KW-17 Pigs and Popmaster
Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so
The only way to survive the barracks is with patience. Slowly allowing the days to turn into seasons and the seasons into years.
The only way to survive the barracks is with industry. Filling the moments with actions which progress towards a more desirable future.
On a daily basis, I try to do what needs to be done mostly in some sort of vague priority order. But I almost never dedicate a whole day to one Most Important task. I prefer to break the day into four, marked by standards of timekeeping more familiar to the monks than to the well-ordered minutes-and-hours modern life.
The first time marker is “pig food”, which corresponds to some time around 7 to 7:30am and in which the pigs get fed. Before this, there is “ablutions”, “coffee” and “yoga”. The yoga practice suffers a lot in the winter and one of my must have’s this year is to create a space which is always warm enough to ensure no excuses. And it will almost certainly contain a brightly-coloured picture of Ganesha. And something for incense.
After “pig food”, I generally have more coffee, feed myself and go for a bit of an inspection tour of the things which are growing and probably do one of those “moving things from one place to another” jobs. Straw to the piggies, wood to the woodshed, compost hither and thither. Today, I’m going to get the rake out and tidy up some of the edges of the paths. This year, I want everything productive and everything looking nice.
The second marker of time in the day is called Popmaster. A pop-quiz on the radio. It takes place at the clock reading of 11:30 or thereabouts. It’s usually at this point in the day where I successfully remind myself that I also have to drink something without caffeine in it, so I will make a litre of squash if I have it, water-with-sugar-and-salt if I don’t and settle down to the quiz. Sometimes I do badly, sometimes I do well.
At some point, food happens. And, as the sunlight hours get longer and the middle of the day gets hotter, a nap. We’re not quite there yet, but I can feel the anticipation building!
The afternoon is then usually given over to one longer work session before, you guessed it, it’s time to feed the pigs again. And myself. I like to cook in the evening. At this time of year, it’s mostly potatoes and dried beans, supplemented with some freeganistic skills. I eat well. I had guests this week, which was an unexpected pleasure. They brought me expensive pasta and some vegan treats. I had completely forgotten that expensive pasta is actually noticeably more delicious that the cheap stuff. And I love tofu.
Jobs for this week
Tidy the greenhouse
Put the new trees in the ground
4 rows of peas in the ground, and a load of beans in pots
Finish repotting the tomatoes.
Make at least two pretty, straight brick edges to the potager. There are 24 in total.
Choppy chop the vineyard some more and hopefully sow the sweetcorn
Think some more about doing a YouTubes
Yes, like a lawyer, I charge thinking time!
Talking of which - have you been watching the latest and last season of Better Call Saul? It’s already worrying me that it’s going to be a heartbreaking ending. Kim isn’t in Breaking Bad, and I have a horrible feeling that Mike is going to be responsible for her departure…
Back to the real world! How are your gardens, balconies or collections of pots in the yard looking this year? Are we full of spring? Let me know in the comments!
Your ever-caring Pirate
Ben x
It's KW 17. Not 16. Already! Four months of the year already gone by. I have changed the title here on the website, but obviously, can't change it in your emails. Sorry!
We've only had personal clock time for about 150-200 years and before then it was church bell local time and before that it was sun time. Biological time is inexact, noisy but robust. Even atomic time is relative time, atoms vibrating relative to our heart beat. I think time with too many hard edges and straight lines is damaging, like trying to constrain a tree to a concrete hole in the road. Also our brains can only hold 3-5 things in them at any one time, so a day with 3-4 parts is perfect.
(My Better Call Saul theory is that Kim's departure isn't anything to do with Fring or Mike but is a result of her pushing Howard too far. The series has a brilliant way of making small seemingly inconsequential choices add up and there have been a few active ones by Kim. But hurray, Lalo is still going and he's more politely angry than ever.)