Quite an eventful day yesterday. Sue was out in the morning so I had the pond man back to my (socially distance) self. To cut things short we found the extremely unlikely problem and a fix, although it's rather more what I might call a temporary bodge. But if it fails again, I now know what to do. He also gave us a new anti-heron pond net so had to remove and dismantle the old heron defences, which was no small job. I think it's just repeating a mistake we've made before, but we shall see...
I then decided the big pond at the end of the garden needed topping up. Although this involves three hose reels end-to-end the insides were still very cold and stiff and to make it worse, there is now a serious leak at the 4-way hose fitting outside the bathroom window. So I had a hell of a game swapping incompatible hose fittings around until I got a working and 99.9% leak-proof connection direct to the outside tap. I've got a new 4-way thing in the garage, but I've ben waiting for warmer weather before removing the old one and replacing it. What has all this to do with myeloma? It comes back to those finger splits and I thought I was really going to lose progress on them. I could have put more cream on them, but it's hard to work with hands covered in slippery gunk. But they don't seem to have suffered so far although I'll know more in the morning.
I made some "hard" butter this morning (slightly salting it because with all the business with the pond man at the same time I forgot I wasn't making the spreadable version) and gave the cat fountain its weekly clean - the easy way in the dishwasher, apart from the pump which has to be taken apart to be cleaned up. More fiddly work that isn't great for the fingers.
And then there was Prince Philip's funeral to watch. I'm no great fan of monarchy (although it may well be the least worst of the alternatives) but it's impossible not to respect what the man did or not to feel strongly for the Queen. As for the prospect of my near-contemporary Charles (just four days separate us) getting ever closer to the throne, I can't say I'm exactly enthusiastic...
Walking many times the length of the garden got me to a little over double my activity target without going out for a walk. Much easier to do that now things are drying out and warmer, so you don't get shoes covered in mud and worm casts and can sit for a while to admire the view. During all that I noticed that our horse chestnut (always severely pruned to stop it taking over) is coming back to life after the winter:
Now it's the first dex night for a while. I didn't fall asleep during the evening (which is unusual), and at 01:22 I feel perfectly wide awake. I think it might be a late night. Fortunately I've still got quite a few episodes of The Big Bang Theory to finish off.
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