Living life in the slow lane

I had always thought my life had slowed down to a crawl after I retired.  If you, dear reader, have retired from work you will know just what I mean: how the jobs seem to take longer to do just because there is more time in which to do them.  But if I thought my life had slowed down before...  well, I had seen nothing yet.  The stiffness and occasional pain brought about by courtesy of this latest bout of arthritis have really reduced life's speed dramatically.  Whereas my first-thing-in-the-morning routine - shower, dress, let the dog out, feed the dog, put out the recycling, make coffee (for breakfast) and tea and take a cup of tea up to the Old Bat - used to take as much as 35 minutes, it now takes me at least an hour and a quarter.  Putting on a pair of socks takes 6 minutes!

The result is that any job or activity is reviewed thoroughly for urgency, importance, enjoyment.  I have done nothing in the garden for several weeks and will soon be inviting the Royal Marines to undertake jungle warfare training in Brighton.  The other day a flourescent light tube at one end of the kitchen failed; the one at the other end - which is rarely used - efused to come on.  I had to call on a friend to replace the failed tube and the starter motor in the other one as I just could not reach up to do the job.  Like the gardening, other jobs are considered too inimportant to bother with.

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The good news: I got a cheque from Volkswagen UK.  Back in March my car broke down in the middle of the French countryside.  Green Flag covered the cost of the tow off the motorway, bed and breakfast for two nights, taxis and a hire car but I was still left with the bill of £750 for replacing a failed injector.  I later learned that there is a recall because of a batch of faulty injectors and my car was included but had not yet been recalled.  The dealer approached VW with the result as mentioned.

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I didn't mention that when we arrived at our French house two weeks or so back it was to discover that mice had used not just one but both the duvets on the beds upstairs.  One was stained and needed washing and both were slightly nibbled.  We could have put up with the nibbling if it were just family and friends using the house but it isn't.  Indeed, we had no time for washing the duvets before the next paying guests arrived.  We just had to bite the bullet and buy new ones.

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Bringing together France, the car and life in the slow lane is this picture of the Pont de Normandie.  The bridge spans the River Seine just upstream from le Havre.  I have shown a different picture before but until this recent trip I have never managed to get a picture showing the bridge from the side.  There is just one place where this shot can be taken and luckily the Old Bat, who was driving, was able to slow down enough for me to take it.