Creak - but with added music

One last cup of tea and then bed.

Today was an unanticipated day off work. Sometime last week I pulled a muscle in my lower back, around the left hip area. I felt it tear slightly, doing nothing in particular. Other than being a bit of a grumbly ache all week, it hasn't been that much of a problem but over the weekend it really flared up. On Sunday I walked up onto the High Road to acquire a new HiFi and I found myself hobbling ion that really tiring way you get when you can't force yourself to walk properly. I caught the bus back, but really it's not that far. To be fair, it's unlikely that I would have walked back even if my back wasn't playing up. Though not heavy, the new hifi is, like many electronic items, exceedingly bulky - especially in its packaging.

So anyway, I stayed in today having discovered (or rather rediscovered) the benefits of paracetamol and codeine tablets, combined with warmth and support to the injured muscle. I should be able to go to work tomorrow with no, or minimal difficulties. Provided the trains etc. don't act the arse.

I am very pleased with the new hifi, which as well as playing CDs and having a DAB receiver in it, has a docking port for iPod and iPhone. I am far from ready to stop listening to music on CDs, particularly when we have visitors, but there are times when it is just nice to plug in the iPod (or phone) and listen to music from a playlist.



I wish I could have found a better picture, but it gives the idea.

Bush 100W iPhone/iPod Docking Micro System.

( The blurb from the website, for those interested: )

Painkillers are great

I write this update as an unofficial standard bearer for Paracetamol and Codeine. The ache that is my lower back/left hip is barely noticeable and I am sitting on cloud of painkiller jollity.

Our winter, locally at least, seems to have wandered off. This morning I was almost too warm in my jacket coming in to work. If it carries on getting milder, I may have to start looking for the new tweed jacket that I have needed since the autumn. Unless it suddenly becomes fashionable to sew leather patches at off centre spots on the back…

I suppose that if the weather remains mild, I shall have to spend a little time on Saturday planting my first crop of potatoes for 2012. at the moment they are all hidden away in a dark cupboard and being kept as dry as I can manage short of encasing them in silica gel. Nonetheless, there are signs that they are chitting, which means they need to get shoved into soil sooner rather than later. Otherwise the kitchen will be overtaken by miles of inedible potato root. They are not there yet, but once they get going…

What else? Oh yes. Now the temperatures have started going up and approaching the seasonal norm, I can think about spending more time of an evening in the conservatory drawing. The picture I posted a couple of weeks ago is still my most recent attempt and I need to maintain momentum if the project isn’t to slide. Instead of simply practicing, I shall have to start giving more thought to what I want the final outcome to look like.

I am beginning to get mental pictures for other ideas, too. Some are old ones resurfacing, others are newer and if I am to maintain and develop this resurgence in drawing and painting, I need to get some sketches doodled out so I don’t forget them again, even if it is likely to be a while before I take them any further.

Oddly, the visual side of my imagination seems to be waking up again after many years of dormancy. At then same time, I am finding it harder to think of things to write about where not so long ago I would just sit at the keyboard any type.

Cycles, I guess. Cycles.