Archive: 2021-07

  • Week 29: Hot

    It was so hot for most of the week that I spent a lot of time in a state of horizontal lassitude. The house is better than the flat was, thanks to not having floor-to-ceiling glass on one side. It would be better if we had something other than just curtains, that could block the direct light and still allow air through. We have a plan to fit shutters (and even know who is going to do it) but that will take a few weeks to get sorted.

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  • Week 28: Cùrsa air-loidhne

    I spent three days this week on a beginners’ Scottish Gaelic course for speakers of Irish. It’s a good idea for a course: the languages are very similar, so you don’t really start from the same point as an English speaker would, and it’s more a case of learning what’s different than of learning from the ground up.

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  • Week 27: Blood, sweat, and skirting boards

    I gave blood again, for the 34th time. Each donation is a US pint (it’s one of the rare occasions when the UK is on the receiving end of cultural imperialism), so that makes about 16L over my lifetime, approximately three adult humans’ worth. It’s also enough to run a shower for two minutes, or fill one fifth of a bath. I don’t know which would be more horrifying. Probably the shower. It was my first donation under the new, significantly less homophobic blood donor rules, which is a good change to see in operation.

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  • Week 26: Boxes everywhere

    Our sofa was delivered on Monday morning. I managed to clear enough space to be able to wrangle it out of the box and screw on the legs. The box the sofa came in was the size of a double coffin. Written on the side was the message, “please keep the packaging in case you return the product for any reason”. As if. Where? Not having a spare house to dedicate to the packaging, I folded it up and, once we’d established that we were happy enough with the seat, took it to the reuse and recycling centre. Well, it would hardly fit in a wheelie bin.

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