Storm Eunice is currently giving it maximum effort and throwing everything it has at various parts of the country. I managed to avoid the worst by walking the dogs at 07.00 and wearing my motorcycle leathers and full-face helmet. As it’s recycling bin day and our lovely binmen come early there were a lot of overfull bins left out overnight. But we were spared the worst of the overnight storm excesses; I saw hardly any debris around the village, and nobody clinging tightly to the lead of their airborne pooch, in the best cartoon manner.
The good lady wife her indoors and I are currently watching Jerry Dyer’s Big Jet TV livestream which is being broadcast from a platform on the roof of his van at the end of Heathrow’s runway 27L.
We’ll stop watching it shortly. But it’s fascinating, in a nerdy kind of way. And there’s a little bit of nerd in all of us.
I’m also tracking the LHR inbound traffic on FlightRadar24. Watching the routes the go-round traffic is taking is interesting in itself. See nerd, above.
The volume of our local air traffic is noticeably lower than usual, there’s no light aircraft or rotary action from the airfield down the way, and I’m not seeing any traffic going into EMA at the moment either.
A few weeks ago I had a plan to go sailing today. That didn’t happen for two reasons. 1. The sails didn’t come back from the cleaner until Wednesday. 2. The sails haven’t been put on the boat yet (for weather reasons, obviously), and 3. (yes I know I said two) The weather is a bit much to go sailing.
Speaking of the boat, I asked the good lady wife her indoors if, when we next go sailing (emphasis on ‘we’), she’d like to assume the role of keeping the ship’s log. In not too many words she told me that was a less than brilliant suggestion. Words to that effect. The suggestion came from the instructor on the RYA course I recently completed. One of the best preventative cures for seasickness is to give the sufferer a job. So one girl could be port lookout, the other could be starboard lookout, and the third could be keeper of the ship’s log. I thought this was a brilliant idea. But maybe the family will just end up using the boat as a floating caravan, and the sailing will be confined to me.
Oh well.
It feels like Sunday. It’s actually Friday. But the house is full because it’s half-term. And when I say full I mean four humans, four cats, and two dogs. Nobody’s going out because it’s persistently raining. The dogs might have to make do with a shorter afternoon walk. But as I look to my right I can see, out of the front window, that the rain is coming down diagonally, and even a short walk, right now, looks less than attractive.
People* keep asking me what it’s like being retired. My answer is it feels like I’m on leave. Having the house full of other humans this week has just reinforced the feeling of being on annual leave. Next week I have a schedule of interesting activities** planned. This is what retirement currently looks like.
*2
**Tidying and cleaning
Yeah, we watched the Big Jet feed for a bit, before we got bored of it.
Our bin men were due yesterday, but rightly cancelled… not before several recycling bins tumbled down the road, leaving a mess everywhere. The mess didn’t last long though – it blew away..
I see that the recently departed Eunice is to be followed by Franklin, due to visit us in the next 24 hours.