Sunday

I haven't got much to say today.  I slept badly which leaves me in a mess today.  Added to that changing the clocks and I am all over the place.  I don't generally mind the clock change but when you haven't slept a wink all night to boot it really throws you.  I can see the time is just after midday but it doesn't feel anything like that. I have one clock that doesn't change itself but I can't be bothered to change it.  The other clock, I only have two, changes itself as does my phone and my tv.   My watch can wait until I go out tomorrow. 

We had minus temperatures in the night and a sharp frost so my bedroom was cold as I like to have a window open.  Added to that the cats have started to come up to sleep with me on the bed.  Now I like a single bed and that is how I like it.  However, two cats on a single bed with me is not so good even though they know they are only allowed to sleep at the foot of the bed out of the way as far as is possible.  So that didn't help and eventually I put them off the bed but they hung around, didn't go far, one to the bathroom and one to another bedroom with no doors in between.  The bathroom one made a couple of attempts to come back on the bed.  I was cold so I shut the window.  Then I put socks on.   I did all the things I do to get to sleep but it just would not come. 

I have nights like that.  I did the alphabet backwards, prayers, and breathing.  Nothing worked.  I wasn't worrying about anything, sleep just wouldn't come. 

So today I am wiped out.  I had my porridge for breakfast although I was tempted not to and to just flop out in a chair with a cup of tea and a biscuit but I knew that would be the start of the slippery slope to bad habits again so I put the porridge on, had my cup of tomato juice, my linseeds, and then the porridge was done and then I flopped out.  I think it was only just after 7am.   I have managed to light the fire and fill the dishwasher.  The house was so cold.  I am too out of it to put the Karcher strimmer together although I have charged the battery.  I did that yesterday.  The instructions for fixing it all up are awful, I looked yesterday and it was to be my job today but that is out of the question.  

I listened to Simon King (Si of Hairy Bikers) on Desert Island Discs.  He was great but I didn't particularly like his choice of discs apart from the Chieftains.  I was a big Irish music fan at one time and went to see the Chieftains live at Great Yarmouth.  My mother asked who I was going to see and I said The Chieftains.  She was horrified.  I went alone because I didn't have anybody to go with.  Parked my Mini outside the Wellington Pier and loved every minute of the music.  I also liked the Bothy Band.  I didn't tell mum when I went to see them, I decided it was best to keep it to myself.   In the 1980s I went out with an Irish musician who played the fiddle. I loved him but I don't really know what happened;  he used to play the fiddle in the subway and gets loads of money from people walking into work in the mornings.   They used to throw him pound coins and he played for an hour everyday and got a enough to live on for a week doing that.  Then he just sort of disappeared.   I enjoyed those days.  I went out with several different men in the 1980s, worked in pubs and did all sorts even though midway through I started work training to be a stockbroker when I wrote to a new stockbroking office opening.  I was working full time in a pub at the time but I thought I had better get a more decent job so that was how I ended up stockbroking.  I wrote them a letter and asked if they needed any help and they rang me immediately and said can you start tomorrow.   I started off freelance doing the filing.  Then I got to answer the phone then they said I could train.  At that point I became an employee.  I kept a pub job all the time though but didn't tell them.  Then when I went to London for a bit of training I had to give it up. I sometimes stayed over in London in a hostel, my choice, I preferred it that way rather than a hotel, and other times I used to commute but Norwich to London is a long daily commute.  Sometimes I used to drive to Stansted and park there when you could park all day for £3 right outside the terminal when Stansted was more like a coach station than an airport.  I could get the train into central London from there for less than a tenner.  All those days have gone now.  I left my car in the short stay at Stansted a few years ago and when I got back they wanted £90 for the week.   

Then I finished training and exams and didn't have to go to London anymore.