Stasis

Adhisthana, July 2019

Very little going on again, making it difficult to rustle up blog content. The world continues in its crazy state where there is only one topic of news, and we muse over which politician and which country has got it right in the balance between economic disaster and mortality. Actually, since some police officers murdered a man in America there are briefly two topics of news.

I am still fine. All of a sudden, blood testing for Covid-19 antibodies appeared within the Trust, and even reached the Diabetes Centre. The result came back via text message a few days later to say that my test result was negative - no evidence of exposure. Obviously this makes no difference at all to anything, but the latest government guidelines allow for meetings of up to six people out of doors, so I felt a little reassured having driven down to meet Lola II and Mr M in mum and dad's garden.

The weather was not as warm as in recent weeks but we escaped the rain. We brought our own chairs and lunch and face masks and gloves and hand sanitiser, and wiped down the toilet when we used it. The best part of the day was borrowing dad's clippers and taking my hair down to a gentle fuzz, which delights me.

I have managed to get started on a couple of LTRP jobs. In the pub garden I excavated the footings of my adjoining wall. The pub had installed decking some time ago, and laid down gravel around the perimeter as well as putting up hanging baskets with an irrigation system on my wall. Having explored many other avenues I came to the conclusion that there was a strong possibility that this was attracting damp into my wall, and that now would be a good time to do something about it, given that the pub is not only shut because of lockdown but has no functional landlord or manager at the moment, and therefore could not object to me sorting things out for myself.

I also invited Ilf to start work on painting the roof-level woodwork (I can never remember the proper term for the fancy bits hanging from the gable end roof) and the front brickwork. It was a slight misjudgement to call upon Ilf, because he assumes that if he's asked to do a job then he'll do it badly rather than suggesting it's actually unsuitable and I should find someone prepared to utilise scaffolding. The ridge of the roof is beyond the reach of his ladders, so he has basically painted over whatever state the woodwork was in with a brush on a stick or some such device rather than washing it down and checking for rot etc. It will do for now, but I must remember to choose a different tradesman if I want that particular job done properly next time.

Other than that, there really isn't anything new going on. The doctor continues to bring amusing games with him every fortnight; I play online games with Lola II and other friends; I join in various events with the Buddhists; I observe the world going by on Facebook and the news and in satirical comedy shows on BBC TV and radio; I read and listen to books and podcasts. To be honest I am not occupying my time very productively at the moment, and each week I tell myself things will be different. Perhaps this week really will be different.