Restricted and unrestricted

4 March 2025 (Tuesday)

Heard five bongs and then dozed off and on until Richard brought me a cuppa at about 6.30am… then off to Lidl for 8ish, shopping, home, and then to my desk - I want to get a lot done today so time’s a bit restricted.  Richard was already working on an edit for the Great Green Barn.

It was 0° again overnight, though walking to Lidl it didn't feel quite so cold, the sun helping.

There’s roadworks continuing on the Uxbridge Road, traffic light controlled and restricting cars and buses and motorbikes and cyclists to one way only - and yes, the roadworks are again unmanned!  It's been like this for rather too many days now.  Either the work needs doing or it doesn’t, and if a job needs to be done then the scheduling should allow for it… and if they’re waiting on parts surely a part can’t take that long to get.  Meanwhile, traffic's restricted, backing up and causing much increased pollution on the streets and much increased stress levels in vehicles.

A desk morning of work work, one essential job trying to work out how to do memberships for Great Green Barn.  We're setting up a membership scheme to allow discounts on tickets, a free community hall hire per year, quarterly entry to a competition to win a GGB Afternoon Tea, a free tea or coffee a month at FES... quite a lot really, though obviously restricted too.  Clearly setting this up on the ticketing system we use (TicketTailor) is not rocket science, though sometimes my brain can’t quite figure things out without help!  AI did come to the rescue, as well as a human being on an even more complicated matter - what I needed the system to do was restrict the purchase of a membership to one per an individual email, though actually it doesn’t restrict this and there’s no way of doing so, so the human was sending the request up the line to get sorted as it’s an oversight more than anything else!

In the afternoon I was at the plot, sorting out the three end beds that have, like other beds, needed work for some time.  They’re edged, i.e. restricted by borders of red bricks as I found a job lot on the way to the plot some years ago.  Two of the beds are now sorted, and the third which is nearer the front of the plot will need at least another half an hour on it as it was just so embedded in grasses, plus the usual weeds - my fault as I let them grow unrestricted.


Weather:  Cold, yet mild, and rather sunny.  In the sun it’s glorious.

Breakfast:  Bran sticks, yogurt and banana
Lunch:  Softened lentils, leftover soup and a tin of Minestrone… plus egg mayonnaise, sliced cucumber and radish, Ryvita
Supper:  Pancakes, lemon juice, sugar…