#unblogged — Public Fediverse posts

This evening on my blog: Unblogged April, being notes on a few things from the month I didn't otherwise write about.

https://zenmischief.com/2026/04/unblogged-april-5/

#April #blog #unblogged #zenmischief

Unblogged April

A few notes on things this month I didn’t otherwise write about.

Wednesday 1
Spotted at least four April Fool news items today.

Thursday 2
So we’re due a wine delivery. You tell them not to deliver before 14:00. So what do they do, deliver around 12:30 when we’re both out and leave it with an elderly neighbour. It’s called customer service! Gah!

Saturday 4
Banks! Well actually Building Societies in this case. Yes, you can open an online joint account, but you have to get the second person to complete a printed form and post it to us. Two different variants of this today. So no guys, either it is online or it isn’t. The third Building Society: yes, it is all online and we will send you the final setup details, if possible by email. Guess who gets the business!

Sunday 5
Oh happy Easter day, spent beating our brains out over draft wills and the like documents which should be going back to the solicitor ASAP.

Tuesday 7
What a gorgeous afternoon to be sitting outside the hospital (waiting for my taxi).

Thursday 9
And suddenly the garden is ablaze with bright pink blossom on our columnar crab apple. I must photograph it! (It’s too dark now.)
Later …And this afternoon I looked out at 16 green parakeets sitting neatly arranged in a row on two branches of the oak tree, one above the other. Of course by the time I’d counted them and could get a camera they’d all shuffled untidily about.

Saturday 11
So Artemis II is back on Earth. Now can we go back to something that passes for normality and forget about wasting obscene amounts of money on shooting people and things into space for nothing much more than willy-waving. Think of the waste of money and resources; the environmental damage; how much good that money could do. And no, I don’t just mean America, but the whole world.

Monday 13
Another glorious Spring day, except for a quick light shower at lunchtime. The garden is full of blossom and birds.

Tuesday 14
Why are hospitals so exhausting? This is why … Today I had a 14:15 appointment about my back. I left home about 13:20 and found where I needed to be by 13:50. I was seen at 14:30 (so late) and to be fair then had 45 minutes with the clinician. Having phoned for a cab before 15:30, I got home at 16:20, with not a lot to show for it. Oh and the hospital was boiling hot; but people were still going around in heavy woollen coats and puffer jackets. At one point a fit-looking coloured woman sat down beside me; after 5 minutes she says “It’s really hot in here” and removed her puffer jacket revealing a thick sweater over … well who knows! No wonder she was hot – I was wearing just t-shirt and jeans and was too hot!

Thursday 16
Why, for no obvious reason, does one sometimes have a truly bad night and feel wrecked the next day?

Friday 17
Got my Spring Covid jab today. The pharmacy I go to is a couple of miles away, but I go there because they are just so efficient. Left home at 13:45, back home by 14:25 – and at the pharmacy for 10 minutes! OK they weren’t busy – two in front of me and only one lady doing injections – but they’re set up for this and have I think five stations for injections. It is a well oiled, very efficient system. If only everywhere was as efficient!

Saturday 18
Awake just before six this morning. Looking out of the window at the trees, the air was absolutely still; not a leaf moving. Very very unusual. There was a little breeze by mid-morning, but then it was almost dead calm again by teatime.

Wednesday 22
So relaxed today that my blood pressure was getting low.

Thursday 23
So what happened to St George’s Day? Scarcely a mention of it online and in the media. Yet St Patrick’s Day (especially) is always wall-to-wall coverage. And that’s just in London!

Friday 24
Sitting in the sun outside the hospital this afternoon, there’s a jumbo jet flying over out of Heathrow. And up there too a bird against the clear blue sky; looking as if about to collide with the plane. It looked tiny and was drifting in the breeze, but clearly well below the plane. No it isn’t a red kite, that’s one of the local peregrines drifting slowly around looking for some hapless pigeon for tea.
Other than that, very much a reprise of Tuesday, ten days ago.

Saturday 25
Now the daffodils have finished, we’ve recently been getting some really gorgeous tulips from the supermarket. OK, they aren’t dirt cheap (unlike the daffs; how can they do a bunch for £1?) but they’ve been lasting well, and been really pretty and joyful.

Sunday 26
Today, the first rose of summer. As we would expect on the Lady Hillingdon.Sorry not a brilliant photo as it was taken looking into the light.

Monday 27
Spent the morning cat-wangling, in order to take them to the vet for their annual check-up and jabs. We’ve changed vet to a practice in the same group but which is closer to us, because the senior vet at our old practice has retired. Saw a very nice young lady vet (appears to be at least half Chinese, likely Hong Kong) who had been recommended by the lady from whom we got the Rosie cat. We had some lovely conversation about the cats. All three felines were incredibly well behaved – they didn’t even swear at any of the dogs! – and got a clean bill of health. Tilly was said to be in wonderful condition for a 13-year-old cat, with no sign of dental problems at all and has put on a little weight since last year; Boy has a grazed ear, likely from scrapping with the cat next door; and as we knew Rosie could do with losing a bit of weight. Otherwise they did really well. Although my credit card hurt afterwards!

Wednesday 29
Now that’s what I call service. I spent the morning at the dentist, when I had expected most of the day! He needed to replace one of my crowns. I arrive for a 09:45 appointment about 09:15 and I’m seen within 10 minutes. Old crown removed and tidied up. He then waves a little scanner wand around my mouth, and uses the scans to design the crown on his system (basically a CAD system) while I watch on the screen. As I’ve said before they now have a very clever (but noisy) machine which sculpts the crown from a ceramic blank to the design it is sent. That’ll take about an hour and a half, says dentist; we’ll ring you when we want you back here; so we may be done before lunch (I was expecting the sometime in the afternoon and having hours to kill). Noreen had come with me and gone off to the local charity shops. So about 10:00 I’m ringing her, and we meet at the café for a really excellent, and large, full English breakfast. We wander back to the dentist about 11:30. Again he sees me within about 10 minutes. Crown adjusted and glued on; I’ve paid (very ouch, again!) and we’re on our way home by 12:15. So I get a free afternoon! Definite result!

Also now on my blog "February Unblogged" being things I didn't otherwise write about this month -- and featuring a conference of magpies.

https://zenmischief.com/2026/02/february-unblogged/

#unblogged #February #magpies #corvids #crows #naturalhistory #blog #zenmischief

February Unblogged

So here we are, another month bites the dust, which means it’s time for a look at some of the things which impinged on me but which I didn’t otherwise write about.

Sunday 1
It’s tedious but sadly it’s necessary.

Tuesday 3
Did it stop raining at any point today? If it did, I certainly didn’t notice.

Wednesday 4
In contrast to yesterday, today was a lovely sunny day. Looking out of the bedroom window this morning, there were two goldfinches in the street tree outside – very nice; although they are usually around. But what is that? Flying steadily some way off, across a clear blue sky, and going south was a single swan: large, white with a long neck; quite unmistakeable. Not something one sees very often.

Sunday 8
There seems to be nothing happening at present. Everything is dull, dreary and wet. Motivation has disappeared today if only because I woke up feeling very depressed. That caused me to cancel my hospital appointment on Tuesday as I just can’t face the hassle – the appointment isn’t urgent anyway, it’s just a quick 15 minute check-up which will waste most of the day.

Monday 9
Image stolen from the internet

Wednesday 11
Sitting over lunch we looked out of the window to see not one, but two red kites gliding over, very low. They really are big birds. No wonder the pigeons scattered!

Friday 13
There are days when you have lots of sugar, and days when you don’t have any. Given my diabetes the latter should be the norm. But today was one of the former; I seem to have spent the day guzzling cake and fizzy pop. Well it would be rude not to! At least once in a while.

Saturday 14
Sunshine! Lots of sunshine! A glorious sunny morning, although cold. And the afternoon was good too, although it did gradually cloud up. Doesn’t it make everything feel so much better.

Sunday 15
Only a day late for our Valentine’s Day dinner. Something simple: sirloin steak with garlic roast potatoes and a tray of roast veg (tomato, fennel, pepper, mushroom, onion). Washed down with the obligatory bottle of Champagne. No starter; no pudding; the main course was enough. Despite all, food remains one of the pleasures of life.
We were remembering our first Valentine’s Day together in 1979. It was bitterly cold and snowy; we were at my parents. We went the 2-3 miles to a restaurant, despite 2 inches of ice on the roads (somehow the buses were still running!). The restaurant were glad to see us as almost everyone else had cancelled due to the freezing weather. Starters, main course and wine plus a Calvados each cost £50 – which was a fortune; probably the equivalent of paying near £500 now. Looking at the menu, which N has kept, a gastro pub starter now costs the same as a main course then. It felt like something we really couldn’t afford at the time, but looking back it was, in many ways, a great investment.”

Monday 16

Tuesday 17
Hang on! This isn’t right. We had another essentially dry day and some sunshine. It’s definitely helping lift my depression.

Thursday 19
What an interesting day. The osteopath mauling my hand and back was the least of it! A trip to the doctors this afternoon produced two “amusements”, Firstly one of the receptionists asks me if the patient group could fund-raise as the nurses want an ECG machine – errrrr, maybe, but do the powers know about this? Then to see the nurse for my RSV jab, when she discovers the supply is out of date – rescued by one of the other nurses finding some OK stock well hidden in the back of the fridge. After witch tidying up the books in the book exchange was a piece of cake!

Friday 20
Felt distinctly mucky all day – and through into Saturday morning – which I put down to yesterday’s RSV jab.

Saturday 21
Well that’s a nice first for many years … this morning two (and sadly only two) greenfinches sitting in the top of the silver birch. They’ve been devastated in recent years by “trichomoniasis, a parasite-induced disease that prevents the birds from feeding properly”. In consequence I’ve not see them around for many years, so wonderful to have them back, however briefly. Add to that, a couple of days ago we had two redwings; they’re winter visitors and it isn’t unusual to occasionally see the odd one or two, probably in transit. Also this week we now have four squirrels!

Sunday 22
For the last several weeks we’ve been getting some really cheerful daffodils and narcissi from the supermarket – and they’re British grown!They’re ridiculously cheap; in fact I’d say too cheap. But they do give a cheering lift to the dining table. And given the recent weather, I’ll take that.

Tuesday 24
Just after 18:00 I opened the study window. It was pitch dark, but there was still a robin singing its heart out somewhere close by.

Thursday 26
Walking out of the hospital to get my cab early this afternoon after my audiology appointment … the hospital entrance is blocked by at least three police cars, three fire trucks and an ambulance, all with flashing blue lights. Chaos; no-one can get in, but you can get out. Fortunately they all backed off after about 20 minutes so my cab was able to finally get to pick me up. And horrible traffic on the way home meant I finally got lunch at 15:15!

Saturday 28
They clearly know something we don’t! I don’t know what was happening, but somewhere around mid-afternoon I looked out the study window and the tree at the back of us, a couple of houses along, was full of magpies. And I mean full. One or two went away and a couple of others joined the throng. At one point I think I counted 20 birds sitting in the tree, without any that were flying around. Here’s the proof …Count them: 19 magpies
[Click the image for a larger view]