Weeknotes 83–94

We moved house.

Our recycling bin is grey and our general waste bin is green (what a country!) and both have the letters “C.B.M.D.C.” stamped on them.

I’ve replaced most of the old light fittings and a vast number of various halogen lamps with simple MK Electric pendants with LED bulbs. The fluted brass dimmer switches have all gone, replaced with normal light switches that don’t produce a high-pitched whining noise.

We had just over a week of building work done shortly after moving in to remedy some issues flagged by our structural survey. The work consisted mostly of repointing and replacing some poorly designed coping stones which lacked any sort of drip groove. Any rainfall (and there’s a lot more here than in London) would then pour down the wall and into the living room bay window below.

It was worth doing just to expand my vocabulary of building jargon.

I didn’t realise that different screws had different characteristics until Paul Battley wrote about the benefits of Torx head screws. I’ve needlessly stripped so many screw heads due to camming out.

The initial rush of renovations (new lighting, filling holes with silicone, replacing leaky flush valves, repainting E’s office from a particularly upsetting shade of yellow) has slowed to a more manageable crawl as things that once seemed urgent have receded into being fine for now.

After nearly eight months at home or with my parents, C is once more going to a nursery for three days a week. All three of us are full of cold and I write this with a warm mug of Boots Pharmaceuticals Max Strength Cold & Flu Relief Blackcurrant Flavour to hand.

A friend returned from an intermission while watching “Godzilla vs. Kong” in a Prime Video Watch Party with ice cream in a cone, explaining that one can simply buy waffle cones (chocolate dipped or not) from the supermarket.

After stocking up on cones, I made a small batch of Christina Tosi’s cereal milk ice cream by steeping corn flakes in milk and then using that milk to make Felicity Cloake’s “perfect” ice cream. The milk powder I found in our cupboard expired in 2016 and smelled strongly of cheese so I left it out of the recipe.

It took me over a year but I finally finished Doom Eternal. It was gruelling and relentless—especially during the final boss battle—but I enjoyed shooting a hole in a planet. A friend bought me Marvel’s Spider-Man to play next which I’m hoping will be slightly less stressful.

E and I are watching the German science fiction series Dark, chasing it with the sitcom Superstore to lighten an otherwise grim evening of murder and Zeitreise.

I spend a lot of my time doodling commissions for C either on paper or on a blackboard in our kitchen. They consist mostly of vehicles (police cars, police vans, camper vans, concrete mixer trucks) but occasionally there will be a curveball. After enjoying The Singing Kettle’s “My Boy’s a Cowboy” which features a rousing “oompa oompa”, C demanded an “oompa bear”. I dutifully drew a Bavarian teddy bear in lederhosen, eyes squeezed tight into two set intersections.

In two weeks time, it’ll be C’s second birthday.