Sunday 22 October 2023
All is quiet and still outdoors, the sun is coming up and there’s a small amount of frost. I had a walk at 07:30. Of all the months we’ve been here (we’re just under a month off it being an entire year), October is my favourite for how it looks. If the house were consistently warm, it would easily be my favourite month here.
I am sitting in the slightly-warm Indian room/annex. There is now a TV in it. It took me an embarrassingly long time to set it up, mainly because I got bogged down in trying to remember my Samsung log-in details and my mobile wasn’t able to receive the texts I needed to input the code. In the meantime, I finished my dinner and only ever flicked through what was on. It didn’t inspire me so the TV went off and hasn’t been used since. However, this room has the potential to be the warmest room in the house and is the easiest (smallest) to heat quite quickly with a fan or oil-filled radiator.
I “popped out” to the shops yesterday, leaving home just after 10:00. I didn’t get back until 14:40. I don’t know why I always think I’ll go out and get back within three hours. I did have a farily long walk in Melrose though, it wasn’t just a case of inefficient focus on my chores.
Today is our handyman Mitch’s penultimate day here for 2023. Chris and I are in a state of mild panic wondering how we’ll cope when something goes wrong in November, December and at least part of January. Maybe it will do us good to have to try and sort more stuff on our own, the kind of fairly basic things I know we are capable of doing but would previously have sought professional help with or just not bothered to get fixed. Without doubt there will be some winter issues. In the meantime, I feel like I should be out and about and overachieving.