Having read of potential “travel chaos” on the roads we decided to set off in plenty of time for the four hour drive. The weather forecast was dry, average temperature but very windy. In the end the journey was uneventful, more traffic than usual but there were no delays and everyone seemed to be behaving themselves. Rather stupidly, due to a miscalculation, I drove for over three hours before taking a break at Lanhydrock, a National Trust property near Plymouth, where we were able to exercise dog and have a sandwich and drink.
For almost the first time since we were married (39 years ago) we are spending Xmas away from home and family. We have no surviving parents, so now the children have left home, (even in their 30s we still call them our ‘children’), we thought it would be nice to do something different on our own for a change.
I remember when our parents were still around it could be fraught with controversy deciding where to go, or who to invite over the Xmas holiday.
About 2 years ago I decided I needed to do something to increase my cardiovascular health. It’s not as if I am a couch potato, I walked the dog every day, come rain or shine, for anything from 5k to 11k, on average about 8k, but was beginning to feel that my stamina was challenged.
I read up on the NHS web site about exercise and found some Strength & Flexibility Exercises with a podcast that I thought would be a gentle introduction to a more formal exercise regime.
All my immediate family do regular exercises.
My son has been going to the gym for many years; before he married he was a bit of an exercise addict, particularly weight lifting. He developed a huge amount of muscle which in my view looked rather uncomfortable. Fortunately he got over that period and now enjoys going to the gym just to keep fit.
My daughter has always been sensitive to her weight and body shape.
The quest to find alternatives to replace my phone, or the functionality it provides, with an alternative system NOT provided by either Apple or Google is not going well.
I have been trying to read up about some of the alternative phone OSs, the likes of postmarketOS, GrapheneOS, Plasma, Mobian etc. but it appears that some considerable technical knowledge is required to install and keep them working. Even when they are ‘working’ there are many facilities missing or with limited functionality – I don’t think I have the ability or patience to make it work for me at the moment.
It’s that time of year when the SAD kicks in and everything seems to go wrong. The months October to March seem interminable and I wish I could just hibernate. It’s a particularly difficult time at the moment because both my wife and dog are ill.
The dog’s problem is self inflicted. We think that while we were out in the forest he found a rotten deer carcass that he took upon himself to devour.
Have you ever telephoned a so called ‘customer service’ contact centre, sometimes called a ‘helpline’, and not been on the receiving end of a recorded message telling you that your wait might be considerable because there is an unusually high level of calls at the moment?
Whatever time of day one calls, the message is always the same; so how come the level of calls can be described as ‘unusual’, because whatever time the call, it is called unusual.
It’s that time of the year again when some New Forest Commoners, those with a property that has ‘common of mast’, can release their pigs onto the open forest to eat the acorns.
It’s a really lovely experience being there among them. They appear quite fearless and will try to eat the acorns under my feet if I don’t get out of the way. They do not worry at all about my dog - who is actually more frightened of them.
When considering a change of mobile phone systems there is a lot more to it than making telephone calls, in fact making phone calls is almost the least important aspect of a mobile phone.
Looking at my logs it is clear that I make less than a handful of actual telephone calls a month; I mainly use messaging apps such as Signal for example.
The main use of my phone appears to be as a host for several apps and a method for connecting them to the internet using either mobile data of wi-fi.
For similar reasons as to why I gave up blogging many years ago, I also gave up Android based phones. Basically I was fed up with the relentless increase in tracking me and gathering of my personal data. Google’s “Do No Evil” had turned very sour. At that time the only realistic alternative an Apple iPhone, so I took the plunge and changed.
I was aware that the Apple system was not not free of the same evils, but weighing up the pros and cons I decided that it was the least worse option.
