2007 — 29 December: Saturday shopping etc.
Chores just never stop, do they?! As I'm nearing the end of a loaf that was tucked away in the freezer at the end of November, off I go again. And now, two and a half hours later, I am back, fairly exhausted, and in still more awe at my late wife Christa's organisational skills. I parked in the Lidl car park, whipped into Sainsbury's for the bread and various other items. Back to the car. Into Lidl itself. Back to the car. Into the other end of town via Woolworths,1 Waterstone's and a stationers to buy one of the fantastically useful month-at-a-time calendars2 for a kitchen worktop. Back to the car. Drive to Waitrose to do my scanning thing and pick up something for today's lunch.3 Drive home, unload car, and put it back into the garage. Easy, simple stuff no doubt, except when it's all so new!
I also cancelled the milk delivery; wonder how I restart that? I shall not restart the newspaper, though, until I am convinced I need or read the thing. I have a couple of cubic feet of them to recycle. And I emailed my friendly plumber to come and tweak some sense into the upstairs loo's flush mechanism. It's got one of these "economy" settings, whose effect is currently being negated by the need for a double flush to make it behave itself. (And stop failing to stop, as it were.)
I stayed up quite late last night working through the MP3 collection to build a playlist for New Year's Eve. Quite a long way to go yet, though. I've also started to give some serious — if background — thought to tidying up this place. There's a lot to be sorted and, probably, discarded from Christa's various shelves and cubby holes. The whole issue of her wardrobes and their contents. Her shoe rack. Stuff out in the garage, as I noted when I gently hit it with the car today. Stuff up in the loft. Her various coats and bags. She's not just in my heart, mind, soul, whatever — she is everywhere in this house and garden!
2007 is ending
Not a year to revisit in a hurry, in my opinion. But nor one to forget, of course. Still, my car insurance reduces by £32 or so now that I have done the "Pass Plus"4 extra tuition, so that's pretty cool. Mind you, as Junior just (13:35) pointed out (during his phonecall from a beach after a mid-evening shark barbecue) it will take four or five years to pay for itself. But I definitely needed the motorway practice before venturing up there on my own.
I've also bitten the bullet, and had a haircut! Christa cut my hair for at least the last quarter of a century (as I did hers, mostly). It may be getting ever more sparse, but it does keep on growing. My new barber (Martine) says I should call back in about a month. It costs just about the same as that now-unused cable phone line that Christa's fax machine was connected to...
Flipping heck! I'm depressed enough without it having to rain again and be pitch-black outside well before 6 pm. I shall just batten down the hatches and grizzle gently to myself. (On the emotions of grieving front, by the way, I now find myself feeling somewhat angry from time to time. I'm not sure at exactly who or what this negative emotion is directed. Sorrow is a pretty constant companion, still. But I'm happy (!) to conclude that someone who is either or both depressed and apathetic would not have bothered to buy a DVD of a TV movie. Or publish several nice new photos of Christa (here and here). Or bother to get a haircut, I guess.)