Sunday 22 November 2020

Staying Home Part 2: Day 18

I honestly don't understand how weekends seem to go past so quickly. Today I did a few jobs - beginning what I hope will be a fix to a broken kitchen cabinet door (the holes for the screws holding it on got too large and it fell off), doing online grocery shopping, sorting out money stuff - watched the last two episodes of The Crown and the Strictly results show, went for a walk, read a little and knitted some of sock number two of a pair for my brother. Then boom! Day nearly over! 


We did a town walk today - into town, through a riverside park, back round through the town centre, then home - which came to nearly 4 miles altogether. The house above is one of the almshouses built by a local charity in the late 18th century. I love the shape of this door, though M commented that you wouldn't do well living here if you were either very tall or very fat1 Definitely not a standard size door. The houses are still almshouses, lived in at a low rent by elderly people I believe. 


While we walked we spent quite a while discussing whether or not to sell our little second car. It has had a lot of use over the years, but our life is now reaching a point where it is questionable whether we really need it or not. When one or other of us was working in an office either full time or several days a week, the other relied on it. Then both the older girls learned to drive in it and H drove it whenever she was home during her four years at uni. Between less need to go out during the pandemic and H now having her own car, it has been getting so little use that the battery died; we are now having to make a point of taking it for a run once a week even when we don't need to. This weekend one front tyre had gone flat (we think it may have a slow puncture as it does this occasionally) and it had to be taken out for a visit to the air machine at the garage. We were both leaning towards selling it, but after batting around the pros and cons decided it might be a premature decision - so long as nothing goes wrong with it the cost of keeping it is pretty low, and when life eventually gets back to normal we might regret getting rid of it. "Normal" seems so far away - both behind us and in the future - that it is hard to know quite what our weekly routine will look like post-pandemic. In the end we decided to keep it for the time being and see how things go. 

H went out for a walk with an old school friend this morning. They were going to walk round the local country park, but so many people had the same idea there was nowhere to park, so they ended up walking near her friend's house. This afternoon she went over to the site office for her new house to have another look at kitchen tiles - she and her BF had both changed their mind about their original decision, so they have chosen different wall tiles and also picked tiles for the kitchen floor instead of the wooden floor they originally wanted. They are hoping they may get a chance to look inside the house before Christmas - apparently it might be possible once the structure is completed, before they start fitting it out. All very exciting for her! While she was out I started making dinner, then she took over once she got home - her Sunday roasts are restaurant standard, so I am very happy to leave it to her. Going to miss her cooking when she moves out! 

1 comment:

elli said...

Loving all the building photos, thank you for sharing. And so much fun for your daughter to be planning all the bits and bobs for her new home. Nice to have something so positive to focus on, this wonky year!!