Wednesday 22nd March 2017

Today will sadly be remembered for the actions of a single male who undertook an attack on people in Westminster. I am not going to waste any more time describing that, or how deluded he was, or how nearly as bad the right wing idiots were in using it to further their hate. Hate begats hate, and nothing good becomes of that, both sides need each other, and without them they will die. Best to remember the heroes who risked their life in doing their jobs, either protecting Parliament or trying to save those that had: heroes one an all. Whilst all around, London carried on as normal, people worked, went to the tube or railway station and went home, while other went out to eat and drink. Its what Londoners, all people do, meaning that the terrorist's main aim, of changing our lives, failed. Already.

On the home front, it was a quiet day: the usual stuff. Get up, have coffee, work out, shower, work, lunch, work, prepare dinner, eat, watch TV, go to bed.

It is funny in that I have not worked on survey boats since May 2009, and yet I still dream about working on the from time to time. Tuesday night I dreamt I was on a ship, and for some reason could not get off, or there was some other emergency I had to attend to. And I could not find my room or some other piece of equipment. No idea why my mind does this to me when I sleep. I also dream quite regularly that I am still in the RAF, I had been so busy that I had forgotten to prepare to leave it and become a civvy, and find myself working on my final day with no job to go to the next day, and there are all these jobs to get done before I can leave. Anyway, that's what my mind does when I'm asleep, wear me out, apparently.

When we got up, it was getting light, the brightest part of the day, with clouds expecting to sweep in from the west on a keen westerly. It felt cold, and not quite light. Jools was already making coffee downstairs, so I go down, check online for news about stuff, and we talk about plans for that night and the weekend.

As soon as she leaves, I go upstairs to do another session on the cross-trainer. Might only be 20 minutes, but I am doing it, and enjoy listening to the radio, if not the exercise, but I do know I need to do it. I puff along to the New York Dolls, Pulp, The Clash and Gary Numan. Among others.

Time for a shower, get dressed, put the bird seed out, then make coffee, have breakfast and be ready for work at eight. If not before.

Main thought for the day was what to have for dinner. And for some reason I began to think about the leftover turkey from Christmas and so decided to make curry with some of it. I searched on line and found an interesting recipe, got the turkey out of the freezer, leaving it for an afternoon task.

Clouds got thicker outside, and inside it got no warmer, and in the end decided to put the heating on. I know, I know, could have put a jumper on, but I had to sit around and work, so might as well be warm doing it.

Yet more leftover aubergine and pasta salad for lunch, which I had at half ten, as I was so hungry.

Come the afternoon and I began to cook the curry. In truth, it might not have been the best recipe to follow, and I tried to be careful about how much curry powder to use. As I added the onions, turkey , mashed potato (!), tomatoes and everything, it began to taste like a thick stew. The last ingredient was Chayenne pepper. 1 tsp: no difference. Another generous shake: still nothing. Two more brought some heat, so I cooked it some more and left to stand until Jools returned and I could cook the rice.

Molly and I watch an episode of Time Team, sitting on the sofa while it gets dark outside. The hours and hours of rain we should have got was restricted to a heavy 5 minute downpour. The twins were out in it, and Mulder came and stood on my lap and then shook himself dry. I was no longer dry of course.

We have the curry, not so good as I hoped, but did not kill us, or not yet anyway.

At quarter to eight, there was international football on TV. England v Germany, from Dortmund, and what should have been a good game, even if only a friendly, was a massive let down, with it being played at walking pace. I watched it all, mind, managing to stay awake in the first half, then in the 2nd, Germany began to play and scored a belter of a winner.

And that was it, a whole day gone.