Decade
Posted: Wed 21 October, 2020 Filed under: Domestic, Introspective, Looking Back, Thoughts Leave a comment »Last month, for a couple of reasons, I was looking back in the archives, and realised it’s now just over a decade since Herself and I broke apart.
Obviously things have changed a lot in that time, and some of it’s been tough, but in general it’s been positive.
Time flies, and all that jazz.
Silver Linings
Posted: Wed 8 April, 2020 Filed under: Business, Domestic, Lockdown, Looking Back, Thoughts 1 Comment »I don’t really need to update anyone about the current Coronavirus Lockdown and all the fun and games that entails. (Suffice to say for now, I’m doing fine, but there’ll probably be a separate post about that some other time) It’s generally a bit shitey, and a bit dull, but it’s OK.
However, I was also thinking this week that for me things could’ve been so much worse – and very nearly were. So as well as the shitey-and-dull bits, it’s time to look a bit at silver linings, the things that – if they’d happened – would have made things shitey-er. (That’s not a word, but in context it’ll be fine)
At the start of this year, I was looking at renting a different office – still in Milton Keynes, but with a nicer specification, some more facilities and so on. And, of course, significantly more expensive. They were still fitting it out when I went for a look – which was perhaps a short-sighted move on the part of the company, as I’d have far rather seen things when they were a bit further along, rather than saying “This is where the walls will be” – but all the same, it looked nice, and suitable for most of my needs, along with some interesting extras for being “one of the first in”. But for a number of reasons (primarily the cost, and that I don’t like being hassled by sales people afterwards – particularly when they then can’t even follow their script efficiently) I decided to wait and see. And if I’d taken it, I’d have moved in a month ago, and then been effectively locked out a week later, while still paying that contracted rent for a locked-in 12-month minimum. (At my current one, if all else fails, I can now give them a month’s notice and be done and dusted)
In a similar vein, back in November I was looking at a couple of other houses I could move to instead of the current one. My tenancy was expiring on the current one, I’ve been here a scarily long time, and in many ways I’d like somewhere with more room. (That would’ve been nice in the current situation, I’d have had space to set aside a room as a home-office, which simply isn’t possible where I am now) But again, the ones I liked were a lot more expensive, and not quite right enough to make the decision. So again, if things had worked out differently, I’d be in a bigger house and so on, but also be paying considerably more for doing so.
There have been (and even are) some other silver linings to this whole thing, but for now, I think these two will do, to remind me that things really could be a lot worse…
Bow Time
Posted: Sun 29 March, 2020 Filed under: 2019/20, Change, Do More, Domestic, Five Year Plan (now Ten), Getting Organised, Getting Out More, Health, Looking Back, Norfolk, Thoughts Leave a comment »Decades ago, I used to be highly into archery, and enjoyed it a lot, including shooting up to County level.
Then life got in the way for a while, until I was reminded (15 years ago now) that I enjoyed it when we went to Center Parcs that I went and sorted out a bow and so on and started to get back into it again, and then life got in the way again.
I’d kept the bow and so on, even though I wasn’t doing the archery, and kept on looking for local(ish) archery clubs whose schedules worked with my own. (This is actually a lot harder than you’d think – most of them are on school grounds or similar, so only open specific evenings, and usually ones where I was already doing stuff)
Anyway, about a month ago now, I found a semi-local (within about 30-40 minutes drive) club that has an outdoor range which is open to use seven days a week, which does suit me. But before I could join properly, I had to do their beginner’s course, in order to prove I could use a bow safely.
I did that a couple of weeks back, and again really enjoyed myself.
The final step was to get my bow properly checked out and serviced (it’s not been fired in eight years, I wasn’t going to try it without getting it inspected!) and that happened a week ago on Friday at a place I’d been recommended to use. Again that was a really good – if not cheap – experience, and by the end of my time there, I was grouping my arrows (at a shorter indoor range) within the space one gets if you circle fingers into an OK gesture.
I filled in, signed and sent off the membership forms the following day, so now I’m just waiting to get my confirmation and card.
All told, I’m generally feeling pretty optimistic about it, and looking forward to seeing how things go.
Into 2020
Posted: Sat 4 January, 2020 Filed under: Bankruptcy, Change, Domestic, Driving, Five Year Plan (now Ten), Getting Old(er), Looking Back, Milton Keynes, Norfolk, People, Rebuilding, Single Life, Thoughts, Time Leave a comment »It’s been interesting (for no good reason other than that this is a year that ends in a zero) to look back at what was going on this time ten years ago.
It’s fair to say that a lot has changed in that time – albeit none of it recently.
Back then I was still in Norfolk, and working in Bury St Edmunds (and I did keep the promise to stick with the one workplace for the full year of 2010…) I’d just had the first (and still only) accident of my driving career, sliding on ice onto a set of concrete fence posts, which did a blinding job of twatting the front nearside.
So in that ten years, I’ve
- split with Herself, had another shorter-term relationship, and been single now for much longer than either one.
- moved four times – and been in one place (the current one) for far longer than anywhere else I’ve ever lived since leaving home
- changed jobs more times than I care to think about (I could work it out, but truly can’t be chuffed) and been doing the current one for far longer than I ever expected
- been through the whole bankruptcy process, and come out the other side
- been to more plays and theatre things than I’d ever have thought I’d have been to
- and the same for restaurants – Michelin-starred and otherwise. This time ten years ago, I’d not been to any Michelin places – that happened in mid-2010, and I wasn’t impressed at the time. Maybe I should go back there, maybe not.
- changed car twice, and rented a bundle of others as needs directed
There’s a lot of other stuff – it’s interesting to see how a lot of the things I wanted to change then that I still want to change now, for example – and I’ll write more about that elsewhere/elsewhen.
It’s a whole new decade out there (and I can’t be arsed with the argument about whether that’s 2020 or 2021, so don’t bother) and it’ll be interesting to see what happens next.
Stung
Posted: Mon 12 August, 2019 Filed under: Domestic, Looking Back Leave a comment »Last week, I got stung by a wasp. Nothing major (thankfully) and not something I’ve experienced often.
Indeed, looking back, it’s nearly nine years since I got stung by a hornet, and god knows when I last got stung by a wasp. After all, it’s not like I generally provoke the bastard things.
It was a silly thing to happen – the wasp got caught in my hair after I’d been doing a workout, so I brushed it out, it landed on my arm, and stung me. Poxy buzzy twat.
Anyway, fortunately there’ve been no negative effects – it was sore for about an hour, and has then just been itchy as fuck for the last four or five days.
All seems well now, happily. And hopefully it’ll be another bloody age until it happens again.
Seven Years
Posted: Sun 5 May, 2019 Filed under: Domestic, Housing, Looking Back, Milton Keynes, Single Life, Thoughts Leave a comment »It’s seven years today that I moved to where I currently live. That’s the longest I’ve stayed in one place since I moved out of the house I grew up in.
As I’ve said before, I never expected to stay here this long – it was a location of convenience, a house that came up at the right time, in the right place, and was affordable.
As it turned out, it was more that it was a convenient location, a place to stay that’s easy to get away from, easy to go anywhere else. For the moment it’s still that.
It’s not ideal. It’s a tiny house, which suited my needs then and now – there’s no spare bedroom for friends to stay over or anything, but that’s part of the price I pay, and it just means I go to them instead. At the same time though, I can’t deny I’d like a bit more space, so I could take my books out of their boxes, that kind of thing.
I’ve been looking at other places and so on, but there’s nothing (yet) that’s grabbed me, that’s made me think I want to be there rather than here.
There’s six months on my current tenancy (the first one was a six-month-only one, just in case I turned out to be a nightmare tenant etc., and since then they’ve been annual renewals) and I’m going to take that time to assess things, see if there’s anywhere else that would work better for me.
I might still be here in a year’s time. I might not. We’ll see.
Ten Years Back
Posted: Mon 14 January, 2019 Filed under: D4D™, Domestic, Five Year Plan (now Ten), Health, Looking Back, Memory, Norfolk, Sleep - or lack thereof, Thoughts, Weight Loss 1 Comment »This weekend there’s been a bit of a “ten years ago” meme going round social media, and while I won’t get involved (mainly because I don’t do photos of me, let alone photos of me from a decade ago) it did make me go back to the archives here and have a look at what was going on. Which was quite interesting (to me, anyway)
Ten years ago, I was still with Herself, we were in the Norfolk house, and sleeping abysmally while also sick as chuff with a chest infection of sorts. So, some things never change. I was working in a local-government job I hated – and the post about that was exactly ten years ago today – and generally doing OK.
I did also find a post about my weight – and again, not much has changed. I’ve lost a bit of weight since then – which I’m happy with – but all told it’s really stayed pretty stable. (There’s another post back in Jan 2005 about the same thing, with similar figures to where I’m at now)
Of course, there have been a lot of changes in that ten years, but it’s also interesting to see what’s stayed much the same…
Closing The Year
Posted: Mon 31 December, 2018 Filed under: 2017/18, 2018/19, Bankruptcy, Domestic, Finances, Five Year Plan (now Ten), Getting Organised, Health, Looking Back, Rebuilding, Reviews(ish), Single Life, Thoughts, Travel, Weight Loss Leave a comment »And so we’re at the end of 2018. And as such, it seems apt that the last post of the year should be a quick assessment and overview.
All told, it’s been a good – and busy – year.
There’s been more travel than usual, with that week in Toronto to add into the bargain.
There’s been more work, but also more fun times, trips out, meals, etc.
I’ve been doing a lot of work on weight-loss which has ultimately ended up not doing much – but I have more knowledge, more figures, and the steps I’ve taken have improved my health, strength, stamina, and resilience. They’ve just done sod-all to lose actual weight. But I’m OK with that, and it’s something I’ll continue to work on.
On the downside, I’m ending the year with a bit more debt than I’d like. It’s nothing earth-shattering, nor even major. A fair chunk of it is for tickets for things in 2019, of which another decent chunk is owed to me by others for their tickets. But all the same, it’s more than I’d like it to be.
However, in a fit of progress and being grown up, it’s also now all in one place, with zero-interest ’til 2022, and it’ll be done by the end of 2019. I could do it even quicker if I wanted – and I may do so – but it’s all under control, and I’m OK with it.
There are, as always, things I haven’t done – no matter the good intentions, they just haven’t happened. I’ll continue to work towards those things, and I’m going to write more about that tomorrow.
All told, it’s been a positive year, and I’m feeling pretty good at the end of it.
How Things Change
Posted: Wed 23 August, 2017 Filed under: Domestic, Five Year Plan (now Ten), Looking Back, Theatre, Theatre, Thoughts, Travel 2 Comments »While looking at historical August posts on D4D while writing a couple this morning, I came across this one.
So it’s just two years ago – almost to the day – that I saw my first Shakespeare play in a good decade or two, which was Hamlet, with Benedict Cumberbatch in the main role, at the Barbican.
Since then I’ve seen (in no particular order)
- King Lear – twice (Don Warrington, and Glenda Jackson)
- Hamlet (Andrew
StrongScott) - Midsummer Night’s Dream at the Globe
- Romeo and Juliet at the Garrick
- Macbeth (open-air production near my parent’s place)
- Tempest (Simon Russell Beale) at the RSC Stratford-upon-Avon
and - something else that I can’t currently recall.
I’ve also got Coriolanus in Stratford-upon-Avon next month, and Lear (again) in Chichester in October.
There’ve been a number of other plays along the way as well, and it’s all been pretty damn good. I’m just surprised I’ve wedged as much as I have into two years…
Going Back
Posted: Wed 6 April, 2016 Filed under: Day Trips, Domestic, Driving, Looking Back, Thoughts, Travel Leave a comment »When I went back to Reading over the weekend, I also took the opportunity to stop off in Bracknell.
There was a vague kind of logic/sense here, in that I expected Reading itself to be solid, through having road closures etc. going on for the half-marathon itself, plus usual Sunday shoppers and so on, so it made more sense to get to somewhere else, and then train into Reading. I knew Wokingham station’s car-park is a bit of a cluster-chuff at the moment, so I went for Bracknell instead. And as things turned out, that worked really well.
Of all the places I’ve lived, Bracknell was probably the one I liked least. (I just tried writing ‘the most least-liked’, but that’s a phrase to make eyeballs bleed) I’m not a great fan of most of the area – I don’t mind Wokingham and Windsor, but the rest I could happily never really visit again. So it was also a chance to see if Bracknell had improved at all, or if I still disliked it.
First things first, there’s a whole new roundabout and housing estate on the approach to Bracknell, which was quite a surprise. I’d thought I knew where I was going – and I kind of did – but that did come up as a bit of a shock. (Even more so, as it also didn’t come up on the SatNav) I can’t imagine the driven commute between Bracknell and Wokingham/Reading was any fun at all while all that was going on.
Other than that, there’s a lot of regeneration work going on in the centre of Bracknell, which I didn’t get the chance to have a proper look at. It wasn’t that high in my priority list – mainly because I’m still pretty sure nothing short of flattening it and starting again will do anything positive for the place.
Obviously I didn’t get to see all of Bracknell, but then, nor did I massively want to. The bits I saw were more than enough to convince me it’s still a scabrous shitpit, and definitely somewhere I’d never want to go back to for anything more than a couple of hours. In that context, it’s fine – much more than that kind of timescale, though, and it just becomes some kind of self-inflicted torture…
The More Things Change, The More They Stay The Same
Posted: Wed 21 October, 2015 Filed under: 2014/15, 2015 vs 2014, D4D™, Domestic, Finances, Five Year Plan (now Ten), Getting Organised, Looking Back, Single Life, Thoughts Leave a comment »In preparation for another post (one of the usual ones for a couple of weeks’ time) I’ve been looking at things from (roughly) this time last year, and it’s been a bit odd in some ways.
There’s a distinct synchronicity between the two years, which is surprising. Last weekend, I bought some new tyres for the car – and it turns out I did the same a year ago. It also got a full service done – which I’ve just booked in again.
It’s also just under a year ago that I started doing the day-trips when I could (and/or when I wanted to) on weekends, which has continued and been pretty cool. I haven’t done one in a couple of months, mainly due to a madly busy period with no weekends ‘off’, but that doesn’t mean I won’t again.
Along the way, there’s also been a lot of good stuff.
Comparing where life was last October to this is like comparing pearls with cow shit.
October 2014 was a low point, although nowhere near my lowest. (There’s some competition for that ‘honour’, mainly September 2010, April 2012 and August 2012, although I’m sure there’s a couple of other close-runners too) At the start of it, I’d just walked out on ShitCo with nothing to go to, nothing even in the pipeline. That was a bit scary, but infinitely better than the prospect of staying working for them. I know, I still haven’t written much about that time, and probably won’t – safe to say, it was No Fun At All.
I got a new contract within two weeks though, and that was the start of the recovery process and climbing back to where I find myself now. I’m still working for the same people, and will be ’til at least the end of the year. It’s been good – and helped by being a role where I work for/by myself for four days a week. I’ve rented an office in central Milton Keynes, which works best for my schedule and environment, and keeps me vaguely sane. (Which working from home four days a week probably wouldn’t)
I’ve done a lot of rebuilding again in the last twelve months, and I’m pleased with how it’s gone.
Onwards and upwards!
Into August
Posted: Wed 5 August, 2015 Filed under: Bankruptcy, Change, D4D™, Domestic, Driving, Finances, Getting Organised, Health, Introspective, Looking Back, Thoughts, Weirdness Leave a comment »Somehow, we’re into August already. The year’s racing by (as usual) and here we are. August.
August is a funny (as in ‘odd’, not as in ‘ho ho’) month for me – for some reason it’s always been rather more eventful than others. It seems to be generally a month of change for me, in ways both negative and positive.
It’s definitely the month I get twitchy about, more than any other. I’m sure that’s because my parents first pointed out what a consistently change-laden month it was (which may have also gone some way to making it a bit more self-fulfilling) but I try to not focus on it. By that, I mean that I don’t consciously go “oh, I’ll do that in August”. August just seems to happen.
As examples…
- D4D™ got started in August. Not intentionally (well obviously it got started intentionally) in August – that was just when everything came together for it to happen
- My bankruptcy was in August. Again, that’s just when it came about.
- I finally passed my driving test in August.
- I’ve had *lots* of job changes in August, contracts ending and so on.
This time round, it looks (so far) like things will be a lot calmer.
I was a bit twitchy, as my current work contract had an end date next week – and even though I was 99% sure it would extend again, there’s always that “But it’s August, and thus could bite me on the bum” nagging doubt. However, it’s been confirmed this week that it’ll extend again, through to October (which will mean I’ve been doing this one for a year) so that’s all good.
To the best of my knowledge I’ll be staying in the current house for at least another year. That’s the plan (and renewal isn’t ’til November, so not a concern) and I see no current reason to change it.
There’s currently nothing else of major import and change looking like it’ll happen. I’ve got stuff planned for the month, but nothing change-laden. All the same, during August I’ll be…
- Doing a 10Km sponsored walk for Marie Curie
- Seeing Benedict Cumberbatch in Hamlet (a happy surprise instance, brought about by a friend of a friend not being able to go)
- Possibly another London visit, or alternative Day Trip
- Sorting out (renewing) car insurance again
And there’s a bundle of other stuff as well, alongside the weekly working normality.
So with any luck, this August won’t be too eventful and change-laden. We’ll see.