Glum

The garden in Autumn

I said last week I'd be wishing for another of its grey and gloomy days. Still, the bird baths are all filled up now. Not that the birds needed to use them, after an early morning soaking the spadgers stayed firmly undercover even after they'd emptied the last of the sunflower feeders next to the roses. I used the weather as an excuse for an even lazier day than yesterday, barely leaving the house.

The plan this Autumn was, and probably still is, to get a bit further afield, taking advantage of no longer needing to sort out a sitter for the poor old cat. I'd like to get down to South Devon again, I've not been since before the pandemic, so I checked out the trains and prices. It turns out that it wouldn't cost a great deal more to fly down. I'll have to start asking for travel vouchers for my next few Delay Repay compensation claims. A voice in my head tells me that what I'm saving in no longer buying cat food would pay for the holiday but I'm not having any truck with that sort of logical thinking. That logical part of me has also pointed out that just because it's warmer in late October it doesn't mean there's any more daylight than there would be late in February. I had to be reminded of this when I got to planning an outlandishly ambitious itinerary that probably would have fallen to pieces at the first train connection anyway.

The other job for the Autumn is sorting out some graphics and photo-editing software for my new laptop (my old one is very old and while I've been largely successful in coaxing new life out of old systems the hardware is demonstrating that it's well overextended its life span). I thought the only problem I'd have would be trying to avoid anything injecting AI content into my work (I have both environmental and ethical objections to this type of use of AI), it turns out that the other problem is that it doesn't matter how tried and trusted any software is, if it ain't approved by and included in the Microsoft Store it ain't running in Windows 11. There might well be a workaround for this but up to now I've been a bit preoccupied with switching off as much as possible so it stops feeling like I've got a screaming toddler in my face when I'm working. Anyone who says: "You should have installed Linux" gets to have their wifi removed and replaced with a telephone hook-up on a party line.

The rain had petered out by sunset, for a while anyway, so I ventured out to see if the bats were about at the station. It felt a bit cold and damp for there to be many insects about so I wasn't altogether surprised when the answer was no. Ah well. Tomorrow is another day.

No bats.