Having had an absolutely terrible night’s sleep the night before – yes, Christmas Day indulgence and all, but I’d been reasonably sensible about alcohol, and certainly hadn’t any caffeine after mid-afternoon – slept extremely soundly until half four, albeit with yet more strange dreams (something to do with trying to book a hotel room in a strange town and then get off at the right tram stop). Clearly I then stirred enough for A. – who, it turned out, had been wide awake for at least an hour – to ask if I was awake, which of course woke me up completely. She then put on the radio, which helps her doze off but usually means I can’t, and so it proved; still, I do like the World Service, albeit I’m not enough of a Joni Mitchell fan to want to listen to lots of people talking about how The River spoke to their personal circumstances. World news (miserable as ever), shipping forecast (gales everywhere), UK news, time to get up, do last night’s washing up and make tea.
Splitting headache, which probably wasn’t helped by deciding to have leftover Christmas pudding for breakfast. A. highly stressed, partly by having to go into work when she thought she had an extra day off and mostly as a result of finding that the son had tried to phone her at 3 am and now wasn’t responding; reassurances that this was almost certainly an error – if anything was actually wrong, he’d have tried again – were unavailing. Spent half an hour after seeing her off to work sending him messages and trying to phone; no answer.
As this was officially a day off for me – just a bare minimum of catching up on emails, and I wasn’t actually supposed to be doing that – I’d decided to do some brewing; just a simple dark mild, so once I’d got the equipment down from the loft it was quite a relaxed process with fewer complex stages than, say, a lager or an imperial stout. My stocks have got quite low, and I need to spend less money on fancy beer this year, so forty bottles of quaffable malty drink seem like a good idea. In between bits of activity, went into town to post some packages to Austria (serious wincing at the cost) and completed my self-assessment tax return (reasonably straightforward apart from trying to remember why I’d received a foreign payment in March 2022 – eventually realise it was for PhD viva for Sydney).
Sent email to neighbour to check she’s okay – there was a thing on her doormat when we got back from Christmas with my parents yesterday afternoon that was still there when I went down to the post office. Very brief phone call from my mother to confirm that we left a phone charger there – they hadn’t answered last night as whoever had turned off the Christmas lights had also turned off the phone. Message from A. to say that the son had been in touch to confirm that he hadn’t meant to phone her. Message from neighbour to say she’s fine – whoever left the package hadn’t rung the bell, and she hadn’t been out. Duty done.
A day of the deaths of European politicians, it seems – Wolfgang Schäuble (whom I most associate with the Greek economic crisis and bone-headed economic dogmatism, but a fascinating career before that) and then Jacques Delors. UK politics in contrast is extra silly – wine to be sold in pint bottles! (in the unlikely event anyone can be arsed) self-driving cars to be permitted so long as Sunak gets another meeting with Musk! Meanwhile, a bunch of French actors have written a letter in support of Gérard Depardieu, claiming that he is the greatest actor and so can’t possibly have done anything untoward; thankfully Le Figaro has put the full letter behind a paywall, so I can’t check to see if there’s anyone on the list with whom I will feel genuinely disappointed.
Lunch – still working my way through random one-person leftover meals from the freezer, to create a bit of space – and watched the Christmas episode of Doctor Who on catch-up (distinctly slight, but the new man seems quite fun; just a disconcerting resemblance to Mr Trick from BtVS). Drained the wort from the grain and started to boil it; started cooking bean stew for supper (the usual feeling of smug satisfaction about how well our borlotti beans did this year and how easy it makes everything to freeze rather than dry them), cup of tea, began writing blog review of the year. Weather completely awful, and boiling wort means incredibly high humidity in the kitchen – even, I nervously discover, to the point where the lights stay on for a minute or more even after they’ve been switched off, as the moisture is maintaining the collection. Turn everything non-essential off, redouble efforts to clear air without letting too much rain in. Cats have shown absolutely no interest in going outside.
By the time A. gets home I’ve decanted the wort off the spent hops and started the process of cleaning equipment and wiping the floor – without having blown any fuses or electrocuted myself. Which is good. Cooked pork and damson sausages and calabrese to go with the bean stew; finished cleaning, sterilising and tidying. After supper, half an hour struggling to make any headway with current composition – still working on vocal harmonisation from last term’s class, but trying to do six voices rather than four. I now have a reasonable background from tenors and bass, but no idea what it’s the background to. The problem is that I came up with a brilliant idea when either drifting off to sleep or actually dreaming, but could remember only bits of it, and apparently not the really important bits. Suspect that either this is a dead end or I need a completely new approach.
Came back downstairs to the sitting room, where everyone is enjoying the warmth – the fire has been going great guns with the wind outside – and then starting to feel a bit too warm. Continued making my selection of this year’s blog posts for the round-up – and suddenly realised as a result that today is my Twelve Days in the Year day, having missed last month because of dying cat and other stuff, and so set about hastily reconstructing the relevant mundanities. Listening to record by Jonathan Avishai trio, one of my Christmas presents, followed by his duet album with Avishai Cohen.
After last night, it has to be another early retirement upstairs, just after nine. Completed the sudoku from Saturday’s Grauniad and read a few pages of latest German Krimi, having finished the short and wonderful Reise von München nach Genua by Heine this morning – and I really need to check if anyone has written about his comments about the legacy of the Romans and northerners’ response to it. Lights out by half nine.
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