Sunday 3
Tuesday 5
Disaster. I have been hit by Brexit, good and proper.
I may have mentioned previously that I bought a Borussia Dortmund facemask last year (see photo) for £4 (but with £8.50 postage), and wished that I’d bought two. As we’ll likely need facemasks much longer than originally planned I thought about buying a couple of spares, just in case.
Borussia Dortmund aren’t delivering to the UK. This will be because they have to register for VAT in the UK and pay VAT to HMRC. That’s a lot of fuss for very few sales compared to the rest of Germany and the European Union.
Fortunately, one has a very good friend who could buy them for me and stick them in the post (and it would cost less than £8.50, I’ll bet)…
Thursday 7
Human contact!
Time for my annual diabetes check-up, although we didn’t do the sticking-a-pin-in-the-soles-of-my-feet bit thanks to Covid (and my feet are in good condition). Weight loss seems to be greater than the half-stone I make it to be, but I’m not complaining.
Since the Great Kerfuffle stared, I have had four haircuts, three nurses draw blood and one stick a needle in my arm for a flu jab. I have socialised with others over the summer, but no hugs or handshakes. It doesn’t half feel weird, the almost complete lack of physical contact. Looking forward to the days when we can go back into pubs and I can tap a friend on the arm to ask them if they’d like a (cheap) drink.
Sunday 10
No, not the football. Never talking about football again.
The time has come to move on and move out. I will have been here seven years at Easter, 14 times longer than I had meant to be. I ought to have moved last year; but the flat I really want came on to the market and was let within a week before I noticed. So paying more attention this time around.
Of course, last year or this the whole coronavirus thing would make any move awkward. More on this next month, I suspect.
Thursday 14
Other things need changing or renewing soon as well, such as my web space. I paid for three year-worth in February 2018, the server crashed in August 2018, there were no backups kept by them and I’ve had the hump ever since. Looking around for providers that match my requirements I’ve found cheap, less cheap, expensive and where-do-you-want-me-to-post-the-lung-to companies.
The theory of doing this is simple enough; download a gzipped file from my existing space, unload and unzip in the new space. Great word, “theory”. I have been deleting old content to make the file as small as possible, including going through my email archive and deleting attachments and old sent emails. I’ve managed to halve the space the archive took; but, sadly, reminded myself of happier times as well. Ho hum.
Wednesday 20
If I’m moving out then I need to tidy up a bit (a lot) and clean out some of the cupboards. This starts with the kitchen and all of that baking stuff I have. There’s enough flour, syrup and black treacle there to make a short parkin/gingerbread cake. Treacle makes it parkin but I don’t use oats or similar.
Upshot: I’m out of practice on the baking front. Then again I’m not supposed to be baking these sugary treats when I’ve no-one to share them with, as I’ll only have to eat it all myself which can’t be good for the diabetes.
Friday 29
In days past I used to scribble down a list of tasks for the day ahead, which usually became a list of tasks for the week ahead. This time round I just wrote the word “January” at the top of a piece of paper and made things up as I went along.
I still half of January’s to-do list to do.
Two of those things were blog posts; one of a Google map marking all the football grounds I’ve been to, as far as I can recall, to tie in with the visit of Spurs to Marine FC, the other a handy hints guide to job applications and interviews. Well, I’ve had so many… so, so many. I had one yesterday, in fact. Then an email this afternoon about a two-stage interview.
Which means that the first half of February will include a three-minute video presentation and a few more job applications. I’ll just cross “January” off the top of the list and replace it with “February”. Much easier!