Without A Care In The World
It was quite a shock today to be walking and cycling without a care in the world. When I cycled to the Beach Terrace Cafe I was the only bike on the road and when I walked along the prom and beach I didn’t need to think about bikes or cars, it made a stark difference to Amsterdam where ‘survival’ depended on constant awareness of what was going on around me; it was profoundly relaxing to be home. I spent most of my morning at the Beach Terrace Cafe catching up on the diary posts for my blog that I couldn’t write because the HP laptop that I took with me decided to die mid week. I then went for a decent walk, spent some time reading at the Deckhouse Cafe, walked back to my bike and cycled the long way home.
I spent the rest of the day catching up on washing, chores, gardening, packaging up Amazon returns and eBay sales. I’m feeling nicely flush with cash again now that I’ve chosen the case and holster for my phone from the three options I was considering and I’m back to using only a single laptop for now, everything has been returned to Amazon and refunded already.
The thing I missed most in Amsterdam (excluding people) was picking fresh food from the garden and there’s still plenty of it. I had the last few raspberries, and still have quite a few blackberries and loads of tomatoes and apples to work through and I did my best to catch up for lost time, gorging on them all, for dinner I also had beans and kale from the garden.
My shoulder is still badly sprained, I can now feel the inflamed ligaments and after a bit of research I determined that the best treatment is ice for 20 minutes every 2 hours and continued gentle exercise of the muscles. I’m hoping to sort out a session with the physio tomorrow before I start doing any exercises. Unfortunately this means that I’m not going to be doing any training at the gym this week again, but I might be able to do some swimming. I was really missing Steph today so I did a 2 minute skype call with her and felt much better for seeing her smiling face, I think I will try and get into the habit of doing this kind of mini video call with all of the kids as they leave home, it’s nicer than text messaging and doesn’t need any scheduling.
Anna somehow managed to break a sewing machine needle off in her finger this afternoon, so she’s off to A&E with Thom soon to get that sorted, after being told by NHS Direct to go within 4 hours of the accident. I felt she could probably wait 24 hours, but apparently not. Debbie and I are back to watching Stargate tonight, we are on the last series now, exciting stuff.
