Meh!

I’m a little depressed today. It’s a sunny Bank Holiday Monday and I feel as though I should be doing something nice, but Nathan is away doing a gig in Cheshire and I am not feeling hugely well. Instead of doing something interesting, I’m sitting in the front room reading books about the First World War, watching terrible TV programmes from the US about ghost hunting and feeling a little sorry for myself.

In a few minutes I’m going to go and sit in a wood or something, so I can at least say I’ve done something with my day. The lure of the sofa is great, however, and part of me just wants to curl up in a little ball and wake up a more productive individual tomorrow!

I’m appalled to see that the veteran newsreader, Martyn Lewis, has filmed a series of adverts for Calgon (dish washing powders and the like) where he “pretends” to be an anchorman interviewing a series of “experts” about problems like lime scale. Of course, the adverts all end with the expert suggesting that Calgon is the only solution to the issue in question. It’s utterly transparent and really quite 1980s in its lack of humour. Frankly, I can only hope that Lewis is earning huge sums of money, because his reputation is surely in tatters? In my view, no one in a position of responsibility - even one who is retired - should be doing these sorts of things. I believe it’s tantamount to a former Health Minister appearing in an advert to talk about expensive pharmaceuticals. Leave all that crap to Carol Vorderman. Everyone expects her to be in adverts and can take whatever she says with a pinch of salt.

....

I made myself a mug of tea and carried it eccentrically through the streets to Highgate Wood, where I sat in the big clearing in the middle and enviously watched a large group of people playing a game of rounders. The sun was casting extraordinarily long shadows, so much that, for some time, I couldn’t work out what was obscuring my book, until I realised it was the shadow of my tea mug which was sitting about a metre away!

At this time of year the leaves on the trees seem to get darker and darker. Some of the trees were almost black against the skyline. I wonder when the leaves will begin to turn this year. Surely after such a spectacular summer we ought to expect a fairly spectacular drop?