A bit late with this update – my head’s not been quite right as September was a month of quite extreme highs and lows.

Highs

Work gave us the day off to do the annual charity walk.

62 of us set off early one Friday morning to do the Saddleworth 3 Peaks – not everyone completed it but I did…eventually!

Over 25km (just under 16 miles) and I made it to the pub at the end (what else? 🙂 ) in almost exactly EIGHT hours! It was pretty exhilarating, there were breath-taking views and I’m glad I did it but not sure I would (or could) do it again!

At the second peak, ‘Pots and Pans’ cenotaph

At the 3rd peak where we looked back and could just about see the cenotaph behind us in the distance!

I nearly joined some others in giving up after the second peak, but decided to soldier on, despite being in real pain – my left knee did not cope well with the downhill pounding. I had a walking pole (which helped) and ended up taking painkillers (which didn’t help).

Still, we couldn’t have asked for better weather and I’m certain I wouldn’t have made it if we’d had the rain-lashing and high winds experienced during the Snowdonia walk from a few years back. £5000 raised for charity (as a team) with the company matching it so all went to good causes.

Lows

I found out a few months ago that one of my friends from uni (fellow course and house mate) had undergone chemo for cancer. First round went well and all sounded quite positive.

However, the second round of chemo didn’t go well and she was in a coma for a month. She won’t recover fully from this and there was mention of her in line for a move to a hospice.

I and some other friends went to visit her as soon as we found out (6 hour round trip by car, plus hotel stay). What a roller coaster of emotions that weekend was – my friend was herself but also, obviously, not herself. We don’t know how long she has left (could be weeks, months?) and they continue to monitor how her body is battling the illness. She has however made it clear to all that she does not want to ‘exist’ like this.

As she has lost most of her sight, when we turned up, we played the game “Guess who I am?” and she got us all by our accents!  The ward nurses said that it was lovely to hear laughter coming from the room as we reminisced about our foolish youthful antics and were probably a bit loud! It’s down to us now to provide a little joy in her life.

Us friends realised regretfully that it had been over 10 years since we had all met up face to face – busy lives and all that, although we did catch up via video during lockdown and the friendships and connections have been maintained over the years (we all graduated in 1991!) first via Facebook, but lately via Whatsapp.

Life is just far too short and we must make time for loved ones before it is too late.

Apologies to readers who tried to visit the blog over the last couple of weeks and got:

Attacked

My blog was ‘attacked’ and the attacks pushed me up to the maximum CPU seconds quota I’m allowed on my website hosting plan. Once the quota is reached, the website is made unavailable until the following month.

Such an attack on my blog has happened before, only on that occasion, I was able to block the IP/country where the attacks were coming from, so I didn’t end up hitting the CPU limit. Unfortunately, this time, I was on holiday when I was getting numerous messages like “The Web Application Firewall has blocked 101 attacks over the last 10 minutes.”

I had just enough of my CPU quota left to post my belated July update and then that was it for the month.

Have to admit that over the years, I’ve neglected the back-end stuff of my blog, so I guess I should read up/work on whether there’s anything I can do to try to prevent such attacks in the future. Still, apart from the blog being made unavailable for a period of time, at least the firewall did its job and all seems ok.

Anyway, August was a mixed bag of a month – a great holiday followed by post holiday blues/jetlag, celebrating a friend’s 40th birthday with a cocktail-making session and then catching COVID, which, whilst symptoms weren’t as bad as last time, still had me below par for a week. At least no lingering cough this time.

May unexpectedly saw me embarking on another property purchase.

It can only be described as an impulsive buy as I really had not planned on buying but after viewing it online (I was not able to view it in person), I just had to go ahead with the purchase.

Madness? Probably Definitely. Did I mention impulsive?

It’s a detached, 3-bed, new build with no chain, and I didn’t have time to sort out conveyancing.

Given that high mortgage interest rates are showing no signs of dropping, I decided that this had to be a cash purchase.

No refurb or decorating will be required which suits me perfectly, only the odd fixtures and fittings perhaps. I just need to find tenants for it now, hoping for some viewings any time soon.

The yield on this property will be non-existent, with no chance of capital gains either.  However, I didn’t buy this property for financial gain, but to benefit the community.

Yes folks, I am now the owner of an insect hotel, or ‘Air-Bee-n-Bee’! 😀 😀

It’s been located at the other end of the garden, basically as far as it could go as I would rather not live too close to these neighbours, haha!

One of my friends has one and says she has bees (solitary bees) living in hers every year.  No idea if mine is actually attractive to insects, so might have to cope with some ‘void periods’ or resign myself to the fact that I’ve just spent a tenner on a garden ornament!

Yes, I know this seems to contradict last month’s post where I bought a plant to eat insects but I don’t mind insects in the garden, pollinating my plants, just don’t like/want them in my house!

Anyway, May was a pretty good month, with sunny days and lots of bank holidays to provide some much needed R&R as I’ve been providing cover for both my boss and another team member.

The good news at work is that they have rolled out Bupa medical cover, which is great as I know how expensive such cover costs if I had to buy it personally.

The bad news is that my boss has come back from holiday and handed in his notice. I’m sad he’s going as we get on and he leaves me to get on with my work, but I felt none of the devastation I felt when my previous boss announced she was leaving. Oh well, we’ll see what happens there.

In other news, I’ve just paid for my next trip to Hong Kong, the most I’ve ever paid (over £1.5k just for an economy class flight!), which had to all go onto the credit card so I’ll be on a tighter budget for the next month or so.