Plums

Mme MB has harvested some of the reine claude plums from our tree, this is just a fraction, but of course a lot are too high up to get to.
These will no doubt be turned into a very tasty jam. We have rather a lot of it from previous years, but luckily I never get fed up with the taste of it. Lovely on toast.

As per usual, at the moment, suffering with the heat. I also have a bad back, not sure where that came from. Possibly mowing last week when the temperatures dropped down to the mid 20's? We're currently hovering around the 30 mark, a little less hot than it has been. Set to drop back down to the mid 20's from tomorrow. I'm looking forward to it.

We had a bit of a crisis a few days ago, as Emma's boyfriend was due to come on holiday with us in August. Unfortunately his parents and step Dad have decided that he can't come. I won't go into the reasons here. Needless to say, she was extremely disappointed and very upset. So it was difficult to console her. I hated feeling powerless to help her, but in the early hours, she came into our room to say sorry. I was already awake as it was too hot to sleep. Apparently her boyfriend was sorry too.
I had already spoken to his Step Dad on the phone, previously, to say Emma was upset. Seems we'll have a proper chat about things after the holidays. I have already met him, but I've not yet met BF's Mum & Step Dad. Mme MB has several times.

Aside from that, I think the weather has affected my depression. I'm OK most of the time, but yesterday it really hit me. I think that the change of rhythm has got to me, as at the moment I'm no longer working. It is pointless teaching in July and August, as students are mostly absent. Which would mean long gaps between lessons. But suddenly the heat has made doing things a pain and unfortunately we do have a lot of things to do. Not good for motivation.
The other week I saw a TV programme on iPlayer about depression and anxiety, presented by Emma Willis and her husband. For me it was a bit of an eye-opener and I hope to use it as a guide/comparison for how I feel. I can identify with some of the cases covered.
Recently I had a little thing happen, a local bus group (which I used to be a member of) rejected some photos I posted to it's FB group on two occasions. The images were on topic, so I didn't understand why. Added to this there being no interaction from them whilst I was a paid up member, I just got fed up with them.

I have decided to leave the group and just post the images on my own outlets (FB profile, Instagram, X and my Flickr account) - I can take things to heart and I don't handle rejection very well. This is a catalyst to ask myself why am I like that? Things during my childhood and teenage years no doubt piled up to make me into the person I am today. Those are things that most of us rarely consider.

On a happier note, I'm very pleased with my Linux installation. It does what I need and I've found an excellent photo restoration software called Krita. Highly recommend that. I now have Linux Mint on my Thinkpad as well as my Mac Mini. Both now networked together, so I can work on photos stored on my office HD's elsewhere in the house using my Thinkpad.

As well as photos I've also been learning how to edit video in  Openshot. Soon I'll have my first video using that completed. It is very quirky, but once you get used to that it does work quite well. It is surprisingly fast - especially now I've upgraded the Mac Mini to 16Gb RAM, from the Thinkpad.
The latter had been downgraded to 8Gb RAM (swapped the cards over) - but after a weeks use, it isn't enough. In particular when editing in the Gimp or in Krita, they can very occasionally freeze. Which then means having to reboot.
So reluctantly I've bought 2 x 8Gb RAM to bring the Thinkpad back up to 16 again. Still cheaper than having to buy a new PC to upgrade to Win11. Aside from the RAM, the only outlay has been a tray sized ventilator - to sit under the Mac Mini. Which keeps it very cool, it no longer overheats. I think that was 18 euros - so in total the whole project has cost me 68 euros.