The night sky was clear, and at sunrise it was somewhat chilly. I got ready to be taken to Thornhill for the funeral I was scheduled to take and stood outside in the still cool shadow of the house. When the car didn't turn up on time (as it did once before with this particular funeral company), I started to fret and phoned the office. I was told the funeral is tomorrow not today. Indeed, when I looked again, my diary confirmed this was the case. How did it happen? I wondered.
A bank holiday disrupts weekly routine. Nervousness about a repeat instance of un-punctuality. A careless glance at the diary. Not memory loss, but a loss of focus on what day of the week it actually is. As we're both pretty active, no day of the week is the same as another, so days don't normally merge into each other because each is the same as the other. This is what can lead to people living alone with uneventful lives to lose track of time.
Once I'd recovered from my bewilderment, I picked up on what usually happens on Tuesdays and went to the Coop to do the weekly grocery shopping. Clare had an acupuncture appointment, so I cooked the lunch and listened to a consumer phone-in programme about the technical challenges of making homes energy efficient, with listeners sharing their experience of solar panels and air source heat pump installation, both benefits and unforeseen problems. With energy prices so high, the question of saving money is more of a concern than carbon footprint. What's interesting is the finding that energy conservation by improving insulation standards is key to the success of any alternative heating system. The government has recently launched a campaign to promote and facilitate insulation improvement. Will it deliver significant change? It remains to be seen.
In the news, Moscow was hit by a drone attack last night, not the first in recent weeks, not causing much damage. Immediately the regime alleges this attack is of Ukrainian origin, which Ukraine denies. This was said when there was an attack on the Kremlin recently. This was followed by nightly drone attacks on Kyiv. Is this a 'false flag' attack, giving an excuse for escalation? There have also been a few cross border incursions allegedly by Russian militias opposed to Putin's regime. These have not been of much military significance but they send a signal to the Kremlin about government control over the population, by sowing seeds of doubt about how safely distanced from the war Russian people feel they are. Small uprisings and acts of resistance occur and get suppressed, but the more there are, the more it suggests dissatisfaction with the status quo.
It was nearly two by the time we finished lunch and had a siesta. Then another grocery shopping trip to Tesco's before walking in the park together enjoying the sunshine. After supper and putting out the rubbish I decided to sit and read Carlos Ruiz Zafon's novel 'La Sombra del Viento', while my Fitbit was on charge. I've had it now for sixteen days. It took me a while to figure out how to get what I want from the device. It tends to nag to to set up every facility it provides, on top of a link to my phone to record the few essentials I need and suppressing ones I don't want to use is still a minor annoyance.
The touch screen on the watch is ingenious, but took several weeks to fathom out from scratch. I'm not sure I found the first use instructions, and most of these things are straightforward to get working. The most irritating thing about the phone app is how encourages you to set health goals, like or not, and if you don't it imposes a default set. Any goal it thinks you've achieved, it send you childish congratulatory messages, as if it were a grown-up coaching children. I detest this patronising intrusion.
All I need is simple information about my daily walking habits plus date and time. At least it has a decent watch face with a minimal always on setting showing only the time. And the strap on it is decent and comfortable. It takes two hours to charge and a charge lasts ten days, but it starts nagging to recharge when it's still 20% full, in effect about two days left. That's a bit annoying too.
I read thirteen packed pages of the book while waiting for a full charge, and was able to appreciate the humour and the atmosphere of story-line, again, despite the obscurity of some vocabulary which defeats Google Translate. On the other hand the app can be helpful in listing secondary meaning and contextual uses arising from colloquial turns of phrase and this can bring interesting little surprises to light. For example in English we'd say a very rich person was 'loaded', in Spanish it's 'lined' - in both cases with cash. Anyway, that's enough for tonight!
then printed off a couple of poems I've been asked to read at tomorrow's funeral. Bed early tonight.
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