Ireland day 0317. Thursday 11 August 2022- Cleaning

Today’s summary	Spent the morning tidying and cleaning the flat ready for a guest who’s staying with us over the weekend.  Then went to the gym again.   Wall to wall sunshine all day.   One of the best.
Today’s weather	Full sun with not a cloud in the sky all day.   Light easterly breeze.   Appx 24C
Today’s overview location (The blue mark shows the location of my route)			Close-up location (No GPX today.   Click buttons below to download TCX files of gym activities (experimental only)): Rowing machine Cross trainer Pool swim

Commentary

There’s not a lot you can write about the intricacies of cleaning a small flat, and even less that I imagine anyone would want to read about it.   But what I find most remarkable about the whole process is quite how grubby our flat seems to get – even with just the two of us in it.   I still haven’t solved the mystery of the fluff and dust – it can’t all be human skin (ugh) or else there would be nothing left of us by now.   Perhaps it floats in from the nearby railway.

(And talking of railways, Iarnród Éireann have taking it upon themselves to do more bridge repair works.   We naively though that the two weekends of overnight work earlier in the year had finished it, so were a bit disappointed when another week of works, every night last week, was undertaken.   But now the railway company have really excelled themselves, announcing with just 1 day’s notice, that they are going to be working on the same wretched bridge every night (including weekends), from midnight until 5am, from now until the 8th of October.   Last night it was so loud that even earplugs couldn’t keep the din of drilling and hammering out.   Perhaps we will eventually get used to it.   I sincerely hope so!)

But nocturnal tribulations aside, the whole morning, while Val was away at work, was taken up with cleaning, hoovering and tidying.   The toilet, I can assure you, is so clean now that you could eat your dinner off it.   Though I don’t think I am going to give it a try at the moment.

Eventually, everywhere was spic and span so I had a quick sandwich lunch and decided to head off to the gym.   Well after all I want to get my money’s worth from the membership fee.   On the way over there, I bumped into a representative of the property management company we are renting our flat from.   As we are always keen to keep our costs down, we had been vaguely interested in moving to a 1-bed property – possibly in the same complex as where we are now – instead of the 2-bed which we don’t really need most of the time.

Anyway, he told us that such is the shortage of property in the Dublin area that 1 beds in our complex today are only €50 a month less than our two bed, and 2 beds in the same complex are fully 20% more expensive than the rent we are paying.   So he strongly urged us to stay put, as the maximum rent increase the management company can levy on us at our anniversary (at the end of October) is 4%.   Quite sobering, really, and I am glad that we do at least have a decent roof over our heads at a not too extortionate rate.   Even if it does benefit from unwanted nocturnal accompaniments.

After that interesting diversion, I made my way to the gym for, essentially, a repeat of the same routine as I’d followed yesterday.   Rowing, cross-training and swimming.   All quite low-impact which is presumably better for your joints.   I actually enjoyed it, though have decided to give the more scary looking machines a miss until after I’ve had an induction session next week.   I have attached TCX files for the workouts in case anyone is interested.  TCX files, by the way, are a bit like GPX files but for static activities.   They include data such as heart rate, stroke and pace and can be viewed in an app like “Strava”.

Anyway that’s stage 1 of the day finished.   Stage 2 is a visit to the airport to pick up our guest.  The flight is delayed so we’re using the unexpected spare few minutes to prepare the dinner and I’m getting hungry already so i hope the delay isn’t too protracted.   The blogs from the next few days will be a bit shorter than normal, as we will be out and about with our guest.   But do check in anyway, to see what we’ve been up to.

 

Today’s photos (click to enlarge)

The birch tree* outside the Casino model railway museum is looking alarmingly autumnal at the moment. *It might not actually be a birch tree but I can’t get close enough to see what it actually is	Back at the gym this afternoon!
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I’m posting a large picture of this just so that next February I can remember what blue sky actually looks like

Interactive map

(No map today)

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