No gods, no kings, no billionaires
The photo may be nice, but I’m feeling not. Woke up with a headache, sinus pain, and a sore throat this morning. Corona test says negative, but I took some painkillers and went back to bed. Woozy and exhausted all day. Will try another early night tonight.
Oh, and the concrete delivery didn’t show up.
The concrete from last week didn’t set properly. Instead of laying the floor tiles, the builders had to rip out the old concrete, which was brittle like honeycomb. We’ll be getting a new pour of concrete tomorrow, and a finishing surface layer on Wednesday, which blows up the scheduled kitchen fitting on Thursday and Friday. The next available slot the kitchen fitters have is 1 and 2 December, another month away.
Once the new concrete dries, the tilers will be able to come back and do their work, maybe at the end of next week. But for the whole of November we’ll have to live with just a blank space where the kitchen should be. We’ll set up a table with a portable electric stove, trundle in the old dishwasher, and hook up a couple of taps to the water pipes to make it more livable. But disappointing nonetheless.
It was remarkably mild for a late October afternoon. I sat outside for a couple of hours in the afternoon with a book and the cats to keep me company. I scattered some peanuts for the magpies, expecting that they would avoid them until we went back indoors, but they were clearly in an adventurous mood. I grabbed my camera and put on the long lens (Fuji XC 50-230) to try and catch a few shots. I’ve learned quite a bit about photography since I last spent time snapping birds. I know enough to keep my shutter speed high enough to freeze the action (pic above is 1/1000s), and I know enough to be unhappy that I had to go up to ISO 3200 to get enough light for the exposure.
However, I also know that birds follow patterns, and if I’m patient enough I can sit around and wait for that exact same shot at a time when the light will be better – perhaps shining right on the back of the magpie to really bring out their vivid colours. The light hits that angle of the garden in the mornings. The shot is there for the taking, if I can make the time to get up early one sunny day…
The white paint with blue accents from the painter’s tape gives the empty kitchen a slightly Mediterranean feel.
Solo’s contentment, not mine. This is the end of week 3 of the kitchen work. No builders today. They’ll be back on Monday to tile the floor.
The far wall has the thickest layer of player, and it was taking a long time to dry out. This was our improvised apparatus to help the process along.