Category: Challenges
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The joy of logistics
The only way I could consolidate all our scrap metal was to carry things into a staging area in front of our sheds. But the stacked row of vehicles in front of the pile, and additionally the small host of additional vehicles that have accreted around our place, posed a different challenge: how might the […]
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Clearing joys
It was a hard job, but somebody had to do it! Over the years I’ve been accumulating defunct items in a corner of the field. The weeds have overgrown the small heap so it was as if there was nothing there. But I knew the day of reckoning would arrive, and yesterday morning it did. […]
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Learning new things . . .
Embarrassed as I am to have been writing earnestly for the past three years and only now discovering a wonderful editing tool, I’m delighted at the same time. I’ve been fortunate to join a specialist writing group: five would-be novelists working in the science fiction genre, who have begun to share their work together. As […]
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Oh we do love to be beside the seaside . . .
Early Monday morning, everyone is struggling to wake up and pack up for the off, after a delightful weekend of fish and chips, pizzas, and then a complete Sunday dinner. Food and drinks have been in copious supply, just like the sunshine. It seems the whole country was filled with sunshine, actually, as the reports […]
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Forget it, corvids . . .
We’ve finally finished sorting out Mr Duck’s patch with biosecurity netting. It turned out that the rails I had laying around were exactly the right size to be supports for the jackdaw-proof netting, and so the task was relatively easy to facilitate. The challenge has been that the jackdaws, especially if they go in two-by-twos, […]
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Palpable relief?
Over time, I think it’s natural to develop work-arounds, ways of accommodating when things don’t go according to plan. So if the fan oven element could not be repaired, or if the problem was deeper in the electronics somewhere I couldn’t reach, there was still the other side which works without a fan. Work-arounds are […]
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The joy of the reveal
When the power flicked off, right in the middle of the bread baking, we thought it was probably a valley-wide outage. But no, the special indicator light showed me that power was still coming in to the house; actually the domestic RCD switch had tripped out. We wondered, as you do, what could have set […]
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The joy of building on criticism . . .
Let’s face it: nobody really enjoys criticism, but most of us suffer it with a pained expression. That’s to say, how could you not find my most recent contribution supremely edifying, wonderful and a sheer delight? But since you mention it, I shall try to understand what you’re saying. Before discarding your unwelcome contribution to […]
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More things to do . . .
I keep forgetting that work around a big garden is never done. Much as I’d like to pretend that we’re keeping some borders wild and free (folks in New Galloway are very keen on the new ‘ark‘ concept of gardening, in which Acts of Restorative Kindness are brought to bear on domestic gardens that have […]
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The joy of things to do . . .
I suspect, could be wrong mind, but I suspect that one of the main reasons old(er) people turn to drink is because they’re impossibly bored. I’ve definitely found, for myself, that retirement days sometimes seem to stretch into oblivion and beyond, and I wonder what on earth I can usefully do with myself. But not […]
Roads to Joy 