Yesterday I felt quite bored. It was a nothing kind of day and I didn't really feel like doing anything - well nothing special. It was rather grey and chilly outside which is exactly how I felt on the inside.
Shirley left for work at 8am while I lay in bed listening to "Today" on Radio 4. They say that folk are either larks or owls and I am most definitely the latter. Generally I stay up late and that's why I do not feel a single iota of guilt about rising at nine o' clock. I had enough of early starts in my years as a teacher. I would have much preferred it if the school day had started at 10am and finished at six. It would have suited my natural body clock much better.
Anyway, I had breakfast. Toast with peanut butter and strawberry jam with a banana and a pint of tea. I surfed the internet and emptied the dishwasher before filling it again. Then I went back upstairs to perform my usual tedious daily ablutions. It's like Groundhog Day. Shampoo, mango scented shower gel, shaving foam and razor. It never changes.
Then get dressed and make the bed, Back downstairs. A bit more internet surfing. Another scam call from an Indian call centre. I say, "Why is your number withheld?" Then they abort the call. Christ! I am so sick of those people and it's all because of our phone and internet provider - Talk Talk. Their database was hacked into two years ago and these extremely irritating calls remain the unpleasant legacy.
I stepped into our back garden to feed the birds and later I noticed a single grey squirrel hopping about. I wondered if he might be partial to our growing vegetables - peas and beans and courgettes. Over the past twenty eight years there have been very few squirrel sightings in our garden for which I am quite thankful.
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| Servants' Bell Box |
Lunch was a chicken sandwich and a mug of coffee. I caught the tail end of " Bargain Hunt" on the television. One pair made £190 profit on a Victorian servants' bell box.
I just didn't feel like doing much yesterday though there were things I could have done and perhaps should have done. I felt bored and lazy but at two o'clock - just to get out of the house - I jumped in the car and headed out to Stanage where I sat in a favourite lay-by and began to read "The Underground Railroad" by Colson Whitehead.
I had a little walk through the bracken to Sheepwash Bank and then back along the familiar lane to Clint where I read some more before heading home. Here I watched "The Chase" quiz show on TV during which Shirley got home from work. Then I made our evening meal - new potatoes, cold chicken and hot gravy, grilled field mushrooms and broccoli.
The boredom persisted. I had nothing planned for Monday night. I watched Prince William and Prince Harry in an ITV documentary about their mother, Princess Diana and I remembered that weird day back in 1997 when the whole country seemed overwhelmed with grief as her funeral cortege headed from London to Althorp in Northamptonshire.
Yes. July 24th 2017 was for me a very forgettable day. Boring and bored. I guess we all have days like this once in a while. The brightest note of the day was the excellent news that Jennifer in Florence, South Carolina has landed a new job.
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| Princess Diana with her sons |
Sometimes you need a lazy day once in a while. Sleep in, watch some telly, relax. Nothing wrong with that. I was fairly bored yesterday myself, still recovering from a concert, and did little other than rest and write.
ReplyDeleteHow do you keep squirrels out of your garden? Is there some kind of scarecrow-like device, or a non-toxic spray? I ask because one of the last things my father in law did before he passed away was plant a tomato plant for us. Unfortunately the little vermin keep eating the tomatoes before they have a chance to ripen. :/
And I agree that Jennifer's job news was the highlight of the day. :-)
The grey squirrels in Britain came from America. They are unnatural imports and they have more or less driven away our native red squirrels. You guys can have them all back! Please send over a ship or two to collect the little bastards.
DeleteSome days are just blue! You do keep busy with a wide variety of activities.
ReplyDeleteI agree Red. You have to fight through the blue days.
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ReplyDeleteI don't get bored.
DeleteHowever, some people bore me, but then, that's easily rectified. I just move on away - out of their reach.
I always seem to find something to keep me interested, even when being lazy...easily, lazily entertained is the way to go! :)
Rather than being bored I guess I could have raided our drinks cabinet and got thoroughly pissed.
DeleteGetting pissed doesn't solve anything, but does create a hangover the next day which would soon bore you to tears, no doubt, because it would remind you of the reason you got pissed in the first place - an endless cycle. :)
DeleteNot that I would know, I suppose. I can count on one hand how many alcoholic drinks I've had so far this year. And, yes...I do have the normal requirement of four fingers and one thumb on each of my hands, in case you were wondering. :)
Actually, I thought you had hooves.
DeleteYou just can't help yourself, can you, Yorkie?
DeleteI choose to consider your comment not to be an insult...however, I'm often wrong...
I like you Lee and that's why I sometimes jest with you in a mischievous way.
DeleteYou just feel brave because you're so far away! lol
DeleteThat last line took me by surprise! Thank you, Neil!!! It was a wonderful day for me. Turning in my resignation letter was supremely satisfying!
ReplyDeleteI am not the only one who, in spite of never meeting you in person, genuinely feel your joy and your relief. We are with you.
DeleteI do have lazy days (probably more than most people), but I honestly can not remember the last time I was bored. There is always so much to read, look up, look at, listen to etc.; sometimes, rather than doing anything of my self-set tasks, I prefer that.
ReplyDeleteAnd even your "bored" day made for a good read this morning!
"Bored" is not usually a feeling I often experience as I hope this blog will testify.
DeletePerhaps you will not be so bored when you realize you have turned into a cat, as per the photo.
ReplyDeleteI'm never bored. There aren't enough hours in the day to do everything I want to do.
For me it's not a familiar feeling and often in the past I have scorned folk who said they were bored.
DeleteI hope I did not come across as scorning your feelings, YP ... I feel rather frustrated that I can never find enough time to do the things that really interest me, and that was all I was trying to express.
DeleteHave you ever thought about doing some tutoring of some kind? You can choose your own hours. I know you volunteer but if the boredom increases maybe using your teaching background for kids who really need help would be satisfying.
I started teaching at the age of 18 and finished at the age of 56 and then I taught in Thailand for six months in both 2011 and 2013. Thanks for the well-meant suggestion Jenny but I have had enough of teaching. Yesterday's boredom was just one uncharacteristic day in my life.
DeleteI can understand that. I was thinking of how much my mother misses teaching now. But everyone is different.
DeleteHave you blogged about your time in Thailand? Sounds interesting.
Blimey, not only was you bored, you then decided to bore the pants off us by writing about how you was bored. I'd rather not write a blog if I have to resort to mentioning what type of shower gel I use, etc. etc. We all get bored at times, except of course, jenny - it's just one of those things. By the way, I'm very much a lark and get up around 5-5.30 every day of the year.
ReplyDeleteSorry for boring you Derek.
DeleteThat's all right YP and next time you have such a day, can I suggest that you do as I did yesterday afternoon and go and see Dunkirk at the cinema. An amazing and at times, very emotional film, worthy of all the good reviews that it is getting. The second time I've been to a cinema in gawd knows how many years and what a joy to sit in plush leather seats watching it, quite amazing.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the heads up Derek. I will have to see what Mark Kermode has to say about "Dunkirk". His taste and judgement seem to mirror my own.
DeleteWho's he? and anyway I prefer to make my own judgement.
ReplyDeleteHe's Britain's number one film critic. He has saved me a lot of money.
DeleteMark Kermode was wowed by this film Derek. He said, "I was left marvelling that a film of such scale was ultimately defined not by its action sequences, but by quieter visions – of a man walking hopelessly into the sea (towards home?), or the expression on Branagh’s face as he stares out into the lost horizon. These are the things that stayed with me and that will stand the test of time."
DeleteIf Kermode of "The Guardian" and Faulkner of "The Sheppey Globe" say it is worth seeing then it must be and I shall go.
I felt like that yesterday. (End of summertime blues?) But in the afternoon I got on my bike and cycled up the hill to Ranmore and by the time I got back down to civilisation the sun was coming out so I had a very pleasant hour hoeing and harvesting at my allotment. Quite cheery by the time I arrived home to make supper and when everything was cleared away we watched "Who Do You Think You Are" with Clare Balding. Late night as I picked my son up from the airport at midnight after his two-week trekking holiday in Corsica. So it's laundry and airing camping equipment for me as he is back to work today.
ReplyDeleteThanks for calling by Sarah. In Sheffield we have a suburb called Ranmoor but you said Ranmore so I guess that means you are down in Surrey?
DeleteGosh that sounds less boring than most of my days. At least you got out in the car to a bit of countryside and had a walk.
ReplyDeleteBut it's a place I have walked frequently before... so even that was somewhat boring.
DeleteThat post surprised me enormously. I could not imagine you being bored. There must have been a million things trying to grab your attention and things to be done, pictures to be painted and so on. I was going to suggest that it was a dose of ennui which I rather associate (though perhaps not accurately grammatically) with a mental listlessness rather than boredom (which I think of as arising from nothing to do).
ReplyDeleteListlessness. I love that word. And yes perhaps that's what it was. Today I have the excitement of a second visit to the physiotherapist about my knee and tonight a pub quiz with a couple of chums up at "The Hammer and Pincers".
DeleteI watched that Bargain Hunt episode yesterday, I think they paid £115 for that Bell Box from the dealer. I said they were mad and would only get a fiver for it. Wrong!
ReplyDeleteI guessed they'd get about £25. Again - Wrong! You could do with one in your chateau so that Paul can ring down to you in the kitchen when he needs something.
DeleteOh well, call it a mental health day and move on.
ReplyDeletePhysio and a pub quiz will be a little change
Mental health day? More like a mental ill-health day Kylie!
Deleteboredom is good for creativity :)
DeleteThe weather definitely hasn't helped. It's been like winter down here in London! Chilly and gray and wet.
ReplyDeleteI missed that Princess Di special but I'd like to see it. Maybe we can catch it on the web player. That whole episode seems like so incredibly long ago.
I find it very heartening that you eat peanut butter. One of my English friends once mocked my peanut butter habit, saying that it's a food for kids -- not something a proper Englishman would eat! (He's a much older guy so maybe that was true in his day!)
I have loved peanut butter since it first arrived in England. I especially like it in a sandwich with sliced tomatoes. I curtail my consumption of it because I have been told it is quite fattening.
DeleteHad one of those days, called it a sloth day.
ReplyDeleteDid you crawl very slowly along a tree limb and promptly fall asleep?
DeleteYou should have come to Welsh summer school with me. You'd have been exhausted at the end of the day, but not bored! ;)
ReplyDeleteWe would have had to keep it secret from Keith and Shirley.
DeleteThis is what summer is like nowadays, YP, climate change and everything. That servant bell was lovely, what a bargain! My grandparents lived in an old apartment for some years, with servant quarters just below the rooftop and bells on a panel, with little labels telling what room and what floor.
ReplyDeleteBeing bored is very healthy, that is what we tell our children, so it would fit for adults as well!! But I agree, do you really get bored???
I agree Solveig. There's nothing wrong with a bit of boredom. We can't have glory every day.
DeleteI loved this your chattiest post
ReplyDeleteIt seems to have attracted more interest than "Yemen" John!
DeleteHad one of those days,
ReplyDeleteตารางคะแนนพรีเมียร์ลีก