In this weekly update I need to remind myself about the blessing of good friends and to tell you about our scary ‘lectrics. Plus a farewell to Hannah and today’s Parkrun.
We decided to crack on with a very brief makeover in a small room upstairs. Chances are the room will be structurally altered at some point in the future, so this is not the time to spend money on it. Instead we wanted to simply freshen it up and make it vaguely useable following the removal of the airing cupboard in the previous week.
We had had a nice LED light and movement sensor installed in the cupboard and, having dismantled the walk-in cupboard, the light fitting needed disconnecting and tidying up the wires. Ideally some serious work needs to be done on some of the wiring but for now we are tackling each problem as it comes along.
So the situation with the electrical junction turned out to be a missing screw (top left in photo) which only allowed a shaky connection. Even more serious was the bare earth wire touching the live wire (bottom left) – guess what happened? Yes that’s right, the power goes off as soon as they touch each other. I should say this is how I found the wiring with no sheath on the earth. Naturally I was alarmed at this (which is far better than being shocked) and in a panic I called my friend Val who’s an electrician.
So ‘thank you’ once again Val for dropping everything and coming to the rescue – we really do appreciate it!
The rest of the room is now looking more presentable and t’was most definitely on a shoestring. Rachel took the lead with painting and I can now say we have a totally unique and definitely unrepeatable colour on the walls. You see we had amassed a number of test pots of paint over the last year and Rachel, using white emulsion as a base, added a dash of this and that to achieve an interesting colour for the walls. I’m not sure if it is a minty green, or a dusty pink or even the duck egg blue but it is definitely an improvement. Photos probably to follow once complete.
Hannah
On Bank Holiday Monday we drove down to the south coast with Hannah, our youngest daughter, so she can start her new job as a sailing instructor. Already I miss her.
Rather than benefit from an induction programme, she attended another local sailing centre to take her Senior Instructor qualification. She passed! That is a fantastic start to her new job there.
Today, on her first day off, she has gone along the coast to support a swimming event in the Solent. This is where a group of swimmers swim across to the Isle of Wight and each one has a kayak safety escort and this is where Hannah comes in. In a previous event that she supported, her swimmer was particularly strong and he even swam back to the mainland from the island, so Hannah paddled both ways.
Parkrun and blogging
You might already know I’m a fan of Parkrun. A completely free, no nonsense volunteer-based event which has been brilliant for thousands of people’s physical and mental health.
So today’s 5k Parkrun was very nice, a combination of jogging my way around the course and having coffee with some friends afterwards – as usual we come back to the Quirky Museum for coffee and toast in the garden. I am wondering if we should move indoors when the weather becomes a little cooler….?
The run itself was okay. I got around the course in 27 minutes, which I was quite pleased with. I started with a painful foot which slowly loosened up. As it did, my whole leg seemed a bit odd for a couple of hundred yards but things settled down after a while. Now I’m very aware of my right foot – either tendonitis or an issue with one of the slender metatarsus bones, I’m not sure but once again a balancing act between staying fit, enjoying running, risking further injury or taking a rest. Head and heart stuff.
The highlight was actually meeting Marty. I have come to know Marty through this very blog as we have a couple of things in common. Although our paths have only crossed in the context of my blog and with as much or as anonymity as we would choose, it does highlight the joy of blogging and other opportunities of connecting with people.
Marty is both older and faster than me, impressively so! The most curious thing was, in the brief chat before the start, he told me what his job had been and where he had worked. I was mulling that over as I plodded around the Parkrun course and I remembered someone else I knew from a few years back and I wondered if they had known each other. They did! Even more remarkable was the fact they lived on the same housing estate and saw each other from time to time.
In our crazy world, our relationships with each other are increasingly important, or at least I find this to be true. Sometimes our relationships can be quite fleeting and this is fine, other relationships can be deep and long lasting. I value each of these and how friendships can spring up from the most unlikely of places. Blogging remains a rewarding thing to do, even though I’ve stepped back over the summer months. Over the years people have corresponded with me from all around the world; everything from urology and kidney issues, cycling, product reviews, keeping fit and so on.
It’s hard knowing quite how to wrap this ‘blogging’ bit up, perhaps drawing a conclusion is difficult. Allow me to say how I value the outlet in writing about all the day-to-day happenings as a record of things going on. I know, as I’m sure you do, no blogger puts their whole life online but perhaps it’s just enough. Certainly it’s enough for me to re-read things and then a whole load of other memories come flooding back; this is useful as I don’t keep a daily diary any more.
As the days get shorter and cooler, I always find myself doing more indoors, so I do hope stepping up blogging will be one of them. Thing is, for the last year I have felt guilty in spending too much time blogging, or being arty or running as there’s so much to do with our home. A year ago we devoted so much time to the care of Rachel’s mum. Since we lost her, we have spent so much time trying to make this house into our home, something which is taking quite a long time and will continue to do so.
So I suppose it is really about getting the balance right – and I do hope to spend some more time writing in the coming months. I do enjoy it and hope you do as well.