31 July 2023
Cables. I have so many [expletive] cables. But not the right one in the right place at the right time. My mobile is showing signs of, as Chris and I refer to it, “piece of shit status”. It’s just over three years old, doesn’t work particularly well on WiFi Calling (which is our only means of sending and receiving phone calls and SMS in our house in Scotland) and now, with increasing regularity and for longer each time, the USB-C connection is essentially not working, so I can’t listen on headphones (I like plug-in rather than Bluetooth), I can’t charge it other than with one particular cable (I’m in London, it’s in Scotland) or a wireless charger which gets alarmingly hot. And now I can’t get my photos off it in my usual, straightforward way (I know, I know, Cloud, back-up, etc; that’s just not how I deal with my phone photos. I have my own system). Anyway, wrong cable, phone alarm going off every time I try a different cable … So, a plus of being in London as of yesterday is that I can go to a phone shop today and see about a new tariff and a new mobile, the latter which I really don’t want to have to get, but I suppose three years isn’t too bad for a mobile. I hate the short-lived-ness of technology.
Yesterday, after a day’s driving from Scotland to Lewisham, we’re both exhausted. Within half an hour of getting back to London, there was torrential rain. Unexpectedly, with the balcony door open (the flat is constantly too hot), I realised that rain sounds different here compared to at home in Scotland. It’s obvious, I know, the rain we hear in Scotland falls largely on grass and earth and Velux windows. Here, it falls on concrete and buildings. That is something I’ve never thought about or really noticed before.
We brought back our Oodies, towelling not-DryRobes and a quilted bed cover so we could wash them here and, crucially, dry them. They’d have dried beautifully in the sun in Scotland, but there has been an absence of rain-free sun days (be careful what you wish for; the six weeks of no rain and loads of sun were amazing for drying washing but we had very limited water supply so didn’t want to use the washing machine unnecessarily, and indeed for a while couldn’t use it). Overnight, the washing I’ve already done is almost dry.
We left Scotland yesterday at 07:40 and got home to Lewisham at about 15:45. We stopped briefly to drop Chris’s car off at Lockerbie (he’s going home earlier than me by train), for diesel, a short lunch stop and in Lewisham to fill up with diesel again (I have a lot of driving to do this week). There was traffic from roadworks between two junctions of the A1 (ongoing, a slow area for every drive over the next few months still) and it took ages to get along the A12 and to the Blackwall Tunnel, probably in part because Rotherhithe Tunnel was closed. Anyway, it’s tiring however long it takes to drive that far, 365 miles.
Within fifteen minutes of leaving home, Chris driving in front of me, he had to stop for a bull on the road, which I took photos of before realising that pointing a camera at a bull standing on the edge of the road (no fence or barrier) was probably not a particularly good idea, though he did look friendly in his enormous bull kind of way. When we got into London, the equivalent hold-ups were vehicle/traffic-related. There was rain in Scotland when we left, about 12°C, and torrential rain in London just after we got indoors, but about 21°C. It also got darker earlier so we actually had dinner at a better, earlier time.
I really hadn’t wanted to leave the Scottish house yesterday, but, as I expected would happen, it’s now nice to be back in London. Work-wise though, it’s a lot harder to work here (too hot, traffic/trains/people/sirens/construction noise and less space) and I didn’t bring everything I normally have around me. However, only Monday to Wednesday are likely to be work days here anyway. It’s a relief that we’re not in the midst of the heatwave that was for a while forecast for this week.
Today, I shall be visiting an o2 shop later, walking out to buy something for dinner and I might even walk out for coffee.