14°C, light cloud.
Awake at the wrong time. I know it’s wrong because when I get up in the night at this hour my body seems almost drunken. Odd that.
Sleep cycles follow rises and dips, 2am seems the lowest of the dips. That’s the time when my body is so slow that it feels intoxicated. Later in the night, my consciousness remains high enough to seem slightly awake until dawn.
20°C, clearing
Mid holiday has a definite feeling. Work is still a long way off, physically and mentally recovered and looking forward to adventures. I’ve been on two already- both involved camping of one sort or another. Now, I’m looking north to Scotland.
I feel truly alive, which is a slight on work isn’t it? I can listen to music and be moved in a way that evaded me a month ago. Yesterday, I read a Spike Milligan book. His writing has that evocative mix of irony, wit and innocent sadness that had me doubled up in uncontrollable hysterics. Reading out a quote from the book was just impossible. I finished the book thinking the same thing on finishing Douglas Adams– I wish I could write like that.
Anyway, I feel restless. I have plenty of energy and lots of exercise is the only solution to that. Well, maybe not the only one; many people use alcohol. There’s a miserable solution that is of no use to me.
20°C, light summer clouds. CK:30 miles
I am poisoned. I think it was triggered by contact with Ivy. It causes a reaction that takes a few days to reach full rage. I have furious itching on my hands, especially on the webbing between fingers. On advice from the NHS, tried an anti-histamine. The cure was worse than the illness. Saturday I spent the day with the feeling you get in the days after a cold- detached, listless and fuzzy headed. Hydro-cortisone seemed to reduce the irritation, but it still took nearly a week.
13°C, wind & broken sunshine
Amid furious itching, I used the NHSdirect website to decide whether I have excema or a dermatitis brought on by exposure to some trigger. the webbing bit between my fingers on one hand are ablaze. So, I filled in the questions on the webpages and within 20 mins, they phoned. It may be a reaction to weeding in the garden. Probably the day I pulled ivy off the window-frame here.
Not normally the kind of detail I’d go into here, bit I am rather impressed with nhsdirect.
16°C, rain.
This has to be the worst hay-fever since I moved to the Midlands. My eyes are filled with tears that fail to sooth the itching. Each day ends with a mild headache which reminds me of that concussion I had a few years ago. There is pressure inside my head, especially behind ear-nose-throat bits. Another victim would blame that cycling tumble at the weekend, but I know this beast from the past.
Maybe soon I will post a picture of the newest fungus that has sprouted in my garden. It’s somewhere between an oyster mushroom and those bracket fungus that grow on tree-trunks. A fine specimen deserves a worldwide internet stage.
18°C, light westerly. Pollen
Tuesday is pollen day. It’s coming off the grass flowers like talcum powder. My reaction is to itch & sneeze. The itching is getting so bad that I want the ability to reach inside my head and scratch my ears- from the inside.
Pollen at source.
14°C, light gry skies, no wind. CK:53 miles
Weekend up North. Saturday was I tired or was I harbouring some latent poorliness? After Sunday’s ride, it was obvious that all those debilitating feelings the day before were exhaustion. The ride went well- it felt so natural to be back in the fixed-gear. Muscles ached towards the end but nothing that would have been mended by a cafe stop.
15°C, SW winds, sunny
Rode to Rocester (pronounced Roaster) & wound through windy lanes between grassy fields. The grass picked up waves of wind that gave the surface an oceanic quality. A lovely day then. Just to dampen it a bit was my uncharacteristic lack of energy. It all felt like such an effort, and that wasn’t because the bike’s gears were still jumping about a bit. After some adjustment they were much better anyway. the last thing I will say about them is that the levers felt heavier than ideal- so perhaps a change of cable sheaths will finally fix the issue.
I have come home with that sticky throat (the bit in the back of my mouth anyway) that I get when hay-fever is bad and I react to dust on a dry day. However, that and the empty feeling in my legs is also characteristic of on-coming cold feeling. Time will tell.
Description: Trees were knocked down and burned over hundreds of square km by the Tunguska meteoroid impact.
14°C, rain which arrived late.
This is a day off work, blame backache. At one stage I had to lift my legs out of bed. These things make you feel rotten, it’s the kind of thing old folks supposedly experience.
So here I am, a little housebound so I fired up the computer upstairs. I still have some old Flight Sims files that are worth uploading. There are some compatibility problems with software that is new. GoogleEarth 6 doesn’t work properly with the scenery app FSX-KML. there is a workaround, but it’s a pain. Still, I have fixed up a file for the area of the Tunguska Event (1909). There is no real impact crater, but there is a convenient marsh area shown on GE.
The other files I fiddled with are Siberian airfields in the Sakha Republic. Some of the files are a mess of naming conventions. I don’t yet know how best to release the files. There are about a dozen airfield files in total, along with nearby scenery. Perhaps later, I may upload some pictures.
FSX scenery remains a therapeutic thing to do. I used to, years ago, get really hooked on this.
11°C, sunny & light wind
This is not the way to spend a sunny but cool bank holiday weekend. I’m exhausted and am rumbled by ominous gurglings from my belly. Yes, I’m unwell. Confusingly, for a few days exhaustion has crept up; is it stress, lack of sleep or just the unwinding feeling from a lesson observation at work?
Sleep habits have evolved this year for me. Not in a good way though, no more is the solid sleep with a very early rise. I don’t get up before 5am these days. Now I lie a frustrating hour in bed wishing I could nod off at about 3am. Often, like tonight, I get up for a camomille tea in the hope that it will help.
Days, I look at the bike in the garage and lament its meagre 110 miles for the year so far. This time last year, I had clocked up over 300 and worn out the first chain.
Micycle 