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I’ve been off the sauce for a bit recently. Due to calamitous collapses of self-control when imbibing. Tonight I’ve been allowed – by both myself and Teresa – a small snifter o’ whiskey.

I kind of wanted to photograph the tint of the whiskey. Maybe alluding to the idea of altered perception through substances? But Teresa poured it into this cute little blue glass (wasn’t blue the colour of poison bottles?). So the boozes’ hue isn’t visible.

This last shot I quite like. Just for the intensity of the blue. Such a minuscule dose helps one to savour it, which is good. If I had the bottle to have I’d probably just clobbered myself with large amounts.

Well, after the false-start/non-collection, yesterday, Silvio Burlesque-O-Neill has finally departed.

The guy supposed to collect yesterday had been offering £200. I bought the car in 2015, for £1,200. In the end I sold it to Fenland Breakers, a local outfit, via removemycar.com. This latter being suggested by one of Teresa’s work colleagues. They are paying £236.

There’s now a big – well, yawning, if not exactly big – space on our driveway, and a gurt big hole in my heart.

It’s such a sad day. I’m finally getting shot of my beloved MX5, Mk II, Silvio Burlesque-O’Neill.

He/she/it, gave me sooo much motoring (and more) pleasure, over about a decade. And, starting at 89,000 miles, more than doubled that, passing on to the great garage in the sky at roughly 195,000. Good going, Silvio!

In the end it was the lowly yet ubiquitous rust, infamous slayer of MX5s, that did for her (she’s a girl, for now). I’ve had a number off welding bridges done over the years. This time it’s a few too many rust spots – some quite big/structurally fundamental – too far.

I’ve held on to her for ages, ‘cause I can only get peanuts for her. And I thought maybe I could gradually fix her up. But times are just too tough and finances too tight.

Plus I’m fighting other battles, that simply don’t leave me with enough energy, regardless of time, and the absolute absence of any money, to take on such Herculean efforts.

Looking on the bright side, I’ve had the best part of a decade of sexier than average motoring, at the wheel of this ace little ride. She was a bit high maintenance, with regards to running and repair costs. And, alas, that’s finally become unsustainable.

POSTSCRIPT… or maybe not? The scrappers have failed to materialise. I’ve got 15 minutes left, before I have to go to work. Will they show up? I suspect not, somehow. Which makes me rather gloomy…

Uh-oh! What is that facial expression? Well… I love the Furze Mining T-shirt. It arrived yesterday. I bought it what feels like aeons ago. And it finally turned up. I bought it when I thought I had a few brass farthings. But of course it turns up when I’m absolutely and completely broke (again!).

I’m experimenting with taking Valerian of an evening. How wise this is, I really don’t know. I had been taking Zopiclone. I slept very well last night. Indeed, maybe too well, inasmuch as I slept well into the day, till about 10 or 11 am.

Once up, I did the Joe wicks 10 minute workout for ‘seniors’. Teresa and I are trying to do this every day; at least once, or even better, twice.

And with the little time available to me before work, I tried to find a buyer for Silvio (my older, and as yet unsold, MX5)… no luck! Looks like I’ll wind up eBaying or scrapping her. So sad!

I also had just enough time to heat up some pasta Teresa made yesterday, for lunch. And paint a bit more of the master bedroom (see above pic). I’ve also tidied that corner a wee bit. Or rather de-cluttered it.

I had another mini-meltdown recently. On that subject? Least said, soonest mended, methinks.

Hannah had offered that we visit them, for Friday evening, which chez Gimeno-Palmer means (home-made) pizza night.

We’d have been there like a shot anyway – other commitments allowing – but under the circs (me needing recuperative relaxation and time out), it was a no-brainer.

And in the end we stayed over two nights, instead of just the one. I only hope we didn’t impose too much, or overstay our welcome? It didn’t feel that way. So I’m trusting all is tickety-boo.

Tim’s living with ‘the girls‘ now. And that’s more than fine with us. It obviously changes the chemistry, compared to when we used to visit, and it was just Teresa, me, Hannah, Ali and Sofi.

I had to, or rather, chose to keep off the sauce, whilst all the other adults imbibed. That puts an interesting spin on things. Sobriety illuminates intoxication in a fairly unforgiving.

Sleeping, or not, remains a hot potato. I’d been able to get some Zopiclone prescribed, via ‘NHS’ 111. And that had worked a treat Thursday night. so I took one Friday evening, and once again slept like a log.

My Saturday shift took me back to home turf. I dropped in on Chester, fed and cuddled the wee rascal, and picked up some Valerian tablets. I took one of these Saturday night.

That caused a predicament, re the Zopiclone. I’m now in a quandary… do I take the ‘known to work’ Zop, or chance the possibly just ‘old wives tales’ Valerian? I’m lead to believe the two shouldn’t be taken together.

Whilst at Hannah’s news came through the family WhatsApp grapevine that dad was freaking out again. I communicated a bit with him, Sam and Claire. Not sure if that was wise or not? It certainly ramps up the stress levels. But we are family!

I decided that the DVD-on-a-shelf idea that I’d been using up till now was shite. It intruded too far into the room, and was ugly. So I took down the brackets, and filled in the holes.

In all honesty I’m still not happy with the position of the TV. But I’ll leave it where it is for the time being.

Whilst the filler cured, I painted an undercoat on that section of skirting board. Doing this room piecemeal, around all the clutter, is proving tricky and time consuming. But we’re getting there. And if it must be by lots of little bites, so be it.

We won’t win any design awards with this setup/layout. But it’s a lot less cluttered than previously. And the new floor and carpet are a vast improvement. At least to my tastes. Teresa seems happy as well.

There is a little corner of as yet unpainted floor, on Teresa’s side of the room. The vast amount of clutter in that corner has given me ‘the fear’! But it’ll get done. And purty soon, I reckon.

As a lover of literature, libraries (the tragic fate of public libraries in the UK makes for a stark contrast with the contents of this handsome book), and beautiful buildings, this is right up my alley.

My edition is a medium sized one. But still nicely put together and lavishly printed. ideally I’d have got a larger edition. But funds constrained me. And better this than nowt.

I haven’t read any of the text as yet. Nor even really looked at it that much. But occasionally, as now, I’ll peruse it. And, oh my, it’s a visual treat!

I look forward to really spending some time poring over it. Maybe even reading the text?

Today, after an entirely misspent and almost entirely sleepless night, leading to an early morning comedown of Biblically epic proportions, I ironed our super-king sized bedsheet (the first time it’s been ironed in at least a decade; possibly ever?), remade the bed, and took the door to the studio/office down.

The latter had to be done, really, as the new chesty o’drawers arrangement is such that this door could no longer be opened wide enough to allow passageway. Teresa’s draft-excluder curtain is now all that separates the bedroom from the studio/office.

We got a lot of stuff out of the room, either into the corridor, the office, or elsewhere. But there’s still shitloads of clutter n’ crap to be dealt with.

But as the above pic hopefully conveys, a corner of the room is now neater and less cluttered… at least for a while. I want to hang the mirror on the wall (it’s just on’t table at the mo’), move (or even remove?) the hand drum, and… well that’s about it, actually.

This post is actually a retrospective one. I made a second visit to St Andrew’s, in Abbots Ripton, in February, ‘24. And that reminded me I’d been before. So I looked for it, as a previous entry, here on my blog. But it wasn’t there. Hence this post.

And that lead in turn to my realising that this had been a two church day. A good day! Here’s the other church, the rather splendid, St John The Baptist, in Wistow. The village of Wistow is also quite pretty in parts.

The porch of this church is wooden. Whilst that makes it look and feel very old, I suspect that wooden porches might need renewing. I wonder how old the current pitch actually is?

As I entered the porch I spotted a gargoyle waterspout.

The contrast of wood and stone is very pleasing to the eye and mind.

The stained glass here is glorious. It’s amazing to contemplate that in rather humdrum little villages up and down the UK there are so many buildings like this. Churches are, not always, but very often, incredible repositories of human art, architecture and endeavour.

The intensity of colour in some of these windows is, frankly, breathtaking. The richness of the reds and blues in particular, in the lights above and below? Pretty staggering.

The fact that these windows elicit an ‘OMG’ from me, a devout atheist, or – as I prefer to term it – naturalist and free-thinker, is, I think, quite remarkable. The window pictured above is pretty mindblowing.

In light (get it?) of the functions of these windows, it’s quite astonishing how powerfully effective they can be. Certainly they work a kind of magic on me. And I guess this was as intended?

And then you get the effect of repetition. The above is very similar to the one that precedes it. But it isn’t the same one. The effect of this density of imagery, and the repetition, it’s like a visual chant. Again, the word mesmerising seems apt.

I need to know more about the stained glass here, as it’s so intensely magical in its effects. Whoever did it, they were artist and magician. The alchemy of glass, lead and light, the symphony of colours? Just phenomenal.

And I leave, a sadder and wiser man! Perhaps. Or perhaps not? I do feel time spent in these ‘sacred places’ has a powerful and very positive effect. How this squares with their intended functions, and how that in turn is faring in modern times, when these buildings are no longer as central to so many lives as they once were… it’s all a bit of a mystery.

I simply had to stop and check out this church, looking so attractive in the autumnal season. And with those red poppy lines, presumably a Remembrance Day thing?

These few photos track my walk up to the church. Which, alas, was locked up, closed.

That’s as far as I got on this attempted visit. I’ll have to return at some point. See if I can find the keyholder, and have a look around inside.

Another attraction here is a cute little rest area or picnic spot, adjacent to the church. I took a couple of photographs. Thinking it’d be nice to have a picnic lunch here on a sunny spring or summers day.

What a dude! An Ayotte kit very like mine, and a brown pinstripe suit, very like mine. Is it any wonder I love the guy!? Oh, and the last survivor of the original group that cut many of these great Peanuts (& other) tracks, with Vince Guaraldi, back in the day. Granelli passed in 2021.