Author: Jeff

Pic of the week

I’m getting old.

Somehow, on Monday I managed to pull a muscle whilst sat on a sofa.  I was sat done and just moved slightly and felt a real twinge in my left rib cage and it has hurt all week – particularly on the couple of occassions that I have sneezed.  Hurting yourself whilst exercising is one thing, but hurting yourself whilst sitting down is another, a depressing sign of my ageing body I fear.

And today, I enjoyed a long snooze of about an hour this afternoon, another sign of getting old.

This post is partly tongue in cheek – I’m not as young as I was, but I was able to keep up with the 18 year olds I refereed yesterday, and today I ran 10K in sub 50 minutes, so I’m not doing too bad.

The pic above is the tree outside my window, its turned a beautiful colour.  The trees are all turning now – I need to enjoy them whilst I can as they will soon be leafless and skeletal as autumn rolls on and into winter.  One week of term to go, looking forward to the deserved break, but this half term does seem to have passed quickly.

Pic of the week 4/9/22

By pretty much any metric, summer is over.

The most important metric is that I return to school tomorrow, but this weekend has also seen a notable shift in the weather – its still been warm, but the glorious blue sky and wall to wall sunshine is no longer here. After brilliant, beautiful light for months, it did seem remarkably dark under the leaden grey skies yesterday morning.  There has been a little rain – enough to annoy my washing! – but not the significant deluge we need.

It has been a great summer. The holidays, to me at least, have seemed really long. I think that’s been because of the wonderful weather – no day has been wasted, sat inside watching the rain and wondering what to do.

Kefalonia was wonderful and the sun has shined ever since we jetted off. We’ve also been to Sophie’s graduation (hot, hot, hot!), Coldplay, Bristol … the only thing we didn’t achieve was our balloon flight – cancelled three times, twice because of weather, once for a technical hitch.  I’ve refereed a lot (and found myself enjoying it again) and spent many a happy hour tinkering on cars – its a shame I didn’t get the 205 through an MOT, but I’ve enjoyed working on it, and I’m also pleased to have cured the knocking noise on the Corsa (replaced a drop link) and also (finally) got the oil change plug out.

The sunflowers – both front and back – have been the success of the garden.  Initially it was a little disappointing that we didn’t seem to have a mass of high sunflowers, but over the course of the summer, we’ve always had several in flower and it has been fun watching them blossom.  Two pumpkins have grown – must tray and grow a few more next year – one is smallish and already fully orange, the other quite big and only just starting to change hue.

And on Monday I saw a grass snake!

I was driving along a country lane near Castle Cary (returning from Jago’s house) and saw it in the road. It was long: a good metre to 1.5 m long. an impressive site!

Pic of the week 28/8/22

On Wednesday, Becky and I went to Bristol, in the main to see the Grayson’s Art Club exhibition – which we did – but to also have a general mooch around the city. For lunch, I had the most delicious cheese toasty from the Dareshack cafe.  The bread (from Abergavenny, apparently) was superb.  The exhibition was good and then we explored a little on our way back down from the museum, stumbling upon, and the ascending, Cabot’s tower for some great views across the city.

It was a good day out, that I enjoyed.

On the same day, Sophie signed the contact on her first flat in Cardiff (she starts work in mid-September) so that has been exciting, giving her a purpose and incentive to get organised ready for the next phase of her life.

On Thursday, Sam headed up to the Reading festival – he has just messaged to say he aims to get the 8.30pm train back to Castle Cary this evening – I think he wants his bed tonight!

Pic of the week 21/8/22

On Tuesday we all went to London to watch Coldplay.

We had bought the tickets way back in October (whilst in Palma) but at last the day had come and we headed up to the capital for the show.  And what a show it was.  A magnificent fusion of music an lights, in a sea of humanity at Wembley stadium. We had great seats – 7 rows from the “edge of the pitch”, on about the half way line.  For once, I could see the stars and not have to solely rely on the big screen for my view.

They banged out the belters, and we all had a wristband which lit up in various colours to produce a visual effect that matched the music. A great evening, a great show.

Pic of the week 14/8/22

This week has been hot!

The temperature started building last Sunday, and it has been wall to wall sunshine all week, but it was Thursday through to today that the mercury really began to soar, being mid thirties everyday and not really getting out of the twenties at night.

Although I would say it has been too hot, I have enjoyed it and, weather-wise, it has been a summer to remember, a summer to enjoy – certainly preferable to grey skies and showers. The landscape has taken on an arid beauty, everywhere is a parched brown. On Friday evening Becky & I went for a walk on the Poldens at circa 8.15 pm – the temparature was lovely, a few degrees lower than at home, probably because it lacked the retained, radiated heat from builidngs, and a gentle breeze lightly brushed past the skin. The grassland was as dry as a bone (the pic above is from that evening) but the grass swishing and swashing in a gentle rhythm with the breeze.

The heat is due to break tomorrow – we are all looking forward to a much cooler 26 degrees (!) and the possibility of rain showers.