Category: Perseverance
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When things work . . .
I’m a great fan of the mundane, things trundling along as they should, and being able to live within the constraints that make sense. My joy came crashing in, today, apparently because I managed to re-install our pair of passive antennae, so-called SlimJim dipoles, to facilitate communication of our smart meter to the electricity supplier’s…
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The ‘whew!’ of a successful road test (MOT)
The MOT inspector followed me and Harry Hymer into the inspection bay. ‘That’s an immediate fail,’ he opined, as matter-of-fact as you please. ‘Your brake light’s off.’ I know Harry’s been through the wars, and this particular side end has had an unfortunate encounter with our own little Fiat Panda as it scraped out around…
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The joy of dreams
In a previous blog post, I waxed enthusiastic at the prospect of minimal building work over this coming year. I felt delighted that we might contemplate settling in and living, rather than preparing for the lifestyle we’d hoped for. I forgot how much fun it is to plan and to anticipate the renovations, and then…
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Joys of the unexpected
In mid-October, after a bout of heavy frost, so heavy there was thick morning ice on the windscreen of the little Fiat Panda, I’d have thought the bees would be safely ensconced in their hives for the duration. Not a bit of it: come the warm mid-day sun, and the Mahonia, rampant in our front…
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The joy of challenges resolved
Life has felt rather fraught, over these past two months, and joys have mostly been subsumed in fretting. So it’s a delight, finally, to share some resolutions to some of these infrastructural, if prosaic, challenges, and to be looking forward to new creative projects. Considering that the ancient Romans had wonderful spas, indoor plumbing, and…
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With tidiness comes a sense that a disciplined work-life balance might be achievable
In bright sunshine, our cat lurks beside the table that we’ve strewn with breadcrumbs for the cheeky robin or two that indulge our offerings if laid out on a surface. The garden nook took a fair bit of tidying, but today our lovely neighbour has brought us over two purple pots of chives that we’ll…
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Tearing Apart and Tidying
These days, as we’ve been dealing with all the ramifications of major kitchen renovation, we’ve been veering between delight and despair. Sometimes you have to catch the smallest possible unit of hope, in these times, and that’s what I’m trying to do just now as I contemplate the demolished, flattened and neatly stacked set of…
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Not only, but also . . . looking ahead while looking back
Both perspectives, it seems, are golden: the golden years we may have experienced, and the golden future we might hope to inhabit. Today I’m musing on the simultaneity of the visions; though we often think of looking back at the year gone by, or looking forward to the new year coming, I think I tend to discount…
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Cams, programs, switches and bongs . . .
For whatever reason, I’ve been identified locally as the guy who loves to fix things. Or let’s say rather, who loves to see things working correctly. I don’t mind work-arounds, not at all, but if the end result is that the thing is working and performing the function for which it was intended, I’m a happy guy.…
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In the face of death . . .
I was going to sit here, after our festive lights have come on in the dark late afternoon, and write about the joy of singing. Or the joy of participation — we’ve got tickets for the annual pantomime put on by the Youth Players at the CatStrand Arts Centre, just down the High Street from…
Roads to Joy 