Sleep change plan

I woke up at half past seven, and got up and made breakfast at eight. Recent medical research reports that seven hours regular sound sleep is enough for a healthy lifestyle in older people, and that sleeping several hours longer, as I tend to do can result in deteriorating brain function. I've been sleeping nine or ten hours a day in recent years, but my sleep pattern was persistently broken by pain and discomfort. My sleep is far less disturbed nowadays, but old habits die hard, so it's time for a shake-up. Last night seven and three quarter hours sleep, and no afternoon siesta to follow, that's the plan!

After breakfast, when Clare went out for a walk, I recorded next week's Morning Prayer audio, and edited it. By ten was outdoors walking in the park under a blue sunny sky. I went to the greengrocer's on my way back to buy some mushrooms and a soft fruit treat for Clare. Then I made lunch with the butter beans, bought yesterday and soaked overnight, and added them to a sauce with spinach, mushrooms and onions, served with spaghetti. It turned out well, and I look forward to cooking it again.

Instead of a siesta, I completed work on the Morning Prayer video and uploaded it to YouTube, then went out and walked again until tea time. I had a call from Ashley to say that my Blackberry work phone account is now closing, long after CBS ceased trading. The process of winding up the business is nearly complete at last. My EE PAYG SIM card will be transferred to the Blackberry. The six year old Samsung struggles to keep up with current demand. The four and a half year old Blackberry is still fit for purpose, but its storage capacity is half what's accepted as normal in today's new phones, largely due to a phenomenal increase in the use of photo and video messaging with 4G / 5G networks and superfast broadband. I don't think I'll miss a second phone. A simpler life is far more desirable.

After supper I spent an hour working on the third chapter of my draft novel before watching another bizarre episode of 'The Crimson Rivers'. I'm enjoying re-reading my own work, despite the fact that there are always errors to correct. It's good to see with a fresh critical eye how some sentences can be improved and clarified. Working on weekly biblical reflections over this past year has been a valuable discipline. I aim for five hundred words, no more than five minutes worth to record. It's possible to pack a lot of ideas in by reworking, simplifying and editing the draft text. This exercise applies equally to a much longer piece of writing..

News today of the death of a British volunteer soldier with the Ukrainian army, one of twenty thousand foreign volunteers. Three UK Special Forces military trainers were killed last month in a missile attack on a military installation near Lviv, but the story behind that has been slow coming out. This morning a missile attack hit an armament factory in Kyiv, while the UN Secretary General was conferring with President Zelensky nearby. The Russians are demonstrating provocatively what they can do to outrage the international community with targeting like this. Ukraine's Ombudsman for Human Rights reports that 490,000 Ukrainian civilians have been deported from war zones into Russia. How is it possible to stop this terrible evil?