Registration sorted

A sunny start to the day, then the sky clouded over and it drizzled for the rest of the day. I slept badly, losing three hour's sleep out of nine in bed. I woke up at one stage wondering if I'd switched off the oven, after slow cooking some chicken yesterday afternoon. I had to get up and go down to check in order to settle my mind. I'm no stranger to anxious wakefulness in the night, prompted by unquiet intestines. I felt better for having a shower and washing my hair after breakfast, but the effect of the meds, slowing down my brain and making me feel light headed made it difficult to function normally. 

A walk in the drizzle to try and clear my head, was unfruitful. Clare called me with a request to buy veg pronto from the 'Fruit Bowl' greengrocer's as she'd started cooking and was short of supplies. We've relied on a weekly bag of organic veggies from Coed Organic for nearly twenty years, but after such bad weather in the past year, the cooperative market garden in St Hilary is currently unable to supply produce for veg bag customers. We rely on supermarkets now, and on Jason at 'The Fruit Bowl', where we get bitter oranges for marmalade. The stock is fresh and very varied. His veg labels are neatly hand written.They declare the provenance of the veg he sells. He opens early but closes at four, so a modicum of forethought and planning is needed before cooking in the evening.

Fatigue hit me hard after eating lunch and I slept in my armchair for nearly an hour. Then I checked the Council's postal vote website, and was pleased to see that the downloadable application form I complained about yesterday has been corrected. I set about finding the required identity details and filling in forms for Clare and myself to email .pdf copies of them to the Council's Electoral Services office. Then I went out for another walk to recover from the mental effort of concentrating and checking details were correct. When I was looking for the right email address to send the forms, I noticed we're both on the electoral register, marked as requiring a postal vote. It also says 'If the information is correct you do not have to do anything'. This is in a letter addressed to 'The Occupiers'. It contains both our names, abbreviated as the NHS does using the first forename in full with the second forename initialised. There may have been no need to fill in the forms at all, but I dislike the ambiguity in the way this invitation to register is presented. Registration is valid for all elections over the next three years. I don't recall seeing this box to tick last time we filled in one of these, so maybe it's just as well. Electoral database managers or AI should flag up any duplication in any case. We'll see.

Clare went to choir practice after supper. I recorded next week's biblical reflection while the house was quiet. I was almost finished when she tapped on the front door, having misplaced her door key. only the last minute needed recording separately and adding to what was already recorded. Then, to relax I watched this week's episode of 'Astrid - Murder in Paris' before going to bed early in an attempt to catch up on lost sleep. I've been wondering if this is somehow linked to the seemingly toxic effect the combination of meds have on my brain.

 

Welsh Electoral application form shambles

Another overcast drizzly day. Another day of waking with a clear head, soon clouded by the toxic impact of the meds, slowing my thinking, leaving me feeling poorly. I feel like a prisoner. I wonder if this is how people with mental health conditions feel when drugged by antidepressants? 

After our usual Saturday pancake breakfast I made an effort to concentrate on next Wednesday's Morning Prayer video slideshow for uploading to YouTube. It took me  a couple of hours, until Clare called me for lunch. I'm not doing much in the kitchen apart from clearing the table and washing up at the moment. 

I lost my SD card reader, kept in a small box of digital accessories on a side table in between armchairs in the lounge. I've hunted high and low for it with no result. I dug out an old one from the back of a drawer in my study. It has multiple card slots, but is unreliable with a full size SD card, perhaps that's where the fault lies. Thankfully its micro SD card slot works, and these are what I use nowadays. They run faster and have a much larger capacity than the older cards, now relegated to being a very small portable archive. 

The lost card reader hadn't left the house for sure, but being small and black, it had to be somewhere in the shadows where I find it hard to see. Later in the day, I moved an armchair I had moved before and looked beneath and saw nothing. This time, light fell behind a chair leg and there it was!

Rain kept me indoors until mid afternoon. I walked under the brolly for an hour, braving gusts of wind and drizzle to try and clear my head without success, and went out again to the Coop for bananas after supper. 

In today's mail a notification to confirm we are on the electoral register, and can apply on-line for a postal vote. When I downloaded the application form I discovered that the layout formatting of the English language version and that of the Welsh language are not identical. Separate boxes aren't provided for the applicant's forenames and address in the English version, only in the Welsh. If applicants' forms are scanned and data extracted from them automatically, there is a risk that information will be incorrectly processed or corrupted. For a human reader this is confusing and misleading to say the least. The difference between English and Welsh layout format on the form in effect discriminates against non Welsh speakers. I emailed a report to Electoral Services, and a local city councillor. It'll be interesting to see how long it takes to sort out this little admin embarrassment.

No telly this evening. Too tired to maintain concentration or interest. Even getting to bed early is a time consuming effort.