Bills Posts

We were sat in the garden on Friday afternoon/. There was a blackbird in one of the trees at the bottom of the garden. It was singing its heart out, and very loud. It was lovely to hear. Unlike a lot of artificial noises, this was not in the least annoying, it was delightful.

When I was out for my walk this morning, it was pretty much impossible to miss the crow perched at the top of a yachts mast. Every few seconds it would let out a couple of loud Caws, very raucous, I can’t help thinking of crows as hooligans, especially when there are a bunch of them together, not today though, In the distant after the crows call, I could hear a faint response, the crows were shouting eat each other. Still hooligans.

I stood watching this one for a good minute or so, and took pictures. It was not in the least bit bothered by me. I walked away with a smile on my face.

The blackbird and the crow were both kings of their castles. A very pleasant walk

I’m not comfortable in my office chair. After my clumsy efforts to change the gas cylinder that didn’t work, but looks like it may have weakened the mount, and I don’t want to have a repeat of the end of the last chair when it gave away, and I went over backwards.

My mission today then was to explore several of the local charity shops that have very good furniture sections to see if I could find a good 2nd hand office chair.

I visited the two shops in Gosport. The first did have half a dozen office chairs but none of them came anywhere near meeting my needs, so I moved on to the second establishment. Sadly they had no office chairs at all. Where next then?

Luckily, I had my bus pass with me, so I hopped on to a fast E2 service to Fareham, took advantage of the USB socket to keep my phone charged whilst I read the news for the trip. There is one particularly large charity furniture shop in the town centre, I felt confident that it would have a good selection of office furniture. Nope, one office chair, that again didn’t meet my needs.

Elayne had told me about another furniture shop on the High Street. I walked as far along as I thought there might be the chance of shops, but I couldn’t find the other furniture shop.

I gave up and spent a bit of time browsing in Waterstones. I even bought a couple of books, which I shouldn’t have done, but I may need them for reference. And so concluded today’s Great Office Chair Hunt Adventure.

Don’t worry, I’m not getting all emotional or anything. We are watching an Australian TV show, The Heart Guy (called Doctor Doctor in Australia, which might be down under, or up over depending on how you view the universe). Anyhow, at one point someone said something, so significant that I can’t remember what it was. What it did do though was trigger a thought in me; where did the atoms that make up my body come from?

Apparently, it is true that we are stardust. I can’t help wondering which stars I came from. Perhaps Betelgeuse, the red giant in Orion. It also appears to be the case that a small percentage of my atoms could have come from the Big Bang, which makes a part of me 4.5 billion years old. Where have I been in the universe, and what have my atoms seen?

A bit silly, but that was the thought I was thinking.,

It’s my office chair. The gas cylinder has gone. So the seat is at maximum depression, which means it is too low. I looked up to see if it was possible to just change the cylinder rather than pay out for a new chair. As usual, YouTube made it look very easy. Cylinders appear to be a q standard size, and only cost a few pounds, so I bought one.

Of course, what YouTube shows, and real life are two different things. In my attempt to copy the method shown on the screen, I think I have severely weekend the chair and can see the same thing happening as did with the previous one – it broke, and I went over backwards. So a replacement is needed.

I’ve done a temporary fix by using two memory foam cushions to boost my height. I know that can’t be long term, but I am trying to work out what to do. This is about the third chair that I’ve bought from the same place, and they have all failed after a relatively short period. I don’t want to get another chair from there.

The only other source is online, and this is a bit speculative because I can’t try it (mind you, I couldn’t try it when it was in a box in the shop, but they did have made up ones. I said the only other source is online. Not strictly correct, there are a couple of good charity shops nearby that have very good furniture departments.

I think I might make time this weekend to go and have a look and see what they have in, you never know.

My brain is conflicted this evening. I am unable to focus enough to be able to do justice to the blog. So, my apologies only a count-sustainer post this evening.

After the excitement of Exbury yesterday, today, I tried to do as little as possible. I don’t know if my back is easier – by a small amount. It’ll just be a matter of time.

I have been having problems with my office chair, the gas cylinder has gone, and it is way too low. My thought was that I’d have to buy a new one not thinking that it was possible to change the cylinder. That turns out to not be the case.

Having watched a very quick you tube video, it appears straightforward. There’s one tool that I need to check on the cylinder has been ordered (£19.99) at that price it’s worth the risk to see if it works. The cylinder should arrive tomorrow, I’ll let you know how it goes.

Not only have I never been to Exbury Gardens, before today I had never heard of it. We wanted do something other than just got to the shops, we can do that any time. We wanted to just get out for a bit.

Elayne found the place, it looked interesting, so we thought we’’d give it a go. We are both so glad we went. We had a really good time.

We arrived got our tickets and had just enough time to get to the narrow gauge railway. For the 1145 departure, I reckon the trip lasted about 25 minutes, but it was fun and we saw a little bit of the garden.

We had a really good walk around, and there is still a fair bit that we have not yet seen. I can see that we will definitely are very likely to go back.

I’ve suddenly realised that it’s bit late, and that apart from writing about the sudden episode of very uncomfortable back ache that I’ve developed, I can’t think any topic for tonights post. So, we could be heading for another brief post.

I don’t know how I did it, certainly not an incorrect lift. But the frustrating thing is that whether I am sitting, standing or laying down, I am pretty much pain from apart from the occasional spark. But, transitioning between those states is painful, very painful. I can reduce the discomfort if I do the movements slowly and carefully.

What a pain. Literally.

Another B&W picture tonight, this one is of the Abbey at Romsey. There is a lot of history there. But the purpose of tonights post isn’t talk about that.

It occurs to me that recently, a lot of my posts have been placeholders, to keep the internal count in WordPress going. That means that the posts don’t have a topic, are typically one, usually at most two sentences long, pretty boring for my non-multitude of readers eagerly awaiting my every word. I confess that I do feel quite guilty when I do one of those.

I have also been keeping my post count going, as you can tell I am now at post No. 1257.

The question is; when I do a “placeholder” type post, do I deserve the post number? If I say, for example, that my next goal is 1500 posts, as of today, that is 243 days away if I maintain the numbering, but can I legitimately give one (or any number of those days) to a placeholder? Meaning it could take me (again, for example) 300 calendar days to reach that 1500 goal. Or does leaving the post count off, confuse things? I know it will confuse me. What do you think? A point of note, I am not going to go back over all previous posts and re-number them. I should have thought of this before.

After commenting last night that I hadn’t done mono for a while and using one last night I thought we might as well have a bit of a run of them.

I thought the lines in this one were quite interesting and I liked the clouds, so why not?

Sorry that this one is going to be a bit short.