Odd Things on Sunday.

Tonight’s twilight was truly balmy. I don’t recall there having been any balmy twilights in August, and we didn’t have many during high summer. I feel ambivalent towards balmy twilights at this time of year. They’re lovely in themselves, but I’m suspicious of the possibility that their tails might contain barbs of one sort or another.

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There was one fallen conker on Church Lane at the point where several horse chestnut trees overhang the road. There used to be hundreds at this time of year.

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I have a health issue which I assume to be angina, although it hasn’t been formally diagnosed yet. It’s suddenly become worse over the past few weeks – unpredictable, more persistent and more debilitating. It’s making my little life even littler, which is a bit irritating. Mel wants me to see a doctor in case I overdo the strenuous stuff and have a heart attack. To quote Mr Bogle’s No Man’s Land: 

Well I hope you died quick

And I hope you died clean

Or, young Willie McBride,

Was it slow and obscene?

 Food for thought.

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According to my Blogger stats, somebody in Russia is taking an extended interest in what I was saying in August ten years ago. That’s weird, but welcome nonetheless.

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The electric kettle I bought six months ago has gone on the blink and will need to be returned. It seems the Russell Hobbs brand is not as reliable as it was when its manufacturing base was domiciled in my home town. I expect their products are made in Chinese gulags now to help underpin Mr Xi’s dictatorship. And it’s only when you’re devoid of a properly functioning kettle that you realise just how indispensable they are. Oddly, I have it on good authority – several actually – that most Americans don’t use electric kettles. (I knew an American once who’d never heard of them. ‘What’s a kettle?’ she asked. She really did. Mind you, she was from Montana.) But then, I can’t help entertaining the suspicion that most Americans are mostly odd in most ways, so maybe it isn’t surprising that they make tea in a microwave.