Tales From The Crypt - Thursday 22nd July 2021

Usual hot weather walking ritual, though slightly earlier today owing to the cleaner's 6:50 a.m. arrival time.  Lately, when I've walked alone, I've done so to the accompaniment of music, which has made walking even more enjoyable. I've not been using my Cowon player much lately, mainly due to not going anywhere for the obvious reason, but it's having a new lease of life along with the earphones, which have sounded really good, clear, crisp, but with a decent sound stage.  I had thought that walking with headphones in meant you missed out on the experience of nature, but actually I'm finding that music enhances the experience of it. I wont always listen to music when I walk, but for now I'm finding it uplifting, no matter how dark the random tunes that play.

Today has been a very bitty day: I've been organising all sorts of things, but not used the time for anything specific.

A chunk of the day was taken up by the late morning visit by the dietitian to weigh my wife, as a first step to deciding whether we needed to change her feed.  Weighing her is quite complex and requires her to be in her special chair and so the dietitian's visit has been timed to coincide with the lunchtime carer's visit.  First step weigh the chair on the ramp. Next step hoist E into the chair and weigh her and the chair.  It's a bit of a palaver for E, especially as the ramps reset to zero at the first attempt to weigh her.  Finally we got a number which confirmed that she's put on weight so the dietitian must go away and work things out: we can't give E less of the current feed because it contains a nutritionally balanced set of minerals and vitamins on top of the feed itself, so reducing that reduces the minerals and vitamins too. I should hear back tomorrow afternoon.

The highlight of the day was my decision to book two one hour flying lessons with the West London Aero Club at White Waltham. Ever since I took the controls of a PA-28-161 Cadet over the airspace around Cannes and Nice in 2019, I've been itching to take it a little further.  My visit to White Waltham yesterday combined with looking back on the photos taken in 2019 made me decide it was now or never. During the flight from Cannes airport I took the controls for about 15-20 minutes (maybe more?), climbing, descending changing course via banking turns and loved it. Here's a picture of me at the controls heading over the bay of Cannes.

I'm not sure if I'll attempt to go for a full PPL, I shall just see how it goes. It's not the cheapest of hobbies, so we'll have to see how it fits with my other plans. When I go for my lessons I can be accompanied by three guests, at least one of whom can accompany me on the flights.  This should be interesting!

Son #1 got his final confirmation from Birmingham University (based on him sending copies of his 'A'-level and GCSE certificates) that he has a place studying Politics and Economics from September. Well done to him, he's found his path again. 

I spent some time during the afternoon doing the second lesson in the 'How To Write' online course, which included five tricky exercises which involved rewriting a paragraph with certain constraints, one of which was to write the paragraph without using the letter 's' (which was made trickier by my choice of subject which was psychedelia) and another - the most difficult of all - to rewrite the paragraph with each successive word in each sentence having one letter more than the previous, starting with a one letter word - e.g. 'I am the king cloud buster...' etc - and again psychedelia was not the best subject to have chosen.

After booking the two one hour lessons and doing the writing course the rest of the day was a bit of an anti-climax. I did all the usual things including eating, listening to music, watching TV with my sons, and reading, culminating in sleep. 

Menace Beach / 'Darlatoid' / 'Lemon Memory'

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