Good/Bad: Highlights of the week – 27 March

Posted on April 3, 2017 by nicdempsey

So I had yesterday off work and I forgot to post! However, today is back to work and into harness, I feel that I’m tired beyond the telling of it but I have three weeks of work before I get a whole week off and as those weeks are thanks to Easter and yesterday’s leave all four day weeks. I just need to suck it up and get through it! Here’s the good and bad from last week…


Bad

  • Migraine week and darker mornings. The combination was a kick in the head on Monday morning. I know it’s only temporary and if I compare how I felt through March to how I was feeling in January, I know that I’m functioning better but I’m ready for it to be summer and to feel better.
  • Not getting things crossed off the list. I took Monday off work to get stuff done and didn’t really get everything I wanted to do done.

Good

  • Not having a migraine this week. Given the above if it was going to happen it was going to happen this week and it didn’t. I’m not cured,  they are a problem and probably going to be for a while (perimenopause sucks) but I didn’t have one this month and I’m going to be grateful on the slight offchance that gratitude can help

  • Gin club made me really clean the kitchen. I do clean and I am tidy but knowing that someone, besides my mother, was going to be in the house as well as increasing light levels (that why we spring clean, we can see the dirt for the first time in months!) made me scrub the floors and the skirting boards in the kitchen. You’d only notice the skirting boards, the floors in my house never look clean, but at least I did it.
  • Gin Club. It was so much fun.

  • A weekend where I did things for other people. Sometimes it’s really easy to get locked into work and what you’re doing. This weekend, I babysat for friends and helped another friend with some weeding.

 

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March Recap/April Goals

Posted on April 1, 2017 by nicdempsey

The first quarter of 2017 is done. The days are long but the months seem to fly by, in March the days started to lengthen and my mood is improved.  It wasn’t a very social month, I did get to the allotment work day and Grace. Last weekend, we celebrated Mother’s Day and Laura’s birthday (Happy Birthday Lu!) at Ben and Lu’s. There was Gin Club last night and being out on the allotment more so my social life was less planned and more bumping into people on the plot.

So let’s review the March Goals….

  • Use Bright Light Therapy Headset every day. I missed a couple of days the weekend of 18-19 March and I did feel more tired. Other than that, I used it every morning and it seemed to be more effective on the days that I was at work, because I was getting up when it was a bit darker.
  • Get out of the house by 7:30am on workdays & 10pm lights out on schoolnights. Mostly nailed this and it’s dull but it does help. Even when the trains make me late!
  • Going for a walk at least every other day. I surprised myself by making this happen, it does help..
  • Stretching. Another tick, I needed to do it so I did.
  • Clean the oven. Part of my focus on the house.
  • Housework routine. I did better but not perfect. More to aim for next month.
  • Renew passport. Did not do, lost my travel card instead
  • Clothes repair. I have a heap of clothes that need buttons tightening/patching etc, I just need to devote an hour or two to fixing them.
  • Allotment
    • Finish preping the beds, clearing what needs to be cleared
    • Sow things outdoors. This is really weather dependent but by the end of the month I should have been able to sow, carrots, beetroot, chard, spinach, peas and the herbs, chives, parsley, dill and coriander.
    • Sow things indoors, tomatoes, cucumbers, summer squash
    • Work on rubbish pile and creating a compost area – this is being deferred to April
    • Order and set up shed, which is going to take some help – this is also being deferred to next month

Aside from these I also picked up two other things, the first was to make a concerted effort to eat 10 portions of fruit and vegetables a day and the other was a complete accident. I read something about a woman who does squats while she brushes her teeth to save time and while I didn’t need to save time, I started doing it. On the 1 March I did 20 squats when I brushed my teeth (so 40 in total), then I upped it by one a day. So yesterday, I did 50 squats in the morning and 50 in the evening. It’s not going to make me fit but in the spirit of my ‘add something’ aim last month, I’m going to carry on with this next month.

APRIL GOALS

  • Use Bright Light Therapy Headset every day. This is here because after getting used to the lighter mornings, the clocks went forward and I started waking up in the dark again. As it gets lighter, I may stop using it because I shouldn’t need it.
  • Get out of the house by 7:30am on workdays & 10pm lights out on schoolnights. More of the same
  • Going for a walk at least every other day. More of the same
  • Stretching. More of the same
  • Squats. Two sets a day, start at 50 build up by one a day.
  • Use up all the courgette and beans in the freezer. Rather than have a aim of ‘clear the freezer’ I’m aiming to use up some stuff that’s been in the freezer too long.
  • Housework routine. More of the same here too
  • Paint the bathroom and the kitchen. Big goal here but it really needs doing
  • Allotment
    • Work on rubbish pile and creating a compost area
    • Order and set up shed
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Friday Links

Posted on March 31, 2017 by nicdempsey

Happy Friday!

What’s to blame for this misfortune? David Cameron’s hubris about Brexit. I’ve been making this point since the referendum. One of the things he should have done was explained that an advisory referendum is not binding. Or made it binding on 75% vote. The actual vote was too close and neither side should really be claiming victory. He’s a knob, he brought this on himself. Unfortunately, he also brought it down on us…

Marine A must not become a hero. I’ve been really uncomfortable about this case. I worry that we send soldiers into combat, ask them to do impossible things and then abandon them afterwards. I really truly believe that we don’t treat our troops or their families properly. We need to do better. The Army needs to do better.If he developed a disorder that impaired his judgement, he shouldn’t have been in combat and he sure as hell shouldn’t have been in the army. But he knew he was doing wrong? He said to the others, “I’ve just broken the Geneva convention”, he knew. His lawyers and his wife were saying that he would love to be part of the Royal Marines again and that can’t happen. The difference between the our Armed Forces and the Taliban is that we have rules, we don’t shoot unarmed prisoners.

I was vulnerable and wanted a home. What I got was a workhouse Without knowing the ins and out of what happened or which charity he’s talking about, I can’t comment on this case.  There is a question though about what comes first the mental ill health and/or the drinking or the homelessness. Either way the structure of a working day and a community, could be really important in providing a way to get back to ‘normal’ and is should be a temporary, short term arrangement. If it is, I have no problem with it, what we don’t know is whether there was a plan to transistion people out of this and into a proper job and independent living is the real issue and that isn’t answered.

Trump Reportedly Handed Merkel a $374 Billion Invoice for NATO. America you really should be embarrassed right now…

Spring is here and I must emerge from hibernation smarter and cleaner. This just struck me as really funny!

As someone who has never filed a tax return, I don’t earn enough and have always been PAYE, I found this both interesting and horrifying. Why I’m boycotting TurboTax this year. So Americans all have to file tax returns because of the lobbying of a business that makes it’s money helping people file tax returns. That’s just so messed up…

A world without retirement. This is scary, I have 24 years to go until I hit retirement age (assuming that they don’t change it again), if I will have hit max contributions in about 10 years time. Pensions are a massive ponzi scheme my NI is being used to fund pensioners now (hi Ma!) and if what Frank Field is saying int he article is gov thinking, why should I pay NI beyond my contributions? Also Frank, that’s easy to say when you have final salary pension funded by my tax contributions. I have a feeling I might end my days camping on the allotment!

All my friends had some nightmare experience trying to get pregnant. My story took the cake. When this article was first published, I read the headline and skipped it. I find the stories of women who had fertility issues and overcame them, wearing in the extreme. I went back to it and that’s not what it’s about. This to me was what the article was about “Everybody doesn’t get everything”. I’m sorry that she didn’t get it in what was possibly the most horrifying situation to be in but I’m glad that she acknowledges her privilege as well as her grief. Worth reading.

 

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Be a grown ass adult and cook your damn dinner

Posted on March 30, 2017 by nicdempsey

This is a bit ranty and was written last week, when 3 people told me that they would love to cook more but they didn’t have the time to cook like I did because who had time to make their lunch? As if bringing your food in from home and occasionally making a muffin was the height of self indulgence. I didn’t snap at them but this was the outcome of my surpressed rage. I wasn’t going to post it but I stand by most it so to hell with it….

When I talk about being a grown up, I often say that I thought being an adult was going to be about staying up late and eating as much ice cream as I wanted but as an adult I realised it was about getting enough sleep and doing the laundry.

I also realised for me, the key to really getting it and thus to success is repetition. So I’m going to repeat myself. Cooking for everyday is sometimes a complete pain in the neck but adults have to do hard things so suck it up and cook your dinner.

It sometimes feels impossibly hard and on those days, if you can, go out or order in and if you can’t, well something on toast is your friend and your dinner. Adulting means doing hard things that we don’t get points or to use the word ‘adulting’ about. My entire life is full of things I don’t want to do like getting up at 6am, going to bed instead of reading the book, laundry, cleaning the bath, washing up, paying the rent, work. You know why I do those things? To keep myself housed, clothed and fed, so I can read books, garden and drink gin in the off times.

I know that the daily churning out of meals is for some people absolute drugery. It’s how I feel about cleaning floors and hoovering. I loathe it. As soon as you’ve swept or hoovered it needs doing again and because I hate it with a passion, I don’t hoover as often as I should. I’m an adult and I can make the decision not to but I’m not doing it because I don’t have time. I absolutely do, what I don’t have in the inclination. I’m too damn lazy.If you are one such person, I’m not gonna get on your case about that. If you don’t want to cook, are too lazy to cook, prefer to have your food delivered every night or buy a ready meal for every night of the week. Go ahead, no judgement from me.

Just admit it, don’t stand in front of me complaining that you don’t have time to cook. If you have time to watch EastEnders, you have time to cook dinner. It’s not a special skill, there’s no virtue in it, you are just making something to eat and chances are that if you do it often and from basic ingredients rather than ready meals it’ll be healthier but if you don’t, you don’t. Just stop telling me that it’s too hard or too time consuming, it isn’t. Cooking every day is a chore, you just have be a grown up and get the hell on with it. There are people in this country right now who are too poor to afford the electricity to run a fridge or a cooker or buy food, who don’t have a kitchen to cook in, who are too sick to be able to stand in the kitchen for more than a minute. They can’t cook, you can if you want and I’m tired of hearing you whine about it.

 

 

Here endeth the lesson.

 

 

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Allotment Adventures: The best laid plans

Posted on March 29, 2017 by nicdempsey

As I said last week, the plot is just waiting for the warmer weather to get going. Last week, we left it weeded within an inch of its life, with planted potatoes and some grape hyacinths.

This week, I was hoping to do some serious work on the plot. Its the second to last weekend I’m allowed to burn things so I wanted to get on that, but I also wanted to plant peas, plant out the sweetpeas and sow beetroot, spinach, salad leaves and some flower seeds. I was also hoping to build and install the base for the shed.

Then I encountered some issues:

  • First and most serious, Ma fell over and cut her head open requiring stitches! She’s fine (she has a hard head) but her physical activity this weekend was limited (and rightly so), so I lost my helper.
  • Second and more annoyingly, my shed base, ordered on 6 March has still not arrived. I’ve chased and it is now going to be delivered tomorrow.
  • Third, it had been quite a wet week, which made setting things on fire tricky.
  • Finally, because of weekend plans (yes I do sometimes have them) meant that the only time I had to do any of this was on Saturday.

As it was I did very little on my plot except dig over some ground for peas. I helped my new neighbour (she’s moving in to keep the plot cultivated while we can’t let to new people) take a rusting frame down and got an old tin bath, that I plan to use for carrots, in return. You can see the upside down bath and you should be able to make out where the peas will go at the bottom of the shed space and in between the raspberries and rhubarb. Any spare space will have sweet peas and wildflowers.

Indoors I potted on the Orange Banana tomatoes. They all came up and I’ve found homes for 8 of them and I’m keeping 10 for me. I’ve also sown the cherry tomatoes (Jen’s Tangerine) and potted on some of the patty pan. I’ve found homes for 3 of my spares and I’ll keep two for planting out in May. None of the courgette seeds came up and none of the Wautoma cukes, though the Minature White and the Boothby’s Blonde all came up and are doing well. Three of the crookneck came up with two MIA. I’ve re-sown some Wautoma’s and I’ll sow more courgettes and the Amish Paste tomatoes sometime in the next couple of weeks. Then I’ll start on the winter squash. Hopefully by August, the living room will be just a living room and not a living room/greenhouse. Theoretically, I can have a poly tunnel and a shed on the same plot but I don’t feel that I really have enough room, so until I get another half plot (can you hear that, that’s the sound of my mother shouting no….) I’ll have to manage but I’m hoping that next year, I’ll have a plastic greenhouse thing like this.

On the plot, the garlic and onions are doing really well and looking less wind and rainswept.The gooseberry bushes are in flower and so is the plum tree.I think that overall the plot looks good but there is quite a bit of work to do next weekend.

  • finish prepping pea beds, build frames, sow peas
  • prep salad bed and sow beetroot, spinach, lambs lettuce and lettuce
  • sow carrots and radishes
  • plant out sweet peas
  • sow nasturtiums, poppies, california poppies
  • build shed base
  • burn and/or clear weed pile
  • start prepping boxes for winter squash
  • do any weeding that needs to be done
  • indoors sow more courgettes and tomatoes

That’s a busy day and I’ve volunteered to help a friend clear her plot in preparation for growing. So I’m going to be all allotment all the time, until Sunday afternoon. I have Monday off work to recover!

 

 

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March Photos – Part Two

Posted on March 28, 2017 by nicdempsey

Waiting. 13 March. Train service imploding on a Monday morning.Leeks. 15 March. Sown in deeper pots this time.Future Food. 16 March. CucumbersWine with mother. 16 March. Before the cinemaBlue Sky. 17 March. MorningA bad photo of a good haircut. 17 March. On the way home, I think I spent most of that Friday on public transport.Whiskey. 17 March. St Patrick’s Day and the only paddywhackery we indulge in.Powerless in the face of a bargain. 18 March. £1.50 in Homebase and destined for the plotChard. 19 March. It’s starting to grow againCut flowers. 20 March. These ones fell off when I was planting them.Tomato. 24 March. I potted the tomatoes on, These are the Orange Banana TomsCucumber. 24 March. They’re starting to get their true leaves.Blossom. 25 March. The fruit trees are starting to blossom at the allotmentsPurple. 25 March. A week in the ground and they changed colourSunset. 26 March. Lighter evening and a pretty sky

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Good/Bad: Highlights of the week – 20 March

Posted on March 27, 2017 by nicdempsey

Thinking about this week, it was deeply average, I survived to live another week and had a lovely weekend but I was in a funk last week…

Good

Family Time. It was Mother’s Day yesterday which meant we got to spend the day celebrating Ma and Laura. Laura cooked lunch and we all entertained and were entertained by the boys.

The clocks went forward. I know that we lost an hours sleep and that some studies have shown that the rate of heart attacks go up after the change to BST (and down in October when we return to GMT) but I’m always happier in the summer and it means lighter evenings and in theory I could get some evening time on the plot.

Extra money. Due to work mucking about with my season ticket loan, I’ve paid it off earlier than expected, so next payday will give me a bit more than usual.

Bad

Total lack of pep. I don’t quite know why, I’m blaming PMS but I struggled this week. Some weeks just feel hard without actually being difficult and last week was that kind of week.

Plans for this week.

I’ll be going to a ward meeting tomorrow night, enjoying the lighter evenings, working from home on Thursday and hosting the first ever Gin Club, working hard on the plot and babysitting for the Baxters.

 

 

 

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Friday Links

Posted on March 24, 2017 by nicdempsey

Happy Friday!  It’s been a week.

‘Utterly ridiculous’ is pretty strong language from British security services. Do not fuck with GCHQ. That includes you Spicer…

Then they doubled down on the claims

The far right wants to exploit the Westminster attack. London won’t let it

It’s almost like George Osborne doesn’t have a full time job representing a bunch of people in Cheshire. (For those of you that aren’t aware, that’s not a London constituency!)

George Osborne is laughing at us as he takes his Evening Standard job

The public-school larceny might make you angry; the lack of effective oversight should make you despair. Osborne’s new job must be agreed by parliament’s advisory committee on business appointments, which is meant to regulate the jobs taken up by former ministers. This is the same watchdog that allowed Gove to go back to work for Rupert Murdoch, former health secretary Lansley to take money from drugs firms and the ex-water minister, Richard Benyon, to take on £1,000 a day in the water industry. Dress it up in ceremonial robes but this is class privilege writ large and made all the more glaring by being pursued by politicians who bang on about a “fair crack” and the need for social mobility

Mark Rylance on taxes and military spending. I would opt out…

It’s right for Britain to reach out to Africa but Boris Johnson is the wrong man to send. When the lovely Ms T was born, her father came to London, I remember when I asked him what he thought of London, he said that Africans could never have built something like London. Which is probably true, but the legacy of colonialism is that we don’t know the kind of cities that Africa could have build if Europeans hadn’t arrived, stole people and resources to help build that London and superimposed our morality on that continent. Johnson wants to bask in the glory of that first bit ‘Africans couldn’t do it like us’ without recognising the second bit that we didn’t do it by ourselves, we did it with resources that weren’t ours in the first place. It’s simple and complicated and will take more that Boris blundering in. I am biased, I know one very clever British ambassador in Africa, if they are all like her (and Johnson listens to them) we could pull it off but if not…the author of this article is absolutely right.

This by Hadley Freeman beautifully sums up what I was trying to say the other week.

The ACA saved our family and now we’re terrified by the GOP plan. Our government is underfunding and slowly destroying the NHS. This is why we need to fight for it.

Moonlight Director Barry Jenkins Thought He’d Fled His Past, Then He Accidentally Made a Movie About It. I saw Moonlight last week and I’m still thinking about it. It was a difficult film to watch but in the best way. Thinking about it, it reminds me of Ill Manors, the way that children sometimes have to bring themselves up. It was easier to like the characters in Ill Manors because I recognised it, Moonlight was harder because it’s a totally different culture and is quieter. If you can, go and see it.

Democrats need to stop trying to feel everyone’s pain, and hold on to their own anger.  Worth reading.

Labour infighting. I’m irresistably reminded of the advice in the booklet for GI’s stationed in the UK during the war and would like to remind Labour MP’s of it. “They are not particularly interested in taking it any more.  They are far more interested in getting together in solid friendship with us, so that we can all start dishing it out to Hitler.”  Do I need to spell it out….the Tories are decimating public services in this country and giving tax breaks to the rich. I’m less interested in your disagreements with each other and more interested in what your party is doing to oppose the government.

 

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London

Posted on March 23, 2017 by nicdempsey

I’m a proud Londoner and I come from a family (at least some of it) of Londoners. So it would feel wrong not in some way to mention what happened yesterday, at the same time, I don’t want to be hysterical about it.

So yesterday a madman killed four people and seriously injured several more. I don’t care why he thought that he was justified, he wasn’t. I also want to stress that we don’t have answers yet. So I will pray for the families of the dead and for the living and I will pray that people learn that violence doesn’t solve anything.

At the same time because I am a Londoner, I will go about my day to day living. Just like my family did in the 70’s and 80’s, just like I did in 2001 after the Ealing bombing. I will remember that one person doesn’t represent a whole religion and that people can change their minds and their hearts. (If I need to be reminded of that then I’ll look at Martin McGuinness’ funeral, which will be attended by a woman who’s father was targeted by IRA terrorists). I will remember that we don’t defend our rights and freedoms by taking them away from others. I will remember that terrorists want my hate and anger.I’m Londoner, I won’t let them win.

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Allotment Adventures: Waiting Impatiently…

Posted on March 22, 2017 by nicdempsey

We’re in that maddening time when things are starting to happen but it’s all happening very slowly..

The weather is warming up and the days are longer, so things are greener. The gooseberry bushes have tiny flowers on them already. But it’s not quite warm enough to plant out and there is a while to go. Last year because I got the plot in May, it was a mad rush to get things in the ground, this year I have to be more patient and it’s not really a core skill of mine.So this weekend, we weeded, mostly the raspberries. I said it was going to be a fight with the weeds there and I don’t know what the raspberries thought of the compost and woodchip mulch but the weeds are loving it. We also put some compost on some beds and planted up the potatoes in a bag. Aparently, you should have potatoes in the ground on St Patrick’s Day and as mine are second earlies and Joe next door planted his this weekend, I decided to get on with it. We’ve also had a slight rearrange of planting plans because Joe has put his potatoes right up close to my herbs and the raised beds that were going to have tomatoes in them. I had blight last year and don’t want to have my tomatoes so close so we’re having a shuffle. In other news, my rhubarb is coming on but not as much as Dennis’ next door, his is a monster already! Look at that!While we were buying compost this weekend, I was powerless to resist the lure of the reduced grape hyacinths. I’ve planted them up by the plum tree and while they don’t look great at the moment, they’ll be brilliant next year (hopefully)There is a list of jobs for next week and the possibility of a bit more space somewhere else on the site. The allotment committee has been told that it can’t let any plots that have been given up because Pathways want to keep them free for the plot holders who will be forced to relocate if the planning permission for development is granted.  This means that those plots won’t be cultivated and the site will look untidy and unloved when the council comes to inspect the site. So there’s a list of people who would be up for taking on more space until we have a decision and I’m on it. I’ll know in April and my current working idea is that I’ll dig it all over have a go at three sisters planting because I’ve had to abandon sweetcorn on my plot this year due to lack of space. Mother is a bit horrified by the idea but we did set up the plot to be fairly low maintence we are set up really well for the year and in October/November time there will be some work to perhaps set up some new beds but nothing like the work we did last year, so I have some time and the extra space is not a space I can keep so I can’t make plans that cost money. Digging over, weeding, planting and watering. Keep it growing things and then in October, I can dig the vegetation into the soil and cover it with cardboard for the next person to take it on. Of course all this assumes that they’ll be space that needs looking after….

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