Bricks off

Walking bricks up and down our garden started out as a way of getting some exercise in during the COVID lockdown, before I moved onto the Jubilee Way cycle run. 

A walk which ran from the compost bin at the top of the garden to the road out front, a round trip which I computed to be 133m in length, involving a climb in one direction of 3m.

Part of the walk involved carrying one of 16 bricks either up or down the middle third, with walks totalling 32, 16 or more usually 8 bricks. One advantage of this being that a walk consisted of so many bricks and one did not need to keep count or keep time. The bricks counted themselves.

A habit which survived the end of lockdown and ran for another three years or so - until our holiday in the Isle of Wight this year. After which back troubles stopped play for a couple of weeks. Then away again in Devon for a week. And now, although back troubles have gone away, I don't feel like restarting and the graph is flat-lining right. Walking down to town and back seems a better option, albeit one which takes out a larger chunk out of the day.

So yesterday, for example, I got to see the finished paint job on the Screwfix passage, with rather less than half of it being snapped above.

It seems to be a time of changing habits. Another being my taking to eating red grapefruit at breakfast. Another being eating less cheese. Another being taking ice cream in restaurants, something I have not done for years. Another candidate being switching from wine back to beer. I associate to my rather abrupt finishing with allotments.

PS: I had thought that I finished with allotments shortly after I retired, back in 2006. Checking turned out to be laborious as the finishing was silent, without notice or announcement - but the thought turned out to be a false thought. I was clearly still busy on the allotment through April 2008. The blog is silent on the subject during May but the allotments are in the past by early June, as recorded at reference 3. I suppose I just woke up one morning that May and decided to pack it up. Maybe, in the words of a former boss at OPCS, someone else who once had two allotments, I had suddenly became conscious that it had become a chore rather than a pleasure.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2023/06/mid-year-report.html. What seems to be the last report on this matter.

Reference 2: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2024/09/the-home-run.html. Previous notice of the red grapefruit.

Reference 3: https://pumpkinstrokemarrow.blogspot.com/2008/06/moss-side.html.