'd heard back reassuringly from the surgeon about post op recovery time, freeing me to book a flight for my next assignment of locum duty in Nerja, Costa del Sol, in the third week of April. Thankfully, Vueling flights from Cardiff are operational again this year, and I was able to book seats at a good price, leaving and returning at civilized times of day, all of which makes coming and going that much easier. It's nice to have some prolonged blue sky and decent light to look forward to. 

I enjoyed Winter when we lived in Geneva. Even when it Lac Leman was under low cloud at near freezing temperatures for weeks on end, blue skies were but half an hour's drive away on the ridges of the Jura behind where we lived, and that drive was worth making several times a week. British winter darkness and weather makes me turn in on myself to no constructive purpose. I find  myself looking at sunrise and sunset times almost every day at the moment.