Friday Update

Wednesday was a busy day - I was working and then had to give a Zoom talk to the local history society in the evening. It went OK, I think, but I discovered I don't really like presenting online as you don't get any feel for how the audience are reacting. My throat didn't like it either, and by the end my voice was starting to go. Fortunately I don't think I am likely to have to do another online as other talks that were in the diary have all been postponed to dates when it should be possible to give them in person. Giving talks relating to things we have in the archives are part of the outreach aspect of my job, and over the years things have evolved so that only two of us are left who regularly take on public speaking. Usually I quite enjoy it, so long as I am reasonably confident about the subject I am talking about!  

Yesterday morning M and I went swimming again. I enjoyed the swim itself, but it ran my energy supply down to zero - I was tired when I got up to take TG to early morning French, and exhausted by the time we got back from the pool. I am a reasonably strong swimmer, but whole I can swim breast stroke easily, I could never do more than a few lengths of front crawl (freestyle) without getting tired. I decided the time had come to work out why and thanks to Google I think I have cracked it. It seems I had been taking in too much air and not breathing out enough, and kicking too hard and fast. Yesterday I adjusted my breathing and eased up on the legs and .... ta da! Twenty consecutive lengths of front crawl happened! After a rest my energy levels perked up again in the afternoon, and I'm sure swimming regularly will be good for me once my body adjusts to the shock of a different sort of exercise.

This morning we were supposed to meet two friends - another married couple - for a walk but they had to cancel. She had some worrying symptoms and had to call out the paramedics, who took her to hospital for tests.  M and I ended up going for a walk at Woburn on our own.  When we got home I made a large pan full of vegetable soup for lunch as there were various root vegetables in the fridge which needed using up. Nothing showed up on my friend's tests so as she was feeling OK she was able to leave the hospital in the afternoon. Unfortunately, her husband has also had some health issues which mean he can't currently drive, so I collected her from the hospital and drove her home while M collected TG from school. It was the first time since March last year that I have been in a car with someone from outside our household. Another small step back to normality, though not for the best of reasons. 

Staying Home Part 2: Day 8

It was early morning French day for TG which helped me to get started early on my work. I didn't do any yoga, but it meant I had time to go for a three mile walk with M after lunch. Early in the walk we heard some birds making a tremendous racket and realised it was a flock of starlings in this tree - you can just see some in the photo around the top. 

We chose a route round the fields that had been one of our regular walks during the summer, hoping it might be a bit less muddy than the woods. It wasn't. You can see the puddles of water in the tractor tracks, and there were some very squishy bits. This field and its neighbours had been used to grow maize (sweetcorn), I suspect for biofuel or cattle feed. I read that in the UK maize can damage the topsoil, and these certainly did not seem healthy fields, with so much water sitting on top and not draining - it isn't low lying or particularly heavy soil, and to my mind it really should not look like this. 

The next part of the walk was through much healthier looking grassed fields and down a track, also on the muddy side. 

This brought us out to what had once been a separate hamlet, but is now on the edge of the modern town. This building was once a watermill, and has been converted into houses - when she was at middle school H was friendly with a girl who lived in one of them. What must once have been the millstream runs along the side of the track running down to the mill. From here we walked back up through housing estates and just managed to get home in time for M to go and collect TG from school while I got on with some more work. More rain is forecast for the weekend, so it was good to get out and enjoy a bit of blue sky. 

TG had a late dance class, so we waited for her to finish and ate late. I made a beef pie with sweet potato wedges and sautéed cabbage. Good autumn comfort food. The news was a bit depressing. Covid deaths are growing and there was a spike in cases (probably infections from the last few days before lockdown just now coming through the testing system, so hopefully the numbers will now start to fall again). There is infighting among government advisers which has become so acrimonious that one senior adviser walked out and others are apparently threatening to go - not in itself a bad thing, but it is ridiculous that they are bickering like this in the middle of the Covid crisis and with the end of Brexit transition only weeks away, with no deal in place. 

More cheerfully, I made a fun discovery while I was doing my archive work this morning. I have been looking for pictures for an Instagram account, and someone mentioned a postcard showing a bull in a bedroom. That one was too good to pass up so I went hunting and found both a copy on our catalogue and a newspaper article about the incident, which took place in 1900. Apparently a bullock escaped while being taken down an alleyway to market and entered the kitchen door of a hotel. It then climbed the stairs, giving the lady of the house (who was busy putting a child to bed at the time) something of a shock, and went on the rampage in a bedroom. It was cornered and recaptured, but not before someone had taken a photo of the devastation it caused, with the back end of the bull just visible to one side of the picture. 

Challenge Completed!

I may not have been writing here for the past few weeks but I have been writing on my history blog, where I managed to make it through the entire A to Z Challenge and finished my A to Z of Archives, talking about all sorts of archive related things from catalogues to knickers (if you want to know, you will have to read the entry for K!).