What Do You Write About In A Milestone Post?

This is the 200th post to my blog.  I knew that the milestone was close, so I checked the total a little earlier.  Surely such a milestone requires a really good post.  But that means that I have to wait until I have got something significant to write about.  I didn't feel like writing a summary of what has gone before.  So this post will cover some of the things that I have written about in the past, not as they were when I wrote about them before, but as they are now.

One thing that I have regularly complained about is the work that is currently going on around my area of London in an effort to replace the capitals aging Victorian water mains.  The work is still on-going and when I went to the bank today I saw that yet another road has been closed to through traffic.  So far the work within a one mile radius of my home has been going on for almost a year and I am sure that it will be continuing for some time to come.

I have continued to study with the OU; I've completed one course (which I got the result for this week) and I am currently working on two more.  I have had a bit of a rough time with the studying over the last couple of weeks because I haven't been feeling on top of the world.  However, I am going to have a concerted effort this weekend to try to get two of the three TMAs that are due at the beginning of January written, so that I can get the other one completed before Christmas too.  That way I can start the New Year up to date, or even slightly ahead of where I need to be.

Knitting has been one of the things that has helped to pass the time when I haven't been feeling wonderful.  I've knitted four jumpers and a cardigan to keep me warm over the winter, and a hat to keep my ears warm.  I also have three different shawls in progress as the moment.  The Shetland lace shawl that is being knitted for a baby due in February is growing slowly.  It is a difficult pattern to follow and is definitely not for periods when I am feeling very depressed as it just makes me feel worse when I have to unpick it stitch by stitch to correct the mistakes.  The second shawl is a beautiful shawl which has grown quickly and probably could be finished in a couple of evenings when there is nothing much on television.  It will be lightweight, weighing less than 75 grams, and very soft and fluffy as it is knitted in a mixture of mohair and silk. The third shawl is a Shetland hap shawl and this afternoon, I finished the main part of it and now I am knitting the border.  I started with 800 stitches on the circular needle which it has been knitted on, and 17 stitches on a separate needle which were the start of the border.  One stitch from the main shawl gets joined to the border on every other row and there are 160 repeats of the 10-row pattern that makes up each point of the shawl.  I have so far managed to complete 5 repeats so there are only 155 to go.

The other two subjects that have represented a major part of this blog are depression and psychotherapy.  I still have very long periods of depression, followed by short periods when I don't feel so bad.  Sometimes I can fall into a trough in a matter of hours and other times it happens over a period of days or weeks. Psychotherapy has made a difference to my life; it has allowed me to find out so much more about myself and to understand why I am the way that I am. Psychotherapy has been hard; it has sometimes been traumatic; it is often very emotive.  But psychotherapy is certainly helping me to cope with things better, to regain some self-confidence, and to increase self esteem.

So a lot has happened over the time that I have been writing this blog, and I am sure that a lot will continue to happen as the months go by.  What started off as an exercise to see if I could write anything worthwhile has turned out to be one of the best things that has happened to me for quite a long time.  I hope that I will continue to write for a long time to come, and that people will continue to read this blog.  It has been a bit of a lifeline over the last five and a half months and has brought me a lot of new friends.

This is what I have decided to write about in this milestone post.

The Tale Of A New Water Main

Thames Water have a very bad reputation as far as repairing water leaks are concerned. They claim that many of the leaks are caused by the Victorian mains around London, and are in the middle of an extensive programme to replace much of the network. Regular readers of my blog will be familiar with my tales of disrupted traffic and extremely slow moving work.

Earlier this year the area around my home was the subject of this programme. I had to put up with a huge pile of debris outside my house for several months. Prior to my little area of London being the subject of the programme, an area between my house and the library was subject to several months of disruption.

Yesterday evening as I was watching television I could hear the sound of drills in the area. It was not particularly loud as it was regularly drowned out by the sound of passing traffic or emergency vehicle sirens (we have a police station, ambulance station and fire station in fairly close proximity so sirens are something that you get used to) so I attributed it to someone in a nearby residence doing some DIY on their house. But the drilling carried on, and was still ongoing at well past 11pm. It was obvious that this was no householder carrying out some DIY, for his neighbours would have long before insisted that he stop. While climbing the stairs I noticed that there was a red light some distance along the road, and then this light changed to green. Obviously the drilling I heard must have been large pneumatic drills engaged in digging up the road.

This morning, as I made my way to the library I had to pass the scene that had necessitated drilling long past what would normally be considered an acceptable hour. At the crossroads formed by my road and the one 100 yards from my house, there were temporary traffic lights, barriers and a very large hole in the ground filled with water.

It seems that the nice new water mains put into place just a few months ago have sprung a leak. It is possible to say that it is the new main that is leaking because the area of road that had to be dug up is exactly that which was newly laid after the insertion of the new main. It seems that the contractors working in this area may not have done a very good job. One wonders how many more leaks will occur over the coming weeks and months. In all the years that my family have lived in this house, I do not remember the incidence of a single burst main in the area. It seems that Thames Water still have not solved their problem with leaks even after the introduction of replacements for the aged Victorian mains; in fact, we now have them where no leaks had occurred before.