Weeknotes 38 (Oct ’20): Plenty of room for improvement
We took a day trip to the White Cliffs of Dover this week. We decided on our destination on a whim, and only realised it was a National Trust property when we were on the road. We had lunch (baked potato!) in the cafe at the car park, trying not to overhear the young woman giving her elderly recently bereaved companion a pep talk. We then walked along the cliffs in the wind, had cream tea at the lighthouse, sheltering from the wind, and walked back. We could see France, and EE sent me a “welcome to France” text message. Trolls. I woke up the following day feeling really refreshed by the healing power of a long view and a walk. Southwark isn’t great for views.
We tried to drop some (quality) stuff at the local Mind charity shop. As we approached, a woman in the doorway started shouting at us “We’re full! We’re full! We’re not accepting donations! We’re full!”. We ended up donating to a charity across the road, which I hadn’t heard of, and now suspect is a religious cult preying on homeless drug users. I hope they do more good than harm, and I hope they’re not homophobic bigots.
The timer on our boiler exploded, which I discovered just before I got in the cold shower – win! The electrician came and bypassed the timer and told us we needed the boiler engineer. The boiler engineer replaced the timer and the heating part that had also broken, and complained about the electrician’s fix. Both of them came within 24 hours of being called. And the bills seemed alarming until we realised we were paying for their congestion charge as well as their time. I’m very grateful to be able to afford that, and am acutely aware of neighbours for whom that would be a real problem.
I went for a running coaching session with a chi running specialist. I want to try to run without pain. He said I was running pretty much as badly as it was possible to run, but that was good because lots of room for improvement. I like this approach!