under another sun

To Edgware this morning. Feeling at a low ebb of energy, but hopping from crowded train to crowded train, reading a bit more of  A Memoir of my Former Self by Hilary Mantel. A rich, highly intelligent, and slightly cantankerous personality shows through. I enjoyed her Reith Lectures, contained in this volume. The spit of rain in Seaford got heavier the further north, and was full on pelting by Mill Hill.  To mum's had a cup of tea, then off in the rain to The Waggon and Horses. The pub quiet and post weekendish, but Steve and Paul frowning over a laptop in their corner of the bar.  We ate our usual foods, All day breakfast to share with the birds and foxes for Mum, and chicken shish for me. Home again, and a quiet couple of hours in which I looked at some SF books I had bought in the seventies, I even remembered where I'd bought one of them from. Then had some dinner and watched M*A*S*H, episodes I'd never seen and quite enjoyed. Mum creeping out after dark to feed the fo...

Up early, feeling weirdly tense. Did a few bits of work on the podcast during the day. Robin had improved the episode greatly when I got it back from her. I had sent her a bit of an agricultural version. She said I used garden shears rather than nail scissors on the editing, which made me laugh. The new episode went up this afternoon. Lovely poet on it, Seán Hewitt, who lives Dublin and steeped in the Irish literary tradition. Lorraine off with her walking heads today, and did a fair pace. I made off to Specsavers, where I had my eyes tested and scanned. When my background anxiety levels are high, I can get about twitchy about what they find. A guy I think from Hong Kong did the final assessment showing me my retina, and the absence of glaucoma and so on. He was lightning fast, and not big on small talk.  I said he was very efficient, and he said he was the Optical Terminator.  I need new reading glasses but is otherwise okay. Quite relieved, having pictured eyeball removal su...