annanotbob2's Diaryland Diary

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New Year

1/1/24
I swam again today, twice in two days. Really bloody freezing, back in the same place as yesterday, right where I had that shit, but the tide had washed over it twice since then so all good and I didn’t feel the need to share the info with my companions, just you lot.
There was something I’d decided to write about earlier, but it escapes me now. Tonight I’m feeling the loss of my temperature blanket, which I’ve done for a whole year, a row a day, crochet, colour depending on the temperature. Now I just need to do a border, not as easy as it sounds as it has to be double to trap all the ends of yarn inside. I downloaded a pattern for one, very complicated so I’ll take it to the wool shop tomorrow and hope they’re still speaking to me. For ages I’d thought that alongside the younger staff there was one older woman working there, sometimes friendly and helpful, sometimes sighing and impatient, but no, last time I went they were both there, two of them, both with dark wavy hair and that kind of appropriate late middle-aged, middle-class way of dressing – blouses, cardigans, pleated skirts, but nothing like each other – apart from anything else one is smiley and the other is grumpy. Like a fool, I blurted out, “Oh, there are two of you!” which pissed off the smiley one, not surprisingly. So maybe neither of them will want to help me, but we’ll see. I’m going to finish this properly before starting a new project, but recording the temperature in case I want to do a variation of this. I miss having to do that daily row.
In other news Netflix suddenly kicked me off, the fuckers. We’ve had this good system in the family for ages where we each pay for one of Netflix, Amazon Prime, Now TV and something else I forget - Spotify – I remembered – and we all use all of them. Everybody does, don’t they? Suddenly Netflix says hey, you’re not on the same IP address as Son, buy your own Netflix or fuck off. Meh. I paid up as I wanted to watch ‘You Are What You Eat: A Twin Experiment’ a short, four episode, series with Prof Tim Spector participating. He’s my guy – very evidence based. It’s good, if scary. Not as scary as it would have been this time last year, but my diet has improved no end since then. Plants, that’s the big thing, eat loads of plants. And cut down Ultra Processed shit. But I can’t be paying for all those things – and they’re just greedy bastards – we all know they don’t pay people decently. We shall see.
I just looked down as the date rolled round and only then noticed that today would have been my brother’s birthday. He would have been 66. He kind of got lost as he died in 2018, about fifteen months before Sam, but in that time she declined very steeply and steadily and I also had pneumonia to contend with and my little brother didn’t get the recognition, the mourning, he deserved. Or maybe that’s part of getting older, the number of deaths per year among your friends and family increases to the point where you can’t grieve anyone properly or you’d never get off your knees. Maybe. But he was funny and kind, and did good things on the quiet, like trained for the London marathon when he’d never done anything physical, when Sam was diagnosed with MS, and ran to raise money for the MS Society, without telling me. And I miss him. My life is poorer without him in it.
So I’m going to bed now, and tomorrow I’ll be all about my brother.

12:29 a.m. - 02.01.24

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