Old Year's Night

 I am writing again today because it is customary to wish everybody a Happy New Year and to look back at the year of blogging.

I wish all my readers of the new blog a sincere thank you for following me here and especially to those who have carried on leaving me comments who are JayCee, Meike, Simone, John, Bonnie and Yael, Jenn and Pip, Jennifer, and Ranee (who is just catching up with posts). I just remembered Bob and The Hatts visited too  Dave has been around and I am hoping he will come back soon and a new face came yesterday called Tink and Ilona who stays in touch via email.    I appreciate all the comments that you leave me and I wish you a very happy New Year. 

The year saw me busy with completing the Masters degree between January and June with classes and workshops carrying on and then from July to September writing up my dissertation and attending supervision with my professor.  That is all now finished, Masters degree awarded, certificate received, and moving onwards,  and I have started a new chapter in my life.  Following the end of the course the legacy is that I am feeling positive and confident, independent more than ever,  and looking forward to 2026.  

I gave blogging a break for a few months as I described in my first post of this blog and will not go further into it again except to say the break did me good and I am pleased to be back writing. 

In early October, after the time I handed in the dissertation,  I suffered a mystery illness which was identified as a virus and I am pleased to say that in spite of all the fears and puzzles that it presented to me and the doctors I am now feeling well again. 

In September, just before the virus, I booked a holiday for next year which is a tour of Azerbaijan.  This is the first time I have ever booked a holiday so far in advance and during the illness I came close twice to cancelling it.  I also had two difficult calls with my travel insurer trying to be honest and explaining things to them, including touching on my refusal to take statins which had nothing to do with the illness, and then being slammed with a £100 extra on my premiun.

On the back of booking the Azerbaijan trip I commenced an exercise regime to get fitter for the holiday which I have now been doing for three months and starting to feel the benefits.  During the virus I was still able to exercise.

In September I resigned from the Adult Education Learning Group committee as I no longer felt that I wanted to be part of this group researching speakers.  This was one of the changes I made on completion of my university course and a direct result of the way I feel now about continuing my life in a different direction.  I am hoping that 2026 will make this clearer. 

Midway through November I started to feel better and now I think I am through the bad times of the illness.   I have upped the exercises and they have now become a part of my life. 

I still go to the cinema regularly, massage once a month,  and meet the girl friends for lunch.

Nothing has really changed in my year and I wouldn't say it has been a bad year for me,  it has been challenging in many ways, but interesting for me and I have enjoyed my life as I live it and resigned myself to the Labour government that we are lumbered with.  There is no quick way out of it. 

I started attending the Women's Institute in November on a three month taster programme and will probably join in January.  It keeps me going in terms of having to make an effort to comb my hair and dress up to go out at least once a month if nothing else. 

I had a six months relationship from January to July with a man 20 years younger than me and that bucked me up no end and I enjoyed every minute of it, even the day he decided that he was going to up and leave in the middle of a coffee and "start a new life" leaving me,  and the man on the next table,  bemused and amused respectively. 

I heard from him over  Christmas as readers will know so no more to be said today on that.  I am unlikely to be doing very much with him this year but the odd coffee and conversation now and again I will not object to.  He is a fine person and I have no quarrels with him.  What is past is past.  He made me feel human again and that new relationships are not just for the young. 

So that is just about it.  If I think of anything else in the meantime I will add it as an edit. 

Have a great Old Year's Night.  I will be in bed usual time and for tomorrow I wish you all a very Happy New Year.

Daily events

I stayed in all day yesterday.  By that I mean I didn't go anywhere in the car so didn't get a paper. I lived without it and today is here again.  

I spent an hour in the garden and completely filled the brown bin which was already almost full because it wasn't collected on the last collection day before Christmas.  I am doing a bramble clearance in the border which hasn't been done since Covid lockdowns when I used it as my outdoor activity at that time.  I am slowly but surely getting right the way along the border by the wall and once I get to the end I will go back to the beginning and give it a second go.  It is a bit like painting the Forth Road Bridge, once you finish you start all over again. 

I then did another hour on the jigsaw

Late afternoon I went outside to do my exercises dressed in hat and coat and gloves and then spent a further half hour outside just before dusk.

The late afternoon around about dusk is one of my favourite times of the day and I like to be outside at that time enjoying the sunset and the fresh air.  

Whilst watching television, below,  I started a new kind of floor exercise which hopefully will enable me to sit back on my heels, the ability for which I have lost.  With quadricep exercises I should be able to achieve this in about six months or sooner if lucky.  I also improved upon the getting down and getting up and achieved a slightly more "finished"  version of this procedure.   My legs are getting stronger.   I was able to do these exercises whilst watching the following Netflix documentary on Jodi Hildebrandt.  Read on.  

In the evening I watched on Netflix the story of Jodi Hildebrandt the LDS evil child molestor who was at all times in total denial about what she was, what she had done wrong, and announced that she will carry on doing in prison,  a fraud, an abuser of the young and adults, out to make money and just plain evil religious controller.  I agree with the prosecution and all concerned in the police operation that she will do it all again if she is let out and we heard her saying that in prison she intends to continue to preach the voice of the Lord and continue her work.  I hope she is put in isolation as the danger that she is and given a taste of her own medicine that she used to dole out to children tied up and locked in rooms alone. 

I then watched again the story of the Red Army Faction (RAF), the Stasi, and the high profile assasinations after re-unification of Germany.  I have in fact seen this before but could not remember it so clearly and believe that I probably did not concentrate on reading the subtitles last time - the whole series is in German.  I remember the assassination of the Deutsche Bank head but not so much that of Rohwedder, the head of Treuhandanstadt which was a state department responsible for the re-privatision of the state owned companies of the GDR.  It was always believed and claimed that the RAF (Red Army Faction) were responsible for these assassinations but it now believed that the Stasi were more likely to have been responsible.  The Stasi felt betrayed by the re-unification of Germany and they had the expertise by way of military and expert staff to carry out these assassinations that the RAF never had.   It is very interesting viewing for me and I have one further episode to watch tonight.

Today is very bright and frosty and I look forward to the day ahead of me.  

Health and puzzles

This is the jigsaw,  Flower Market in Amsterdam, which is on the go at the moment.  I have now finished all the flower section and top greenery sections.  It is a 1000 piece and is a great one to do.  Just tricky enough to be a challenge but not so tricky to be frustrating.  The houses await and they are all very similar so another challenging part of the whole. 

Yesterday I went out for some vitamin
C based foods and came back with tomato juice from which I can get most of my daily needs plus green peppers, high in C.  I am not fond of citrus fruits.  I have half an apple a day.   I realised that my extra dry skin is possibly due to not enough C vitamin.  I read that this can quickly be rectified within weeks if not days so here goes. 

I think the latter part of 2025 has been about health and fitness and I will carry this on now as fortunately the exercise has become part of my daily routine and the diet has improved a lot since October and the mystery illness.  Daily life, tongue, hands, nails,  feet, skin, visible things, did not feature in the doctors visits just blood tests and they were supposed to hold the secrets to my health, good or bad.  The verdict each time was "nothing abnormal found".  I am glad medicine advanced to include the blood tests but I wish that the advances had not thrown everything else out with the bathwater.  

I see that the latest breakthrough in cancer cure is a drug given to dogs to kill parasites.  I hope this is the cancer breakthrough we have been waiting for.

It is a shame that in all the blood tests one is frequently called in for vitamins are not part of the normal process of testing and one practically has to beg for vitamin tests apart from B12 which is in the normal blood test.

I did my exercises yesterday, cleaned the oven which necessitated getting down on the floor and up again and this time for the task in the flesh so to speak rather than in exercise conditions.  I found the hard floor not nearly so pleasant as the carpet for this but I did at least manage to get down and then up although it is as yet not done with swan like ease or elegance.

The sun is shining, I have had my tomato juice so the day awaits.  I have done Wordle, Codeword and More Wordle.  

Payments and Love

Another day closer to Britain getting back to its normal.  It does feel like a Sunday which is something at least.  I don't know whether it will be like a Sunday for my brother though, probably not so I will find myself here all day.  It is a grey day but not so cold as it has been so heating in the house has returned to normal and no heat in the bedroom.  I used an electric oil filled radiator for two nights when the temperature dropped below freezing. It was Christmas after all.

I heard from the "date" man on Christmas Day when he wanted a chat on the phone.  I carried on with texting him during the day but no chat.  I didn't feel in the mood for it.  I needed to think a bit about him contacting me before doing anything.  Yesterday he got in touch again and we talked a real conversation talk on the phone, as opposed to texting.  I had already decided in the summer that I would forget about the day he walked off and if I ever saw him again I would act as if nothing had happened.  Much better than having a row and, after all, he did give me a good six months of seeing him and plenty of poetry material which I needed at the time.  One of the poems in my dissertation was about the fateful day when he walked off.   

Anyway it was good to talk yesterday and we just carried on where we left off and I put his behaviour in the summer down to a kind of mid-life crisis that he is and was going through.  He said yesterday that he doesn't know who he is anymore which is sort of quite sad and I think it is an indicator of the crisis he is going through which we probably all come up against at some time in our lives.  In that he is 20 years younger than me it is not surprising that he has not faced this before.  He said it was his first Christmas completely alone and he had "got through it".  Being one who has had 7 Christmases alone I was inclined to say something a bit cynical but refrained and talked to him about how I cope by actually not thinking it is Christmas as far as I am concerned and just leaving it to those who have families.   

We agreed that we would meet up soon and that sounded fine to me and he is considering returning to some of the classes we used to go to (I still go but he dropped out) and I told him that is good because he is missed by everybody.  I hope he carries that through as he is fun to be with when he is around.   I am starting to wonder what 2026 has in store for me. 

Talking of dissertation, I found my Masters certificate in the garage yesterday.  Clearly the postman had been and as the envelope was marked "do not bend" he had been unable to put it through the door so kindly laid it flat in my garage.  I now have the proof of the two years I spent studying.  I am currently a bit in denial about it all and clearing out a lot of the stuff (books) I accumulated during those two years by giving them away and wanting nothing to do with them.  Strange kind of reaction but some of the books I can't even bear to touch.  I have been earnestly saving up too and having completely no-spend-months, other than essentials, in order to fill the gap in my savings caused by my university fees and to accumulate something towards paying for my holiday next year.  It is coming along but I have just paid my tax bill and there is always something to pay out. 

Eat well

 Hi, it is that time of year when it is difficult to know what day of the week it is.  I can confirm that it is Saturday and the date is 27th December.   

I enjoyed yesterday because I had human contact when Sue came round and we enjoyed a glass of sherry and a chat.  Much as I was happy on my own on Christmas Day (I didn't post that day deliberately because I didn't want to fret that I had no mates) I did relish her visit and sitting by the fire with some normality with another human in the room to have conversation with.  Sue used to live in this house but moved to the barn next door some years back.  I didn't buy the house off her because she had sold to an airline pilot who used to commute to Heathrow and did long-haul and worked three days a week which was enough to earn a good living.  He was actually hardly ever here and had a girlfriend who was probably here on her own a lot of the time.  Then he got a new girlfriend and she didn't want to live here because he had lived here with another girl so they moved and sold it and I was the buyer.  In between time the house stood empty.  It stood empty for two years because nobody wanted it until I arrived one Sunday afternoon with Peter who knew it was for sale and we looked at it from the outside (empty) and then arranged a viewing. I fell in love with the peaceful garden.    I  secretly viewed it three times and then made an offer which was accepted.  It will be a hard house to sell and I was mad to buy it however such is life and I am probably stuck with it.  My mother, had she been alive when I bought it, would have told me not to.  It is claylump, a non-standard material although common around here, and as far as mortgage companies go they don't like lending on them.  It is listed and 16th century.  I have spent nothing on it, apart from endless maintenance, and the interior is as it was when I moved in including all the carpets that the airline pilot left, Sue's kitchen that is 40 years old put in by her father, and the curtains the airline pilot brought back from India.   The only thing I changed in the house was the stairs by getting my builder to replace the uneven steps,  which incidentally revealed themselves to be made from a mixture of orange boxes and wood offcuts when we removed the carpet covering them, with an even set of steps in a kind of pine which I painted in bright colours.  Sue admired them yesterday because she hadn't noticed the paint before although I am sure she has seen them.  She and her husband brought up their family here and they did the restoration and then restored the barn that they moved into.  I like Sue, she is independent and doesn't care that I am the only person in the road who still speaks to her.  This is due to her trying for planning permission to build a house in her yard last year.  The people all got very stroppy about this and now she and her husband are excluded from everything in the village with a great deal of hostility.  Odd how people can be especially when hunting in packs.  I have managed to  remain friends with all of them and Sue and people accept it but their minds are not for turning and they continue to ignore her.  Sue is not bothered by any of this.  Her husband continues in his garden and doing his own thing.  She had left him yesterday watching Norwich City on the tv when she came to see me.  Norwich have now managed to string together three home wins under the new manager so there is some hope that they may escape the drop.  It is a strange world how humans are with each other I find.  I have no difficulty in remaining friends with everyone here and Sue and I think it rather funny and the people she has known for years and years suddenly not talking to her because she wanted to build a house.  She knows that I also objected to her house building plan but even there we are able to remain friends about it.  I did not send in any objection to the Planning Authority however and those that did find their letters, of course, all published on the local authority website.   The cake is very nice and moist as usual and as good as my mother used to make.  She is off to Tenerife in a couple of weeks time to get some sun.   She was in a bad road accident near here a couple of years ago when a local woman went straight over a crossroad and knocked Sue into a ditch. She was airlifted to hospital.   She lived but the result is she now has a bad back.  I suggested massage and exercise.  We went through what I am doing and I directed her to You Tube.  The doctor has put her on a physio waiting list but they take months before you see anyone.  I am surprised at the attitude of some to massage, Sue didn't seem keen,  and I suppose I am just the freaky one who swears by it for health.  Not that it has done a great deal for me in that I still need to exercise to get up off the ground and I still find illness can creep in like in October but taking care not to drink alcohol (I don't count a glass of sherry - a drink to be sociable I will still do) and not to miss out on greens must help.  The state of the nation's health has deteriorated so much and the consumption of vegetables is about a third of what it was when we were growing up in the '50s.  I mean you never see a Master Chef cutting into a cabbage do you?  Eat your greens.   

Knives Out

It is very frosty this morning which isn't surprising after the cold day yesterday with the biting easterly wind.  In spite of that I was still able to do my exercises outside because the sun was surprisingly warm and with a little bit of shelter from the wind and the warmth of doing the exercises all was well.

In the afternoon of Christmas Day I participated in the WEA (Workers Educational Association) 2 hour session on line via Zoom.  This live event was hosted by a lady in Bedfordshire and 28 people participated.  She had been advised that over 100 people had registered.  28 was a good number and it was probably a blessing that not all 100 people had turned up.  I suppose as it was a free event some registered not knowing whether they would actually be able to participate or not.  

I wasn't sure what to expect but it turned out to be a look at the 12 days of Christmas from a historic cookery point of view, the lady being a cookery tutor for the WEA. Mrs Beeton's recipes from the 1930s were referred to quite a bit which struck a chord with me because my mother often cooked from Mrs Beeton recipes and I still refer to Mrs Beeton occasionally as I have my mum's old copy. 

The tutor was quite fun and pitched it at the right, chatty level and we communicated with her and each other via the chat facility rather than calling out.  Of the 28 in attendance several I think must have been very shy because only 8 of us had our cameras turned on.  

That took up two hours between 3 and 5 and at the end I went to prepare my steak for my tea.  That went well and I then watched the first two episodes of Knives Out with Daniel Craig which I remember seeing before quite a long time ago.  I watched the third episode a few nights ago.  I watched Goodbye June with Tim Spall and Helen Mirren and Kate Winslet, with Winslet in her first directing role.  She directed and was in it.   I turned off before the end as it was not particularly to my liking and had many flaws which irritated me.  They may not be an irritation to others so I won't go into it.  I don't wish to be torn apart here.

I started my latest jigsaw in the early afternoon and got hooked on that and it will keep me occupied for about an hour a day (I limit myself) for a week or two.  It is the Amsterdam Flower Market scene and a  Ravensburger,  naturally,  a good find in the charity shop last week.  

I also did some further de-cluttering and cleared an item out of my kitchen that needed to go into the rubbish.    

All in all a good day and useful things achieved.  I also did the floor exercises in the evening which cannot be done outside.  I am improving the look of me getting up off the floor.  I am now concentrating on getting DOWN to the floor without holding on to anything.  Much more difficult than I thought. 

All in all a good day.   

Today I will light the fire early as Sue is coming round with the Christmas cake and we are having a glass of sherry.  

Christmas Eve

When you are spending Christmas Day on your own and you have to tell people when they ask you it reminded me of the reaction some people have to a death - they don't know what to say to you!  I know now why my mother used to fib about what she was doing over Christmas.  It happens over and over again, that people just expect you to "be doing something over Christmas".  Well I am not.  I am sure there must be many of us who "are not" and are perfectly happy with the situation.   I also will not be giving any presents nor receiving any.  And that is ok too.  My brothers don't exchange presents and announced this to me some years ago so I stopped too and that is just about it for me as far as presents ever went after Mum died and later my ex left.  

Now the only things I do are neighbourly and concern the people who live around me and who help each other during the year.  My neighbour Sue is coming round on Boxing Day with a Christmas cake that she has baked for me and we are having sherry together.  We arranged this the other day.  My neighbour David is cat sitting for some friends in Suffolk so he has been round and had a chat and now disappeared until next week.  (David also looks after my cats when I go away). 

Chris and John across the road have been round and on the phone because they are worried about me being alone on Christmas Day but are now reassured that I will be ok following a further phone call from Chris yesterday.  The are going to the next village to be with their daughter.   John muttered that he would rather be home than in a house with 10 people and a lot of noise.  He is 86. 

So now that I have convinced everybody I will be ok we can all relax!

Yesterday felt more like Christmas Eve than today does.  I have put the bin out and the binmen's Christmas Box so that is the job done for today. Hopefully I will see the postman to give him his. 

 I didn't get out for any milk yesterday so am still heading for porridge with water for the next few days unless I get into a supermarket today.  I only drink Soya milk and it is not so easy to get in the villages.  Yesterday I got to the bakery and got rolls and mince pies but abandoned Waitrose visit because I could see that the roads were jammed and the car park jammed so carried on round the roundabout and came home.  So I didn't get a paper either.

Last night I tried  again with The Great Flood  but still could not get into it at all and a woman carrying a child too heavy for her through a flood up a block of flats and turning down help from a man who offered to carry him for her does not make good viewing panting away (even in Korean with subtitles).  It was unpleasant and went on for too long with the huffing and puffing in the water and all the stairs going up and all I wanted to shout was for God's sake give the child to the man.  Then she appeared to be having to give the child up for some experiment (it is a scifi movie) and next I see her back in a flooded flat about to, yes you guessed it, pick him up again, and I was totally lost and done for.  I turned over.

I then went to bed and started one of the books that I picked up from the charity shop yesterday when I went to the bakery.

This morning is bright and good for a day of exercises, relaxation, more exercises and who knows, I might even get into Waitrose.  My friend Christine is ringing me tonight for some normality after a day at the 'hospice'  where her husband is on end of life and in a home  (hospital full and hospice full so he has been shipped out to a home which is being paid for by NHS under scheme where if NHS can't care for you then they have to pay to put you in a home) where the staff are good but the facilities terrible and she has whats app'd me to say can she ring me tonight for some normality.  Christine is also childless and lovely and on her own, apart from the hospice visits which have been going on for weeks while husband has morphine pumped into him.

That's it for now.