Twelve Days in the Year: 27th January 2024

A disturbed night full of strange dreams – definitely embroiled in some sort of complex academic scandal and a lot of uncomfortable secrets – I think I was whistle-blower rather than culprit – crossed with complex navigation of the public transport system in a strange city. Around half five – so, normal getting-up time in the week, but not what was hoped for on a Saturday – emerged close enough to consciousness that A. turning on her iPad to read was enough to wake me completely. She put the radio on, and I tried and failed to get back to sleep to an accompaniment of Philippa Forrester talking about otters and invasive crayfish – it must be nice to have the sort of house where you then get to make programmes talking about your bit of river – and Farming Today This Week, most of which I’d already heard. Got up to make tea and do dishes after the seven o’clock news and before the sports news to avoid hearing the cricket scores, as I’d rather create a little bit of suspense by reading back through the Grauniad’s over-by-over commentary, avoiding looking at the score as I scroll back and click on the ‘load more’ button. Of course England will be struggling in India; it’s the performance of the West Indies in Australia I care about.

Into the Saturday morning routine, which is basically about finding the balance between doing all the stuff there isn’t time and energy for during the week – cleaning, batch cooking, tidying garden, catching up on domestic paperwork – and doing as little as possible to help recharge batteries and get ready for next week. This latter feels especially important after getting blood test results that confirm there is indeed something in my system that helps explain the chronic fatigue, rather than just malingering, but without offering any sort of solution beyond trying to manage the condition. This does leave me with a dilemma about the piles of essay marking that I haven’t started yet – do a couple of hours over the weekend to make a dent in it, or avoid like the plague in the hope of having loads of energy to get them done next week?

Down into town for the usual round of shopping: butcher for Sunday dinner (chicken this week), Co-op for fruit and a few groceries (normally also newspaper, but there’s been a delivery issue and/or a fascist plot so only Mail and Torygraph are available) and bakers for a pasty for A. for breakfast. Back home to bake my own croissants; a ridiculous expenditure of time to make them in the first place, but now that I have the routine down (remove from freezer to defrost and prove overnight, right oven temperature, watch like a hawk after seven minutes) the results are superior to anything available locally – crispier and tastier than the bakers, not as ridiculously crispy and definitely cheaper than the posh deli even if you factor in my labour time. Hector comes in from the garden with a fluffy tail and yells at us – the “give me cat treats or I’ll keep yelling” version rather than “there’s a dog around and I’m not happy about it”. He gets a cat treat and settles down, lounging back against A. on the sofa with his legs stretched out in different directions.

After an espresso (ginger tea for A.), up to The Hut, smallholding just outside town, to buy eggs and veg, stopping for chat with elderly neighbour en route. Back home for the big task of the day, negotiating with A. what should be grown in different raised beds in the veg plot this year and then sorting out the seed shopping list. Interrupted by visit from neighbour from across the road to share a bit of gossip, health of assorted elderly friends (we really do need to get some friends who aren’t 15-20 years older than us or we’re liable to have none left in the near future…), and despair over the new local group on Facebook that’s agitating about the proposed 20mph speed limit (the only good thing the council has done in years), setting up online surveys about whether people feel safe to go out at night and so forth. This has predictably attracted all the local cranks, anti-vaxxers and conspiracy theorists, so you hope no one is going to take it seriously. Hector comes down to be made a fuss of.

Back into town to see if I can get a Grauniad now – yes, but something has obviously gone wrong as the top third of the Saturday supplement (admittedly not something that generally detains me for very long) is missing, having been sliced off at an oblique angle. Made some quick egg-fried rice for lunch, wallowed in a bit of 1985 nostalgia with Pick of the Pops (yes, Little Red Corvette is a fantastic song, and I continue to fail to understand the success of Madonna’s musical career) and then headed upstairs to tinker with jazz composition (this week: taking a more formal approach to developing melody) and looking out for garden birds for an hour for the RSPB garden bird watch.

The latter was reasonably successful – not as many or as interesting a selection as we sometimes get in the garden (the woodpecker didn’t put in an appearance), but a few moderately exotic birds, with some fieldfares scrabbling around in the dead leaves and, right at the end of the hour, a long-tailed tit on the fat balls. The former was trickier; set out trying to compose a melody line for the Monk-ish piano figure I came up with a week or so ago, first had to work out some harmonies that more or less worked, and then eventually realised that the piano line was a bit too fidgety for the melody, so that needs paring back. But by this point it was time for tea, giving the cats their afternoon treat and getting the fire going – it’s a distinctly chilly afternoon.

A. gets back from a walk and we have a cup of tea, then I head off to the kitchen: to prepare spicy mince and retried beans for supper, to try out the lemon posset recipe from today’s Grauniad food supplement (I love citrus flavours so much – last week was tarte au citron), and to avoid Calendar Girls, which A. has started watching. Thankfully she likes the second part less than the first, so switches to Derry Girls after a while and we can have supper, without my having to spend more than two hours away from the cosy sitting room. Then we start on Great British Menu on catch-up (since during the week either we’re in bed by half eight, or A. just wants familiar comfort viewing, or both); I used to have no time at all for these insanely OTT culinary displays, but years of Professional Masterchief has clearly now developed my taste for the extreme cutting edge. It’s always interesting to see the changing fashions – at this level it tends to manifest in techniques (a lot of dehydrator work so far this week) more than ingredients, though I am also now googling various unusual expensive delicacies…

One of the nice things about the fire is that the cats usually join us, rather than crashing out in the basket upstairs. Olga writhes around on the rug in front, exposing herself shamelessly; Hector curls up on the rocking chair and snores loudly; Hans looks Sphinx-like and superior to such sordid hedonism, then heads back upstairs for some more food – and produce some poo, and throw up. Thank you, Hans.

To bed by quarter to ten, which is insanely decadent by our current standards; a bit of sudoku, then lights out. Awful dreams, restless and disturbed, and Hans coughing for half the night…