With the first half of January seeming to whizz by, time seems to have slowed of late and grey January rolls on with little to report on. The weather has changed from clagged in cold and grey to big, blustery grey, with strong winds on Friday, some welcome sunshine yesterday, and more strong winds and a lot of rain today. This afternoon got very dark, the darkness only punctuated by a couple of flashes of lightening, accompanied by the booming roar of thunder. With the murk gone, it is nice to be able to see the tour again.
I’ve not done a lot this week other than work, sleep, eat and read. Had my haircut on Thursday, didn’t run today as yesterday, in the last 5 mins of a 90 min match, I tweaked my left hamstring (can still feel it now.) Its good that’s its now still light at 5pm, the bulbs are showing promise, but they are still a while away from flowering (although at school I have seen the first few snowdrops and crocus, at home I don’t think my snowdrops are far from flowering.)
Not too much to report, don’t have the January blues, but not too much to shout about either. Beginning to ponder a few projects for February half-term, hopefully it will be dry (and warm-ish) so can I do some jobs outside that I am lining up.
The cold of last week has given way to mid-January grey murk. Its been damp, overcast and at times foggy; the middle of the week it got quite warm (these things are relative – “quite warm” means not freezing in this context) but as the week ended the temperature has dropped again, to a cold, damp 3 degrees.
No beautiful blue skies this week!
But the bulbs are beginning to show in strength, the robins are returning, the evenings are beginning to get lighter – its not dark until 5pm – and on Thursday, as I walked home (in daylight!) I could hear a blackbird singing.
Work has been busy, and tiring, I enjoyed a long snooze this afternoon. This morning I went for a run – I did my “new” 4K circuit and added on an extra km to make 5K, and the Christmas weight is slowly started to be shed, although at 12 stone 7 I’m still about half a stone off my target. All my aches, pains, and niggles seem to have gone away, most notably my bad neck/arm/finger – I was a bit worried that the return to work and regular use of a mouse would cause it to go bad again, but no, the other evening whilst sat watching TV I realised I was pain free. Life ticks on, with everyone looking to the future: Sophie has begun house hunting, Sam has returned to Cardiff (from London) today, he can see the end in sight of his degree, and Becky and I have booked a week in Nice, in late July, after Sam’s graduation. So not wishing our lives away, but January offers little other than the hope of what’s to come, and its exciting times for us all.
Back to school, and its been a cold week! The temperature really started to plummet on Tuesday, and its been cold ever since, with sub-zero temperatures most nights, and not much warmer during the day. I’ve used a fleece blanket over some geraniums that have still been flowering (on the shelf by the back gate) – looking at them today, they are still hanging on in there, whilst any that were unprotracted have been turned to a blackened mush.
I didn’t get to see it (sadly) but on Wednesday we had a Greater Spotted Woodpecker in the garden (well, next doors), a visitor we’ve not had before, and its not been seen since, but feels a little more “exotic and exciting” than the normal robins and blackbirds.
Car woes …
Wednesday was cold, but initially dry as I began refereeing at Kingweston, but then the snow started to fall and everything got damp, and much colder, and by the end of the game my hands were freezing, despite my gloves. Anyway, I put my bags in the boot of the Micra ready to head home, turned the key, and nothing, nada, zilch. Bugger. I grabbed a lift home, and then had Becky drive me back to KW, connected up the jump leads and old faithful burst into life. I don’t think the battery had drained – I think this is the problem Sophie had back in April. I’m annoyed that I didn’t think to just disconnect the negative terminal and reconnect it – it would have helped the fault diagnosis – but I didn’t. I was also annoyed I didn’t have my jump leads or booster battery in the car in the car, I do now. Used it again without incident on Saturday …
Today I’ve enjoyed pottering, both inside and out. Having lost my jeff and info @dotsandspots emails (due to my server migration – I hadn’t considered this), today I resolved the problem by buying email hosting from Ecohost – £20+VAT for the year. Took a little head scratching to get it all set up, but not too tricky, a good job well done. And I also trimmed down a “bush” in the front to bring its height down level with the others. At the moment its just dead/dormant brown sticks and twigs, but before too long it will, I’m sure burst back into bloom; much easier to manage in its dormant state.
I was “aware” of my tweaked hamstring when I refereed on Wednesday , back was fine, and by Saturday’s game my leg was fine, too. But, with about 20 mins to go, I felt a similar niggle on the other leg, so decided not to run today.
The temperature is due to creep up a little this week, I hope so, I’m not a fan of the cold.
Sam was up in Carlisle, Becky, Sophie and I spent an unremarkable night in to see in the new year, before rising fresh headed at a sensible hour and waving Sophie off on her journey back to Cardiff before 9am. It has been a great Christmas/New Year period – relaxed, comfortable and calm. It has seemed a long holiday – Madeira seems a long time ago – and I return to school tomorrow refreshed and recharged ready for the term to come. I have put on a few (too many) pounds, have read a lot, pottered and enjoyed a slow pace of life for a few weeks. I have run a bit, including a couple of shorter 4K runs – perhaps this is the future: less time and less draining, but still getting some exercise – but annoyingly yesterday, 5k into a 6k run I tweaked my left hamstring and had to walk the last k. Also my back had begun to hurt, and got worse after I got home. Now is pretty much better, and my arm/shoulder/neck problem that plagued my last few weeks does seem to have diminished to the point of being over.
After a week or so of sitting under a grey blanket of miasma, on Thursday the weather changed and it was clear and cold for the first time in a long time. Becky and I headed of to Shapwick for a pleasant morning walk.
And on Friday – I was in school on Inset – it got really cold, a hard frost everywhere …
… that persisted into Saturday. I still had some geraniums flowering on Christmas day, so I fashioned a fleece curtain for them, hoping I can keep them going into the summer. But in the garden the seed heads looked specular coated in frost and and a number of bulbs are poking proudly up, something to provide hope and interest over the coming weeks and months.
And last night it snowed! It had been forecast, so no surprise, and at about 7pm it started to snow for a couple of hours – at first very wet, but then settling on cars and then the road.
But before we went to bed, it had turned to rain and this morning was just another grey, wet Sunday in Somerset. In fact, the temperature has climbed today and felt mild when I popped out to potter, but is due to turn cold again mid-week.
Wednesday was Christmas day, and it was a lovely day. the four of us enjoying each others company, presents and a fantastic lunch. The day seemed to pass by quite swiftly (in a good way) – no arguments, no drama, and the day finished off with a couple of TV Christmas crackers – first Wallace and Gromit: Vengeance most fowl; and then the final ever episode of Gavin and Stacey to round off a great day.
Two days before (on Monday) we had been to Lifton in Devon to meet up for lunch with Becky’s family:
And Christmas eve was spent at home, en famille, getting everything ready for the next day:
On Boxing Day we enjoyed another chilled day (I did go for a run, but the weather for the last week has been constant grey mizzle and damp – not the sort of weather to entice you out for a brisk cleansing walk) and we all built some Lego.
One of the Christmas bag rounds was Lego – each of us drawing someone from the hat and tasked with buying them a Lego kit. Sophie drew me, and bought me this Lego Vespa that I enjoyed building. (Becky also bought everyone another small Lego kit. The Lego mini-figures we had bought of a street market in Nerja)
We also played a few games of cards – Sophie was “MC”, we played “Granny” – sort of real time solitaire with four players, Uno, and my favourite, Exploding Kittens.
Yesterday, I took Sam to Bristol Temple Meads for an epic train journey to Carlisle to spend New Year with Poppy. It was a long journey made longer by his connection from Manchester to Carlise being cancelled, and then the subsequent later train suffering techincal problems before departure; but he got there safe and sound.
Today the Christmas tree, decorations and outside lights came down. Other than the mountain of snack food and treats still scattered around the house (and the unforgiving reminder on the scales every morning) it does seem like Christmas is over for another year.
Today we all went over to Jane’s for a pre-Christmas gathering of the clan. It was a lovely day and a rare occasion that all my side of the family were together.
Yesterday Sam came home, Sophie having come home on Tuesday. Last night we all sat together in the sitting room.
On Thursday we (Becky, Sophie & I) went to the Festive Fiesta in Bristol which was, once again, an excellent night out and, I think, now an established Christmas tradition.
In other, more mundane news, but worth recording for future reference, this week I migrated my websites to Hosting UK. They moved my mathsteacherwrites blog for me (although some of the dynamic pages now longer work as they did – I may just ignore them and stick with the written posts, or investigate how to get them working again), I moved the other two blogs using UpDraft plus plugin, which went well, except the images didn’t move so I had to spend a few hours manually migrating them. But pleased that they are now down.
And my arm/shoulder/neck is getting much better – no longer painful, but still at times some pain in my lower arm, and pins and needles in my hand, particularly in my first finger. So not yet 100%, but significantly better than a few weeks ago.
Late last night we got back from a great six days in Madeira. I blogged daily and you can read that here: http://hap-pea-travels.co.uk/category/portugal/ We had a wonderful time, I enjoyed our hike, even if it was a little damp at the start. The rain did clear to provide some stunning views:
I had a swim – for much of our time their the weather was changeable, certainly warmer than the UK, and less grey, but it was only on Friday that we had plenty of sunshine and the temperature climbed into the low twenties. The sea wasn’t warm, but neither was it freezing – probably less cold than the med in late October?
The food was good – and you could eat at a sensible time in the evening – and the pastries divine. I enjoyed every one of the (many!) pastel de natas that I ate
and having discovered “God’s bread” it became a breakfast staple
The Christmas light were amazing, and everywhere, and I particularly liked the “storm tunnel” It felt like I was in a cartoon!
We both really liked Madeira – somewhere a little bit different from the norm.
Now its back home to reality, and the run up to Christmas.
Now that we are through it, I can say that the weather this week has been dramatic.
On Thursday evening, it lashed down – just as I was leaving school to come home (and my trusty, strong Joules umbrella that has withstood many a storm and squall was fatally wounded. Just as I opened it, a strong gust of wind blew it inside out and there was no recovery from that point on. After years of trusty service, it has been consigned to the bin.
And having got home, I had to almost immediately head back out for the cathedral Carol service – perhaps appropriately, the rain was biblical. Friday morning broke calm and beautiful, the pink sky seen in the top photo a peaceful backdrop as I walked to school for the last day of term. I (and I think everyone) was ready for/needed term to end – tired and ready to rest. And that is pretty much all you could do on Saturday as storm Darragh hit with a vengeance, with extremely high winds from Friday night into Saturday. At about 7pm on Friday evening our phones blared into life, klaxon sounding, with a red weather warning. The wind was howling, but we haven’t had too much rain to go with it (thankfully). Its still a bit blowy today, but definitely calming down – a good job as we fly to Madeira at 7am tomorrow morning and I don’t want any delays.
My shoulder/neck/arm is getting much better but I still get the odd ache and pain, particularly on the computer, and sometimes I still wake up in the night and struggle to get back to sleep as I can’t find a comfy, pain free position for my arm. Will be interesting to see if a week away from the desktop proves to be the cure I need.
I can’t quite believe that today is the 1st December, I’m not really sure where November went, and that the month of Christmas is upon us. Above is a pic from school where the trees have been wrapped in lights; when it is quiet and dark in the evening, or the calm gloom of morning, it is peaceful and magical. At home, today I put up our Christmas lights outside.
I continue to ache. At times it has been my neck, at times my shoulder, but I think the route cause of the problem is RSI through using a computer, with pain coursing through and up my right arm. Using a mouse, in particular, seems to be particularly triggering, my right first finger is often tingling and sore. I have ordered myself a “vertical mouse” – arriving on Tuesday – to see if that helps relieve the symptoms.
And, to add insult to injury, lying in bed last night/this morning, I could feel a pain in my lower left back, in a similar position to where I hurt it 4 years ago (same time of year – I wonder if general tiredness, run down-nes, a long term sat in front of a computer are factors?) so I didn’t run this morning, and spent a few hours with my back brace on. It seems to have helped, but I must be cautious as the last thing I want is for my back to “go” again – that was hugely debilitating and painful. Think I have hatched a new years resolution already – when all these current aches and pains have gone away, I need to develop a regular daily stretching regime to shake out the kinks and twists of daily life.
And just for info, today I swapped the dimmer switch in “my room” for a normal on/off switch – a simple task, but no more flickering lights.
On Monday it got cold, and Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday night saw the first frosts of the winter. I think it is the end of my nasturtiums, although my geraniums seem to be hanging on in there,
On Friday the temperature warmed up a bit, but on Saturday and Sunday storm Bert hit, and its been particularly windy, and pretty wet.
I did have to check myself earlier in the week when telling my class it was the 21st November – I’m not quite sure how we have ended up so far through the month! Hard to believe that we are a month from Christmas eve, and hard to believe that we only have two weeks of term left, although last week was particularly busy, and the coming week will, I suspect, be similar.
And my shoulder/neck still hurts. Thought it was getting better during the week, but on Friday it hurt pretty much all day; yesterday and today its been on and off with the pain. Now regularly taking Ibuprofen and also applying a cold pack each evening. Hope it gets better soon.
