About My Blog Site — Garfieldhug’s Blog

I started out simply writing about this and that and what ails me. Yes this blog site is about me and my nonsensical love for my inanimate furball Garfield. This blog site is also about me and the difficulties that I face health wise, challenges in work life and Lords that gave me a hard […]

via About My Blog Site — Garfieldhug’s Blog

london 3.5.20 sunday

this post is i think the most important post , to shout out to everyone why we write a blog, it is a reminder to everyone of us who writes and read blogs to always bear in mind; that way we will allow everyone  the freedom to write and say whatever they wish in their blogs without our taking things too personally or to be too judgemental. i will like if this post can be the header in every blog, to be read right at the beginning, and always there to remind us the reason why we blog. 

the currency exchange rate

the currency exchange rate

added 7march2022 200rubles=£1 1.1.23 89.24rubles=£1 21.3.23 94.25 robles=£1

added 8.3.22 unleaded petrol £1.70/litre london

addd 8.6.22 unleaded petrol £1.80/litre

just rambling and want something to write in my blog

london 12.04pm 16.5C cloudy thursday 2023

i must say life is very nice for me, so nothing to complain about. but i fancy writing something on the blog but i notice if there is nothing to complain about what is there to write about? so i shall just ramble and talk of anything that comes to mind without any direction . i went to collect my medicine from the pharmacy whcih is next door to my doctor’s clinic. usually they just give me the medicine but today i was told that the automatic renewal is ended. and i was told to make a appointment with my doctor for a review of the precription. i suppose it is time to review it, because quite a number of medicines i have stopped so i went next door to the clinic and asked for an appointment. i was told they will call me tomorrow at about 11.30am to book the appointment. then i remembered that my phone number has changed. i dont have a landline anymore and my mobile number has changed. so just as well i came in person to get the appoitment . so now my doctor has a updated telephone number to call me.

then i walked to the library in victoria, to read the papers. and i found a new book by rick riordan ,with another trans children’s author,mark oshiro, ‘sun and the star’ . i borrowed that. it looks like children’s book are getting more gay and trans characters now. it might backfire on them, as trans characters are now associated with blocking puberty drugs and breast surgery and bottom surgery on kids. even i dont think such drastic surgery should be done on kids. the trouble is with this kind of surgery given to kids, a lot of people are now equating gays with advocating such surgery and lumping all gay people being for it.

you might think aren’t i overreacting to a children’s book bringing in gay and trans characters… but what is happening in schools is that the school library is stocking very explicit gay and trans instruction books about growing up gay and trans  with graphic illustrations and details about gay sexual practices. it is not surprising that there is a outcry against it, so much so that florida, where such books are stocked in the school libraries;  and other states, have put down a law against such books but the ban is quite broad, and so gay books are drawn into the ban just for being gay. i think it is unfortunate that gays are under the LGBT banner… the T is the controversial one… i think it was meant to be transvestite… not transgender, but the trans have hijacked that and now it is known as transgender… and that is a huge inclusion that not all of us gay people want it.

there is now a separate movement for just LGB, minus the T+… 

eating and books

london 9.35pm 14.8C dry monday 2023

simon is at work today. he was working yesterday too, and got back some pork, belly pork and two packs of minced pork at the end of his shift that were unsold. the manager allows the staff to buy at reduced price unsold stuff whose date has expired that day. so we had a chance to eat these lovely cuts of pork. i just had some belly pork for my dinner just now. it is delicious just fried , and eaten over rice. very simple and does not require a lot of effort to cook. and all the more delicious for so easy to cook.

my days now are spent just doing these simple things , eating my own cooking , and reading . i just recently found in the website where kindle books are being given free or for low cost . and i bought for 99p the kindle first volume of alms for oblivion, by simon raven. i have read some of his novels in this series long ago , borrowed from the library and/or bought second hand books and hence not read in sequence and had found them very unusual, and very erotic, even in those days when i was a innocent in sex matters.

i read that they have recently published the series in a new edition, so this must be it, but made available in kindle and as is their usual practise in kindle books, reduced for the first volume of 3books . i have not read the first 3 books, so it is a chance to see what they are like. i dont usually pay to read kindle books, but this one i made an exception.  i am into the second book now and can say that these first books are not so erotic as the later ones at least if my memory has not played me false and that i may have read more into those later books than they actually are. well, i shall find out i guess when i re read them…

(i just have a thought… i wonder if in this revived edition they might have censored some of the more erotic passages . after all the publicity of how they have bowdlerised parts of agatha christie to make it more palatable for modern readers… i would not put it past them to meddle with the text of simon raven’s novels and cleaned them up). 

 

drama queens

london 9.25pm 14.3C dry night thursday 2023

its quite a peaceful time in my world. it is because i dont interact with people. the only person that i have anything to do with is simon. and our lives together is without conflict because we just let each other do whatever they please. haha. that is the secret of a peaceful existence with other human beings.

as for interacting with other human beings, there are no one else in my life. there can be days in my life when i dont have to talk to anyone if i dont want to.

nowadays with supermarkets having self check out tills, there is never any need to talk to the staff. and going about the neighbourhood, i seldom meet with the other people living around me so no need to greet anyone. and on the buses there is no need to chat with the driver at all, far less any need to chat to the other passengers.

you might say oh how sad u dont have anyone to talk to, but i dont mind. i wonder whether it is because i am a bit deaf, and so i find it a great strain to talk with people because i cannot hear them well, and it is stressful to me to try to make out what they are saying. maybe that is why i like not talking to people and dont think it is lonely.

and as a bonus i realise why it is nice not to deal with people. that way i dont get to hear what they say or do, when most times i will not like what they say or do. this is because people will have opinions and actions or behaviour that can be irritating… oh you might say come now not everyone and everytime u get unpleasant people saying unpleasant things surely??? well not every time but sooner or later they will . so if u talk to a lot of people you will get a lot of times when they will say or do irritating things. well in my life where i dont meet any people, i sidestep that and can enjoy my life without that kind of irritating things from other people to contend with. 

have u noticed this… that all the drama involves people interacting with each other. just look at anything on tv, or films… they are all people interacting with each other and that is where the drama comes in. if u dont like drama in your life, u will have to restrict the number of people in your life. maybe that is why people have cats instead. haha. 

the days are very pleasant because my life is lovely. i went to the library yesterday (monday) to read the papers, though i could only find the sunday times. this library closes on sunday but they still buy the sunday times, so that we can read it on monday.

london 4pm 14.8C sunny monday 2023

11.16am 14.1C sunny tuesday 2023

and then i saw a jane austen book,love and freindship and other youthful writings.  i borrowed it, because i have not seen that title before. when i came back and searched goodreads , that was when i noticed the title mispelt ‘freindship’. i thought the book publisher made a mistake and had wondered how they could have made that mistake. but it seems it was jane who misspelt it, and wrote the title , and they have kept her title, mistake and all. 

its a nice bright day out there, looking at it through my living room window. later… it is clouding over and becoming less bright. i notice i get entertained by the tv, and the internet surfing.. unlike jane austen, who have to create her own entertainment by writing stories, and plays and acting it out. 

the times now

london 6.39pm 12.3C cloudy saturday 2023

today i went to a free burger giveaway by amigos, who were opening a new branch in tooting broadway. it was a generous offer, as there was no quota, at least there was no mention of it and they open from 2pm -8pm with a DJ providing live music. everyone got a free beef burger it would seem, though i went and stayed till about 3pm and saw the queue was still present. one of those in the queue told us that she was at their streatham branch opening and they were giving everyone a free burger, no quota there too.  i saw one of my freebie friends , a chinese lady, in the queue when i arrived and joined her. and we sat upstairs where there was plenty of seating. it seems most of the people were just taking takeaway . the new shop was just next door to the macdonalds. 

i went there earlier today, at about 12pm, but i could not find the address and what i thought was their place was all boarded up and undecorated empty premise. i thought they were unable to get the place fixed up in time. so i went home and looked up their facebook page, and that was when i saw a time stated, it was to open from 2pm-8pm. i had not intended to go back, but seeing it is only 1pm when i read that, i thought i might as well go back .

it is fortunate that i get the freedom pass so my transport fare is free. it is in tooting broadway, in zone 3 in south london. i used to live near there, in tooting bec in 1989, in a huge bedsit costing only £80 a week, whilst ian, my boyfriend at that time was in another bedsit in the same house one floor above me . it was £40 a week for him because it was a smaller bedsit. one of many in a huge house in the late 80s. i got a car then. now i dont have a car but i got free passage all over london on my freedom pass which is a better bargain really. though i have to admit that having the freedom of a car is great when u are young and carefree enjoying the gay life in london then. 

i have been using the broadband and trying to find what the difference is to my surfing and tv experience with faster speed. its not a dramatic change… the biggest difference i notice is the express.co.uk webpage loads faster so that there is fewer circling wheels showing. i am surprised that there is so little difference, but maybe it is because i dont use it for gaming, when faster speeds will be really needed to get a fuller experience. or if i were zooming or having live video feeds with a group of people as in a video call.

there was one night when the signal failed and we could not get online. (it was actually that night when we first installed it) and what they told us to do did not bring back the signal, but luckily after a short while, the signal came back and we got online again. just as well, because it happened at about 11.30pm, when the call help line was closed . it gave me a brief experience as a foretaste of how it will feel if we lost the signal…and no one from the company to help.  but it did not last long and i hope it is a one off and wont happen again.

it seems to have gotten back to a good speed now , because i am watching startrek, nemesis, and the screen seems really sharp , and the subtitles very sharp, which was unlike the previous shell broadband. simon is not here otherwise i could ask him to find outthe speed using his laptop. my chrome dont seem to be able to do that, or more likely, i dont know how to do it. so i guess i shall just have to find out what greater speed can do for me. 

 

i have given up my landline telephone

london 3.04pm 15.6C cloudy wednesday 2023

the engineer to set up our fast community fibre broadband has come and gone and now we are having 500mbps . it is coming up to speed now according to the engineer. it seems it takes time to reach that 500mbps speed. altogther, he spent about an hour or so in the flat   to bring the fibre optic cable into the flat and set up the router .  he had to bore a small hole through the wall from the outside into the flat . after that it was quite plain sailing, the router they provide was a very small compact one about the size of a brick. i got a 2 yr contract with them, for £23 a month. a good price, £10 for the engineer to come and fix it up. my old provider is increasing its price to £27 a month, whcih includes the landline rental, for a 67mbps speed. 

so we have now gone  into the space age with fast broadband connection. i have not noticed any difference yet. but maybe it is early days. 

i called my old shell provider to cancel my broadband and telephone with them. and my telephone is disconnected now when i turned off their router. it feels a bit weird to lose my landline …  it must be just nostalgia for something that i have but never use.

nowadays all our communication with others is via the broadband and internet. and since i am hard of hearing, i actually prefer it rather than the phone. and i have noticed that calling someone on the phone costs money whereas it is free to email people or chat online. 

 

are things coming alive and people start living anew again?

london 5pm 20.1C sunny sunday 2023

the weather forecast has predicted today we will go up as high as 20C  and i see just now that it is indeed so. yesterday during the coronation it was drizzling practically all day so many would have liked if it was like this yesterday. anyway all the news is about the coronation which to me who is not interested in it, makes the news very boring. but i wonder if it might make everyone feel more enthusiastic about living … starting afresh to live it up and start a new year afresh as it were.

yesterday, i got a email from my previous lodger, the indian guy who is singaporean and who lives in saudi arabia to run his IT start up chat website. he said he is coming back to london and asked me if my room is available. it so happens i am thinking of letting it out again, but got a bit lazy to put up the advert. so his request came at a timely moment and i readily agreed to let him have it. he is coming only for the summer which suits me perfectly as i dont want to rent out over the winter. so all in all, it is perfect. he is a known quantity, in that i know what he is like as a lodger and his ways are like mine, so no conflict there. he is as easy going as i am. so what a fine start to the year as it were.

and it would let me find out how he is doing, and how his start up is getting on. i have been curious to see if he has expanded his enterprise. the idea is a good one, to have a site where people can chit chat and make friends and post their doings and find people with similar interests or  outlook as themselves. and maybe to find a way to do business or activities to mutual benefit . the concept is good but how good it is in reality is another thing alltogether. everyone would like to be a wechat… it is so successful in china, it is the website for doing everything and anything… being the go to for people in china for everything. elon musk had said he wanted twitter to be like that… but in the west govts are against monopolys like wechat to grow and will put a stop to it. 

in the past i have never bothered to join in the social media sites, but now that i have joined twitter, i find myself addicted to it… just to see what people are talking about … and it is the only outlet now to get news that feels very up to date . you get the feeling that it is being enacted right at that minute, and u can feel like u are getting it as it unfolds right before your eyes as it were. nothing feels so immediate and up to date and puts you straight into the action. 

an ice storm is more interesting to me than the coronation

london 12.38pm 15C rain/sleet friday 2023

little

its pelting down , lovely, with small pellets of ice bouncing off the window ledge and hitting the glass panes of my window. its quite rare for me to see it, because most times if it does happen it does so at night when i am asleep. i would love if we get a lot of these kind of pelting ice storms as it is quite fascinating to watch. it does not last long though, the sky is clearing up and the dark clouds are moving away. added. the dark clouds are gathering again, so we might get another burst of it . 

i was going to go out to the supermarket to buy the frozen garlic and ginger but the pelting rain made me postpone it. then i checked the sainsburys website and saw that it has gone up from 75p to their usual price of £1.15 for 400mg. however i can get it for 92p if i use the nectar price . but i am questioning it , asking myself how really useful are these frozen garlic and ginger to my cooking and realising they dont really do much … (because they are mostly water really, when they thaw out, i can see they are swimming in water ). so i might not bother to buy them. 

i am thinking it might be better to buy the fresh garlic bulbs , costs 24p each now,  they might be more flavourful. i have not used the fresh bulbs for a long time now, nor use fresh ginger; and i dont see any difference in my cooking… i get my dishes just as delicious… so i am wondering why bother to add garlic or ginger to it really. all these price increases has made me stop using them, and i find the food tastes just as delicious . makes me question how much extra the garlic and ginger adds to the dish really! it is all very eye opening really. old habits of just adding garlic and ginger to my cooking has been disrupted and i am beginning to question how useful are they to making how nice my dishes taste. i see simon buys garlic powder . i might use that instead . but i have the feeling that i wont bother at all. and i will still enjoy my delicious cooking. 

i read about all the preparations and articles about the coming coronation of charles. or rather i skim through those articles as i am not really interested . it is a bit ironic really seeing i am slap bang living in the middle of central london where all the hoo ha will be happening and i am not even going to go out to look at it. its a historic occasion i suppose; you could even say it is a once in the lifetime thing and maybe if he is as longlived as his mother, we might not see another like it for quite some time… and everyone must feel they got to attend just to be able to tell their descendents i was there haha. but i couldnt be arsed . i am not anti monarchy of anything like that,  i am just indifferent to it. 

 

 

oh, i thought i should write a post just for the fun of writing one.

london 7pm 13C sunny tuesday 2023

today i thought i should sort out my broadband. my contract with shell broadband is expiring 22 may. and i do not want to renew the contract because i fancy having a faster speed . at present i have 67mpbs, i have found a company called community fibre for london which says i can get 500mbps for £23 a month.  i am paying that amount now, and if i can get faster speed i would like that.

at present i noticed that when i go into express.co.uk the page takes a long time to download … every article in it seem to have a circling wheel . only this company’s (express.co.uk) website is affected… i asked simon about it, and his laptop downloads it so fast that there is no whirling wheel at all. so he said it is my chromebook. it does not seem to have the capacity to download it fast…. so i ask then having faster speed wont make a difference? that makes my shifting to a faster provider wont make a difference. ah well. i have to move anyway, so if i can get faster speed whilst paying the same, i suppose it will do. the slight downside is that i will lose my landline… as this fast fibre provider does not include line rental. it can provide a telephone service using online internet connectiviity, but it wont work without electricity when the internet will be shut down.

whilst this present landline i have has its own dedicated connection, and so can work even if the power is down. that is the good thing about the old fashioned land line phone. but we never use it to make calls anymore, so it is not much used at all… that is why i am gradually beginning to accept giving it up all together and losing my landline number forever.

i have been following the met gala parade of fashionistas showing off their clothes sense… its quite bizarre the clothes they come up with… taking themselves so seriously… so that when a cockroach came up the white carpet, and being filmed all the way up it injected a hilarous note to the whole proceedings… hhaha. thank goodness for a good laugh , all the rest of the twitter shots elsewhere were quite dire and sad making really… i had to stop seeing twitter, too sad making. i read blogs to try to get back some happy thoughts. 

well, you can see i am at a loss to write .my personal life is very pleasant so that might be why i dont find anything to write about. nothing like troubles and problems and adversity as topics to bring up in our blogs. though i rather dont have them, than have them just so i can have topics to write about in my blog. i think people might even invent strife and create strife and mayhem just to have something to write about and dramatise just to popularise their blogs, or in the case of twitter, just to drive traffic to their posts. they make money out of it i think that is why it gives them the incentive to increase the traffic to their posts. what is paradoxical is that the blogs i like to follow and who i really enjoy hearing from, have gone silent. they dont monetise their blogs, as far as i can tell, and so if they post regularly they will do so only if they want to. i wonder if they too are enjoying a rather uneventful life which is still enjoyable in its quiet way, and so feel no desire to write about it, thinking it wont interest anyone else but themselves.

london 1.35pm 16.4C cloudy friday 2023

8.39pm 14.5C friday

1.09pm saturday 16.5C sunny saturday 2023

i find them interesting but then i dont think my interests are shared by the majority of people. it is because they might mention something they do that gives them pleasure and i would stop in my tracks to realise i too find pleasure in it, but it is so small that i have forgotten, and it is nice to be reminded of it when they too get pleasure in it. or it might be something i dont know, and in their mention of it, it makes me realise it is indeed a new find very outside my experience.

well anyway, i feel the urge to write about the mundane things i see around me. i got an email , a newsletter written by the fitzrovia businesses (fitzrovia is the area around goodge st station, i think it was famous as a place where lots of fashionable restaurants , clubs and whatnot used to be gathered. ) anyway in their newsletter they mention there will be a number of demonstrations near them, which will disrupt your journey into london if u are going to their eating and drinking establishments. they mentioned 3 on saturday and one on sunday of this coming bank holiday weekend, it being the first spring holiday monday . well i suppose it is nice to be warned of these demonstrations, as it will affect the bus routes that i might take if i go to the paddington library on saturday. oh, i just realised it is today. but i did not go to the library, maybe because i subconsciously discounted going when i become aware of their traffic jams that will be caused by those demonstrations. instead i went to the victoria library which is just a short bus ride away. i can read the papers just as well , without having to go the long way to paddington library for the same thing.

actually it looks really nice outside, looking out of my window, it’s blue sky and bright sunshine, which always makes me want to go out, even if it is only to go to the supermarket. haha. to most other people they would go out to find food to eat, buy the many foods in the fast food places, like macdonalds, or japanese soup ramen bowls, chicken shops. that is the most common reason to go out and find something to do. go for a coffee in the many coffee places . is that what people do now, go to all the restaurants new openings, and meet other fashionable diners at these places and see and be seen? even myself, an insignificant person on the social scene have been inundated by emails and newsletters of the latest openings , so many of them. i think it is so many really high class hotels are opening this year… the chief of which is the raffles hotel groups latest flagship london hotel, the owo… for old war office. it is a splendid baroque building and will have lots of restaurants and bars to fill its space. its rooms will cost from £1000 a night… and have a separate wing of apartments for sale. then there is the peninsula group with its new hotel near hydepark corner, opposite the wellington arch. it is hongkong’s flagship hotel. both those places have taken an age to complete. the owo is understandable, as old buildings would take a lot of money and time to bring back to its old glory, but the peninsula is a new build, and yet took so long. i wonder why? maybe the corvid lockdown have stopped all work on it, that might be the reason for it taking so long for completion.