Radishes Planted

Radish seeds planted.

I am feeling very tired and headachey, but I have some nice photos so here I am blogging.

A bit of local countryside.

Yesterday B.A. and I had our nice neighbourhood walk that took us out to farmland. One of the nice things about where we are is that town, sea, hills, countryside and relative wilderness are all only a short walk away. There are some very humble homes around, but there are also architectural jewels. Actually some of the humble homes are jewels, too, as you will see.

We watched The Fugitive with Harrison Ford, talked to my mother on Skype and then went to bed.

This morning I planted a row of radishes and then dug up a lot of dandelions. I suspect I will dig up dandelions every day for the next month, from west to east, and then return to the west end of the lawn to dig them up again. The garden gnome, who looks suspiciously like a Disney dwarf, came with the property, and I don't have the heart to expel him. It was too windy to plant lettuce seeds, so I hope to sow them tomorrow.

We no longer have the exercise excuse.

At lunch-time I hung up a lot of wet laundry outside and helped B.A. unpack our new German stationary bicycle.  He put it together and took an experimental spin. I tried it later, and it was a very different experience from operating my spinning bike at the gym. However, it certainly gets the heart rate up. We chose this model because it folds up and can be put away in a closet when not in use.

This evening I had quite a headache by the time I knocked off work. I hoped a brisk walk through the deserted shopping street would blow the cobwebs out and that worked for a time. However, we decided to drop by the new chippie on our street for a pizza, and some frail looking type in a T-shirt and no coat coughed in our general direction. Nothing like a headache during a pandemic to make you think that maybe going for walks is actually a very bad idea. However, I could taste the pizza and the two squares of chocolate that followed all right, so it's probably just the stress of writing about PP declaring itself an essential service and shilling for medical supplies that should be going to the war-against-coronavirus effort. Heaven knows I wash my hands a dozen times a day.

A higglety-pigglety jewel.

B.A. enjoys exploring, so we got a bit trapped in the back streets as we made our way to the main road. One of our dead ends looked positively medieval, so I took a photograph. This is an example of a humble dwelling (or several humble dwellings) being a jewel.

Eventually I will get back to studying Polish. I don't know when, though. The effort of memorising ten words a day seems inextricably tied to my bus ride to the gym.

Meanwhile, as British women in their 40s having started dying of the coronavirus, I have lost my interest in taking the bus to the nearest Polish shop. This means our Easter soup is going to have very Scottish sausages in it this year, and I'll have to make my own zakwas. My Warsaw friend who is now a cloistered nun once showed me the homemade zakwas she was keeping under her sink, so I understand the principle. Home fermentation is not really within my comfort level, but I'll read recipes carefully.