Getting things done

Peckover House, August 2014

The garden has been in need of attention for months now. It's not work that I particularly enjoy, although after everything has been cut back to within an inch of its life I take satisfaction in the brief period of orderliness before everything gets out of control again or the weather turns nasty and I don't go into the back garden for six months. It's a blessing that I don't have a front garden. Anyway, this was the weekend when I made a start, and managed about a quarter of the work needed. I could imagine making a resolution to do just an hour a day to keep things ticking over, but it's the sort of resolution that I know is worthless.

Not much else that is blog-worthy has happened. I have continued to do too much in the way of exercise, but have curbed my worst excesses and even left badminton much earlier than usual on Thursday. It occurred to me that I have been playing competitive badminton for about 25 years, first in Manchester and then here, and it isn't until now that I have regularly been picked for the 1st team. And it isn't because I have improved compared with my peers, it's more a reflection of the decline in popularity of badminton, and perhaps also my choice of club which contains rather a lot of 'veteran' players. Anyway, we won our first match despite my partner and I having met only a week ago.

At last I have returned to four-day working, and I have a long list of things that are awaiting my attention because I can't get round to them at the weekend. For my first day I took the garden waste to the tip, spent a long time continuing the process of buying a car (at least one further instalment will be forthcoming in this saga), spent an age on the hideous process of sorting out car insurance, did some cooking, some paperwork and that's all there was time for. Not many things get crossed off a long list in a single day, but it felt good.

On the list of other things going on: an update on the clarinet group. We had a bit of a hiatus after the hugely successful open air summer concert we put on in the rectory garden together with the flute and the saxophone group. First week back, and some new music (including top Christmas hits), with some parts specially written for me! It was lovely to play something a little bit challenging, and I may even try to fit in some practice, which I didn't need for any of the previous pieces. It's such good fun that I even imagined one day I might find time to source a new mouthpiece for my mothballed saxophone and join that group as well. Maybe one day.