A Positive End to the Year

The good news - the best possible news - is that the Oxford AstraZeneca vaccine has been approved and will begin roll out in the UK next week. The plan is to get a single dose into as many people as possible as quickly as possible, with a second dose up to three months later. While the Pfizer vaccine is brilliant and highly effective, the AstraZeneca vaccine much easier to distribute widely as it doesn't need to be kept at  such low temperatures. Best of all, it is low cost, will have manufacturing centres around the world (including a large one in India) and the vaccine is non-profit. In the long run it will save millions, and possibly even billions of lives. For us in the UK, the end of the pandemic really is in sight now, although the next couple of months will still be grim. 

The sort-of-good news is that a Brexit deal has been agreed, signed off (with virtually no proper scrutiny) by Parliament, and we will avoid the costs and chaos of a no-deal Brexit. The deal is about as thin as could be, but has one small silver lining in that the EHIC (European Health Insurance Card) arrangements are going to continue, meaning that there will still be reciprocal health care across the EU and UK. The government are trying to claim it is a "great" deal, but it clearly isn't. Brexit gains? In my opinion, zero. It won't even get rid of the interminable arguments about Europe. The government is carefully not mentioning that the agreement provides for renegotiation every five years, and includes a long list of joint committees to discuss UK/EU issues in many different spheres. In other words, Brexit doesn't change geography. We are an island at the periphery of a continent; the EU will always be our largest trading partner, and will always be our most important overseas relationship. 

I am still struggling to completely shake off the headache from earlier in the week. I'm wondering now it if is sinus related - not something I normally suffer from, but I have been a bit sniffly and it seems to be worse at night. This quiet time between Christmas and New Year is very quiet indeed this year. Nothing more exciting happening than our daily walks. We normally celebrate New Years Eve with old friends who live a couple of miles away, so this year we are going to have a virtual New Years Eve on FaceTime. The original plan was to make a buffet meal to graze at during the evening (our usual tradition), but then noticed a local pub is delivering meals and thought it would be nice to support them and have ordered a two course dinner from them. We will have a New Year's Day buffet instead. Oh, and I finished the first sock of a pair for myself. 

Deep Winter

This feels a strange time. The Covid figures are climbing daily and it looks as though January will be grim. It is the dark depths of winter and feels it, with persistent cold and damp. Further north there has been snow, but not here - we just have clouds and drizzle. My headache finally lifted today, but left me feeling a bit dizzy and out-of-sorts. Hopefully by tomorrow it will have cleared properly. The Covid research app I provide data for decided to offer me a test despite having no Covid symptoms, but after two failed attempts the government test portal decided I had had a home test too recently to get another one (presumably because I ordered TG's using my own email address) and I decided I my commitment to help with research data didn't extend to going for a drive-in test. 

We went out for local walks both yesterday and today but I didn't take any photographs, so here are two more from our Boxing Day walk. The house above was lived in by women's suffrage campaigner Emmeline Pankhurst for a couple of years before the First World War, which is why it has the blue commemorative plaque. The church is not quite as old as the Anglo-Saxon church at Wing, but is one of the best examples of a 12th century church in the country. Not long after it was built the church revenues and the right to appoint its vicar were given to Kenilworth Priory, which was too far away to show much interest, and the village had absentee overlords, so there was never anyone with enough interest to extend or "improve" the building in the later Middle Ages. All for the best, as it turned out, as this beautiful old church is a gem. 

Yesterday morning H took TG out to the new drive-through Tim Horton's for breakfast and M went to the tidy tip to get rid of Christmas debris. In the evening we had a Zoom session with our neighbours and ex-neighbours (TG's godparents) which was lovely - almost as good as being in the same room. The six of us have socialised regularly for years, usually sharing dinners with an international theme for which each of us makes one course. One set of neighbours moved and now split their time between England and Spain (when there isn't a pandemic!) but we still usually meet up regularly when they are in the UK. Spending time with dear friends is a treat, even when it has to be virtual. Today has been very lazy. I think I have slowed down to almost a complete stop! Getting back into work mode next week is going to be a struggle. I think I would really rather hibernate and just come out in the spring when it is lighter, brighter, and (please God!) vaccination is starting to win the battle against Covid. 

Ups and Downs

Yesterday was another good day. M and I went for a late morning walk around the village where my father and his family came from (on both sides, from at least the early 19th century). To avoid the dreaded mud we mostly stuck to the main road. It is a long, straggling village, so we started in the middle, walked to the south end and back, and then towards the north end, turning round when it started to rain. I think we walked about 2 1/2 miles altogether. The house below was once the Red Lion Inn, and is where my 10 year old great-grandfather at the time of the 1881 census. 

The next photo is of what is thought to be the oldest house in the village, dating back to the 16th century.  I'd love to see what it looks like inside! After we got home from our walk we warmed up with turkey soup which I had made the night before. In the afternoon we played games - Banangrams, Mind the Gap (a card game similar to Uno but based on London Underground stations and lines) and Mega Monopoly, which in our opinion is much the best Monopoly version. Then M and I watched Hidden Figures, which we saw at the cinema when it was first released. It is an excellent film and well worth watching again. Even though it was just the four of us, we had our usual Boxing Day buffet for dinner. Last year we went to R's for Boxing Day, but obviously that wasn't a possibility this year.  

Today has felt quite flat and lethargic. I woke with a headache which wouldn't shift, and H is feeling at a loose end as she has next week off work but with nothing to do - can't see her BF except for walks, can't go to the gym, can't visit any friends, can't go and do any shopping for things for their new house. It feels a waste of holiday time, especially as she knows that when she wants time off later it will be the busy season and she won't be able to get it. M and I did manage to go out for a walk locally this morning, and H and TG went out for a short walk this afternoon but came back complaining of wet feet. The weather has been truly awful this week. We are on high ground, but there have been floods in the town where I work, and yesterday I was going to meet a friend for a walk but she had to cancel as they needed to go and rescue her elderly mother whose flat was in danger of flooding. Between plague and floods it all feels very apocalyptic. I keep reminding myself that things will get better, hopefully quite quickly once the vaccination programme gets up to full speed. 

Merry Christmas

This was a different Christmas, with faces missing from our table, but most importantly everyone is safe and well and - God willing - we will all be back together next Christmas. With our youngest daughter now 14 Christmas starts a little later, though both girls were sitting on our bed opening stockings by 8am. (We always managed to avoid ridiculously early starts, as we imposed a "no waking us or opening anything before 7" rule which stuck!) Next year we will be down to just one stocking, with only TG left at home. And she is growing up fast! She has always been petite, but this year she has grown rapidly and is now 5 feet 5 inches tall - the same height as me, and almost as tall as her sisters. M and I still get a shock when we look at her and see the young lady who has suddenly replaced the child she was last year.

After opening stockings some of us got dressed and some of us sorted presents into piles for each person, then we opened gifts with occasional breaks to make breakfast and get the turkey in the oven. R received a negative result for her Covid test, so H and TG met up with her midway between her house and ours to swap presents. When they got back we set up a FaceTime call through the TV and watched each other open packages. In the slightly blurry picture (photo of TV screen) below you can see a very excited dog enjoying his stuffed toy pheasant. After that M took a bag of packages around to my brother and H and I did stuff in the kitchen. 

H was chief cook this year, leaving me to do a bit of vegetable chopping, to make the gravy, and to prepare an apple crumble for dessert. We had a minor catalogue of messy disasters, though none affected the quality of the final meal. H opened a jar of goose fat to use for potatoes which had been left out of the fridge and liquified, some spilled onto the black pepper grinder which had to be thrown out. Then something liquid (soy sauce? balsamic vinegar?) managed to spill itself in a cupboard, and while cleaning that up I dropped a full jar of wholegrain mustard which smashed on the floor. Just as we finished cleaning that up TG knocked my drink over. After that all went smoothly, and the end result was delicious. While we were dishing up, M took a large portion of everything round to my brother so he didn't miss out on Christmas dinner. 

After the main course we were so full we took a short break and played bananagrams (one of our new Christmas games) before eating the apple crumble. Then we slumped on sofas and watched TV for a while - the second half of Coco (one of our  favourite Disney movies), the Queen's Christmas message, and highlights from Strictly. I confess I may have dozed off for a while! Most of us didn't want much else to eat - TG had cheese and biscuits, M and I had small smoked salmon rolls, and H I think had chocolate! We played The Really Nasty Horse Racing Game (highly recommend this board game - fun and not too hard to learn), then the girls went upstairs while M and I watched the Call the Midwife Christmas special, which given the way this year has been felt even more of a treat than usual and may have required a tissue or two! Christmas this year may have been different, but it was still good. 

Christmas Eve

This morning we drove over to the nearby village of Wing to drop off a Christmas card to friends. After standing at the end of their drive for a socially distanced chat we went for a walk through the village, past the church and through the fields beyond. At this point it stopped being a walk and became a squelch over mud and waterlogged ground. In the end we walked back along a road rather than battle more mud and water in more fields, doing a circuit of 3.5 miles. 

Wing Church is truly special, one of the most important surviving Anglo-Saxon churches in the country, with much of it dating back to the 10th century. The village was given by King Edgar to a kinswoman, Aelfgifu, who rebuilt what was probably originally a 7th or 8th century building.  It is thought that the crypt held relics which made it a place of pilgrimage. It would also have been a minster church, acting as a centre for a wider area than just the village. The picture below shows the apse, with rounded Anglo-Saxon arches and a much later window cut into the wall. Below the window you can see the top of an arched entrance leading to the crypt.  

After we got back from our walk it was time for a late lunch. H went out for a walk and to deliver presents to her boyfriend and his family, while I made some mince pies. A friend dropped round to bring us some home made sweets, so we had a socially distanced chat with her from the door step. We watched Paddington 2 on TV, then played a Christmas Eve board game (literally, The Christmas Eve Game). M an I went outside with the intention of singing carols with neighbours - our town usually has carol singing in the town centre on Christmas Eve which is attended by thousands, and this year the plan was to broadcast carols so that people could sing along on their doorstep. However, we couldn't make the music work so we ended up chatting outside for a while, with Christmas music on the car radio instead.  

After that we prepared vegetables ready for tomorrow and cooked pizzas, then watched Love Actually, which has become our traditional Christmas Eve movie. Altogether a good Christmas Eve. 

Baking Day

Today was thoroughly wet and miserable, so we went for a short walk first thing when it was just drizzly, before the rain really set in. I should have gone to Stonehenge on Monday to see the winter solstice there, but obviously couldn't because of the new Covid restrictions, and we should have gone to Waddesdon Manor today, but that was also cancelled. Given that the weather both days turned out to be miserable, at least it hasn't felt as though we missed out too much! That is the problem with British weather. It is so unpredictable that planning anything outdoors is always a risk, at any time of year.  

After the walk I did another batch of wrapping, and now just have stocking fillers (small and fiddly!) to do tomorrow. We have gifts for R and her boyfriend, H's boyfriend and my brother all in bags ready to be delivered by "Santa" (also known as H) tomorrow. Or, at least, that was the plan. R is waiting for a Covid test result - she doesn't have any standard Covid symptoms, but had a persistent headache so thought she would get a test as a precaution. If she gets a negative result tomorrow, H will still go over and do a gift swap, but they rightly thought it sensible to wait until R knows for sure whether she is in the clear. While I I was wrapping, H was baking a spectacular donut cake for her boyfriend's sister's birthday tomorrow. 

We had a family movie afternoon, watching Matilda for the umpteenth time - R used to love Matilda so much that at one point we almost knew the entire script by heart! - followed by Klaus on Netflix. TG baked brownies, and then she and H cut and decorated them as Christmas trees. I haven't done any Christmas baking so far this year and have left it all to the girls, but will probably make some mince pies tomorrow.

There was some talk about playing board games this evening, but in the end TG wanted a soak in the bath, H decided on an early night, and I have tucked myself up in bed early to read, knit and write for a couple of hours. I am so enjoying the extra leisure time this week. 

Vaccines and Errands

M received his first vaccine dose this morning, and reports a sore arm (similar to flu vaccine) but no other issues. There were a few stages to go through - registration, questionnaire, sign off by a doctor, vaccine, and then waiting time to check he had no reaction - but it all went smoothly. He said the people being vaccinated were a mix of about 60% elderly people and 40% NHS staff. I see there are reports that vaccine distribution is uneven and that some hospital trusts have yet to receive supplies, but in this area the system seems to be working well. The doctor M saw seemed to think the vaccination programme should be completed sometime between Easter and the summer. 

I went to M & S Food to pick up a few items, hoping it would not be too manic at lunchtime, and was pleasantly surprised to find only a short queue to get in. I also went into the pet store next door to buy a toy for R's dog for Christmas. He adores new toys but destroys them very quickly so any addition to the toy box is always welcome! The plan is that H will go over to R's on Christmas Eve to drop off and collect gifts and go for a walk with her sister while she is there. Then on Christmas Day we will have a virtual present opening by FaceTime or Zoom. I also did a bit more gift wrapping. I spotted these boxes in Tesco last week and got one each for TG and H. I have filled them with treats to have while we watch a movie and play games on Christmas Eve, and to snack on over the holidays. I'm working on the principle that this year anything that might add a bit of extra Christmas cheer goes! 

I also got a few other jobs done, including sorting out phone contracts for TG and M, which I had been procrastinating over. We have had SIM only contracts with Three for at least ten years and their customer service has been consistently excellent, but it always takes time to deal with upgrades and changes so I am inclined to put it off. I also needed to start the process of transferring H's contract into her own name - we carried on paying it for her while she was a student, but now she is working it's time to hand it over. M being decidedly non-technical, I have always dealt with all the phone contracts. 

This evening it was my turn to make dinner - haddock, sweet potato wedges and peas - then we watched Four Christmases, which was definitely not one of the better Christmas films I have seen! The All Creatures Great and Small Christmas special which I watched with M later on was much more enjoyable. 

 

An Early Christmas Gift

Today has been a very much better day - on a personal level, at least, although between mutant fast transmitting Covid, blocked ports, flight bans and Brexit the national news is grim. This morning TG's Covid test result came back negative, as we hoped and expected given that it was just a precautionary test. However, the best and most extraordinary thing is that M is getting his first dose of the vaccine tomorrow! Health service workers who are vulnerable due to medical conditions are considered a top priority group so he was authorised this evening to book in for vaccination. Amazingly he was able to get an appointment at the local hospital tomorrow morning. We had expected he would not have to wait too long - my guess was early January - but to get his first dose as an early Christmas present? What a gift! As you can imagine, it is a big boost to our spirits. 

My energy levels slumped a bit again today, but I still managed a 2 mile walk, so that is good. This morning I read for a bit and then spent some time wrapping gifts. Usually I try to wrap as I buy, but this year it didn't happen. We have a family tradition of me buying the girls quite a lot of smaller gifts and stocking fillers - it started because we have so few relatives that when they were small they often only got gifts from us and from my mother. Somehow the tradition has stuck - habit, I think! - even though there isn't the need for it any more. It means wrapping takes me a while. While I wrapped I listened to the first book in Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy on Audible. I have read the books, but a long time ago. I have been enjoying watching the BBC adaptation and decided it was time to read (or listen to) them again. 

This month I have knitted two pairs of socks as gifts for friends - same pattern but different colours and sizes - and finished a cross-stitch badger for our neighbour who often gets an entire family of badgers in her garden at night. Sometimes I get into a sock-knitting frenzy. I find them relaxing to knit, and can knit while I read or watch TV so I can get through them quickly. I am now knitting a pair for myself, while also working on a cardigan and trying to finish a Mickey Mouse cross-stitch bookmark for one of the girls for Christmas. 

After we got back from our walk this afternoon TG wanted to watch the old Jim Carrey version of the Grinch, so we watched together while I cross-stitched. H was working, and was out for part of the day. This evening's treats were my advent calendar gin, which I used to make a gin hot toddy with honey and lemon as it suggested, an episode of Only Connect in which I failed hopelessly to solve any of the questions, and a Christmas episode of Upstart Crow with Will Shakespeare locked down in London during an outbreak of plague and ranting to good effect about people failing to wear plague beaks and hoarding moss for the privy! Altogether a very much better day. 

Pandemic Fatigue

I started the day with full-blown pandemic fatigue. Having the prospect of family visiting for a few hours on Christmas Day snatched away at this stage upset me more than it should. I know how fortunate we are in that we are all healthy and have not been hurt financially by Covid, and I am truly grateful for that, but all the little things are now starting to get to me. I struggle with the inability to make plans, because the rules change frequently and with little notice - my inner control freak doesn't cope well with uncertainty. I'm sad that so many things we had been looking forward to this year, both big and small, have had to be cancelled. Working from home has advantages, but is also very isolating and I struggle with lack of access to things I need, both physically and digitally (I have never been given any tech by my employer and have to use my own laptop, so I can't access files I need). I miss seeing friends and family indoors. While walks and picnics were good in the summer, at this time of year not so much! I miss all the people I haven't seen since March. I am fed up with constantly having to assess risk, with having to make so many decisions about what is safe and what is sensible. I am even fed up of always having to be aware of where people are walking or standing so that I can keep my distance, and having to circle round people at a distance when we go out for a walk. I would just like to be able to turn off my Covid antennae for a while and forget about the wretched thing.

There. That is my moan out of the way. Having grumpily worked my way through that list in my head this morning, I felt better as the day went on. It was a nice, bright morning so we went for a walk around our old canal / woods loop. We have been avoiding the woods because it is so muddy, but decided to chance it today ... and yes, it was very muddy indeed. On Thursday evening I went out playing carols with a small group from the brass band and got home exhausted. Although I am almost completely over the post-viral thing from earlier in the year, every now and then I have an energy crash which takes a day or two to get over. Apparently a couple of hours of walking round in the cold carrying a trombone and a music stand and stopping to blow it at intervals was overload. I was still weary yesterday, and half way through today's walk I started to get more tired than normal, but I got a second wind and managed the full three miles, so hopefully my energy levels are on the way up again. 

I wrote a Christmas newsletter last night and then wrote and posted cards after we got back from the walk. H and her BF had to go and sort out about carpet for their new house - they ordered some through the builder which had gone out of stock, so had an appointment arranged to go and choose a replacement. I think things relating to house moves are still exempt from lockdown, though who really knows any more! They stopped off at a new drive through Tim Hortons (Canadian coffee and fast food chain) to test it out and she brought a box of mini doughnuts home with her. We all enjoyed watching The Holiday and H cooked roast lamb for dinner. Lots to be grateful for, despite Covid. 

Tier 4

Well, that went downhill fast! Three weeks ago the Covid rate for our local authority area was 55 per 100,000 people; now it has gone up to over 300 per 100,000. On Thursday it was announced that our area would be moved from Tier 2 coronavirus restrictions to Tier 3 from today, then today we were told we would be moved into a new Tier 4 from tomorrow. It seems that the rapid spread in London and the south-east of England, which has now moved up to us, is due to a mutation of the virus which may increase transmissibility by as much as 70%. As a result the government has effectively sent us back to the same lockdown restrictions we had for four weeks during October and November. It as also, so far as Tier 4 areas are concerned, cancelled any relaxation of the measures over Christmas and no households in Tier 4 are allowed to meet up. 

We were expecting a small amount of mixing to be allowed over Christmas, so had planned our usual Christmas Day gathering, with R and her boyfriend, H's boyfriend and my brother coming to us for Christmas morning and dinner (at lunch time), with the older girls going to their partners' families later in the day. However, we will now just have the four of us who live here together. While it is disappointing not to be able to see the rest of our family, keeping well is more important, especially with the vaccination programme already under way. My brother lives a few minutes walk away, so we will take his Christmas dinner and gifts round to him. We had already ruled out any further socialising over the Christmas period, so it isn't going to mean any other changes to our arrangements. Two other minor disappointments are that my planned trip to visit Stonehenge is off - we are not allowed to travel out of our area - and so is our visit to see the Waddesdon Manor Christmas lights on Wednesday. We keep reminding ourselves that it is just one year, and we will enjoy everything all the more next year when (we hope!) life should be pretty much back to normal. 

All secondary age school children have been asked to take a Covid test, as it seems that is the age group where the virus is spreading fastest. Fortunately for us, our immediate area still has quite low Covid rates, and N's school has been largely clear. She did a home test on Thursday afternoon, but we haven't had the results yet - someone (not me!) missed part of the instructions and we didn't register the test online when we should have done. I have now done it retrospectively, so hopefully the test result will get correctly matched up to the right details. If no result comes back by Monday, we may have to do another test. I'm not over worried as it is just precautionary. M is still doing his lateral flow tests regularly and getting negative results. 

To brighten a slightly grumpy post the photos are from a walk along the canal with neighbours on Thursday, and some other neighbours' cheerful Santa and snowman. 

Third Time Lucky?

Yesterday was another wet and miserable day, so I didn't venture outside at all. I sorted out a few things online, including updating my shopping order and rearranging a cancelled flight back from Paris. We moved our planned trip to Disneyland from February to September, then EasyJet conveniently cancelled our flight so we were able to change the date to September at no cost. This was originally a flight booked to come back from a trip to Italy in July - the plan was to take the train out with a stop in Turin on the way to Lake Garda, then fly home. Fingers crossed it is third time lucky! 

H went to the gym in the morning. After exercising at home since she came home from uni she decided to  rejoin. It looks as though the government has decided that the measures gyms are taking to keep people safe are working, and that the benefit of exercise is greater than the risk in keeping them open. When she got home she baked sausage rolls. These are made with chicken sausage-meat, stuffing and cranberry sauce. She also makes a vegetarian version and both are very, very good. During the afternoon I read a bit of Jan Morris's Europe, knitted a good chunk of the second sock of a pair, and did a bit of writing. H was in cooking mode and made roast beef, roast potatoes, Yorkshire puddings and all the trimmings for dinner. Definitely going to miss her roasts when she moves out, but she has promised to invite us over for dinner regularly! In the evening we did a Zoom quiz organised by a colleague from work. She has run it on three occasions, asking participants for donations for a charity which runs food banks, and has raised over £1000. 

Today was back to work. H was out doing a stock count. M worked on our last freelance job before Christmas, and I did a mix of archive and freelance work. We managed to squeeze in a 40 minute walk in between lunch and M going out to collect TG, when I spotted this rather unusual Christmas decoration! I cooked salmon from the fish box with new potatoes and broccoli for dinner and now have a slightly sore hand from an oil splash. Totally my own fault! 

Winter Picnic

The current coronavirus restrictions mean that we are only allowed to meet people outdoors, so we arranged to meet three friends for a lunchtime picnic in the park. We originally planned it for tomorrow, but the forecast was for rain all day, while today was supposed to be dry, so we rearranged. Yes, it rained. It did at least stop by the time we got to the park, but the picnic benches were very wet. After eating our lunch either standing or sitting, according to how brave or well-protected we were feeling, we went for a walk through town and along the riverside walk and canal tow path. Despite the weather, it was good to see people we don't live with (much as we love our family). I am now finding that the isolation is beginning to get to me. I am the only person in the household who doesn't go to either work or school, and my interaction with colleagues is limited to a 20 minute Teams staff meeting with no video on Monday mornings and occasional emails, with no plans for me to go back to the office any time soon. I know it is going to be a long winter, and suspect that we will be back in lock down again in January, so I am just going to have to deal with it - at least I know now that there is an end in sight, though I don't expect things to improve significantly until the spring. 

Over the past few days I have started to get back into writing and research. A couple of years ago I stumbled across a couple of sisters with local connections who served as ambulance drivers and orderlies in the First World War. The more I found out about them, the more interested I became. Once I began to research in detail I discovered one of the sisters had a lifelong friendship and partnership with another woman who was a very unusual character, and who very conveniently had written a detailed account of her war service. The more I dug, the more I found, and I am now trying to write a book about the three women and their families. I have hardly touched it this year, but I am really hoping I can be more disciplined next year and start to put in the time it needs. I have no idea whether the end result will be publishable, but I would like to finish even if it is just for my own satisfaction. I also have another book to put together, editing some documents for the local record society and writing a commentary. That one I know will be published (unless I make a complete hash of it!), though the market is pretty limited and it is definitely a labour of love, not for money - it is hardly a candidate for the Amazon best seller list! Both have a very long way to go, but I suspect the idea that I will have more time in the future is a mirage, and I should stop using time as an excuse and get on with them. Something to focus on over what looks like being a long, lonely winter can only be a good thing. 

I'm short of photos today, so here is another of my Christmas bauble collection. This one came from one of the Christmas markets in Vienna when we visited last year. Travelling so freely seems hard to imagine now. Once we are eventually able to travel again, it will no longer be as Europeans, it will be as Little Englanders, thanks to Brexit. No European health insurance cards, no fast EU citizen passport queues, restrictions on how long we can stay in European countries, and in another year, the need for a visa to travel to continental Europe. This makes me unutterable sad. So much lost, and so afar as I can see to no benefit. On top of Covid, whatever happens in the current negotiations between our useless government and the EU, we are almost certainly looking at considerable trade disruption in January after the transition period ends on December 31st. I am most worried about the possibility that there may be issues with importing medication, as I am very reliant on an asthma inhaler. Nothing I can do except hope that it doesn't take too long to sort out the initial chaos. The negotiations for a free trade agreement are not going well, with reports that PM Johnson made a hash of a visit to Brussels this week, and there are unpleasant mutterings about using the navy to chase away European fishermen in January if there is no deal. What.a mess. 

Vaccinations are Happening

This week seems to have gone by surprisingly fast without very much of note happening. The weather has still been mostly gloomy, though we have managed to walk most days. M is on the busy week of his shift rota, working Saturday, Sunday and Tuesday evenings, and then an early shift today. We both had yesterday free so went into town in the morning to run a couple of errands. As we were there we stopped at Caffe Nero for coffee and a mince pie (me) and tea and an apricot croissant (M), then went for a walk along the canal. 

When not working I have mostly been knitting, reading and watching Christmas movies with the girls. Yesterday evening we had a "live" band rehearsal, and we have one more lined up before Christmas, and we are back to driving TG to and from dance classes four evenings a week. This year the timetable has everything spread out, another year she could do the same number of classes but only go two evenings - it is very much pot luck. 

The best news of the week is that on Tuesday the Covid vaccination programme in the UK started. Priority is being given to the over 80s, health workers and care home staff and patients. A friend who works for a local hospital says it all seems very efficiently organised. Not such good news is that there were a couple of allergic reactions to the vaccination on the first day, and they are currently not giving it to anyone with a history of severe reactions to medicines, food or vaccinations. Unfortunately I had a severe reaction to my pre-school booster jabs as a child, so may not be able to have that particular Covid vaccine (Pfizer). I have been having flu vaccinations for the past few years without any problems, so hopefully there will be a vaccine option that will work for me. M came home from work at the weekend with his lateral flow testing kit, and did his first home test on Tuesday. He was a bit unsure about the instructions, and I think he was almost as pleased that the test didn't show up as a failed test as he was that it was negative. In more depressing news, case numbers in our area have gone up quite a bit over the last week, bouncing back as soon as the semi-lockdown was eased. 

I am not normally a big drinker, but I must admit I am still enjoying my gin advent calendar every day, and having fun with different mixers. This one was a gin fizz cocktail, for which I made my own sugar syrup. Today was a lime flavoured gin with soda water and lime juice. These days my digestive system seems to like gin more than lime. I also proved to myself conclusively on Tuesday what I already knew, which is that it really doesn't like dairy! I went into M & S Food while TG was at dance and bought us both discounted desserts made with clotted cream, deciding to risk it for once. They were very nice, but had more cream than I expected, and my stomach was not at all happy as a result. It is funny how these things develop - I ate dairy without any problems for over 50 years. Fortunately there are so many good non-dairy options these days that I rarely miss it. 

A final piece of good news is that H and her boyfriend exchanged contracts on their house today, which means both they and the builder are now committed to the purchase as soon as the house is completed. Next year should be an exciting one for them! 

A Weekend of Two Halves

This first photo was from our walk along the canal yesterday morning ....

And the one below is from this morning's walk through the Duke of Bedford's park at Woburn. We met up with R, her partner and dog and walked through fog, which hasn't really lifted all day. You can easily guess which day the two lower photos were taken. 

It was also a weekend of two halves for busyness. After our walk yesterday H and I cooked a roast chicken with roast potatoes, parsnips, carrots and broccoli for lunch. Then later in the afternoon I went back to the Apple Store to pick up the laptop I ordered in the morning, and stopped off at Tesco on the way to buy wrapping paper and a couple of other items. Then in the evening we had a Zoom virtual Christmas concert with the brass band and a local choir - over 200 household's logged in, so probably a total attendance of well over 300. I also managed to get the new laptop set up. Not that it takes much doing as most things just downloaded themselves from iCloud, though I did have to fiddle around a bit to get the Dropbox and Google Drive accounts that I use for work added. M had his first post-lockdown shift yesterday evening, and came home with a box full of lateral flow tests. Their accuracy seems to be questionable and they are reported to give a lot of false negatives, but if they pick up even half of asymptomatic cases that has got to be better than nothing.  

Today was a much quieter, relatively lazy day. This afternoon the girls and I watched Santa Clause 2, TG did some homework, and then we played Cluedo (which I think is Clue in the US?). Astonishingly neither girl had played before! Their older sister obviously had, as I recognised her writing on one of the clue sheets. M went to work again, so the rest of us had curry (which M doesn't like) for dinner.  

It was good to catch up with R and her partner today, as we probably won't see them again now until Christmas. She has just been offered a new job, to start in the new year, and is excited about it. It will be something a bit different - a mix of internal comms and company promotion. It will use and develop skills she already has from her current job, but also give her the chance to make media content. From what she said, it sounds almost tailor made for her. H seems to be settling in well to her job now the initial exam stress is over. She is helping to plan a virtual Christmas event, and has been delighted to discover that instead of her being the lone extreme planner, for accountants planning with spreadsheets is the norm!

Christmas Shopping

Both M and I had a day off work today, but the weather was too miserable to want to go anywhere outdoors. The forecasted snow didn't arrive, but it was cold with a persistent icy drizzle. Definitely indoor weather. I have come to the conclusion that now might be the right time to trade in my laptop - the one I am using is 6 years old and in good condition, but as I am working two jobs on it I don't want to wait until it starts to become unreliable. I did a bit of research and discovered it has a significantly higher second hand value than I expected, which makes a new one affordable. With this in mind we decided a trip to the Apple store to look at laptops would be a good (indoor!) plan. It turned out to be not as good a plan as we thought; the store was so busy that they were only letting people in with a booked time slot, and the only time available would have stopped us getting back in time to collect TG after school so we had to give it a miss. We did get to see the Christmas lights in the shopping centre, which were cheerful and festive. 

It was still a worthwhile trip, as I was able to get some small stocking fillers and oddments that would not have been worth ordering online, and M and I went to Nandos for lunch. That also involved a virtual queue, where we had to check into the queue online, and then got a text about 40 minutes later to say they had a table ready. Ordering was also digital, with a QR code on the table to direct us to the ordering site. We wondered whether this will continue to be an option or not once the pandemic is over, rather than having to stand in a queue to order. The other shopping success was that I managed to buy two tubs of orange flavoured hot chocolate from Whittards, which made the girls very happy. It was pretty busy, with significant queues for some shops. I dread to think what it will be like at the weekend.

After we got home, M and I watched some more of the excellent Queen's Gambit. I think we have just one episode left to watch now. The girls and I made homemade pizza for dinner, using a packet of gluten free pizza mix from a food hamper which was part of the instagram giveaway H won last month. It took a while for the dough to rise enough, but the end result was very good. While we ate pizza we watched Home Alone. 

Back to Not-Normal

We officially moved into Tier 2 today, with lots of restrictions but a lot less of them than we had yesterday.  We also woke up to the news that the medical authorities have officially approved the Pfizer vaccine for use in the UK, and vaccinations are likely to begin next week. The original plan was to vaccinate care home residents and staff first, but because of the cold storage conditions required for the this particular vaccine it is unlikely to be possible to distribute it to care homes. The initial vaccinations will take place at hospitals, with over 80s, care and health workers getting priority. As M's role is considered front line (although he doesn't see patients in person), there is a real possibility that he could get vaccinated before Christmas. What a gift that would be. 

I switched my routine round today to take an early walk while the weather was nice, and we drove to a local country park. A few years ago they opened a larger visitor centre and cafe, with a different entrance and a larger car park, but today we started our walk at the original entrance at the other end of the park. This was always one of our favourite places to visit when the girls were young.

These stones mark the hours for a human sundial. The girls always loved this, though more for clambering on the stones than telling the time. This part of the park was originally the grounds of a country house, with a manmade lake. I was taking photographs of a swan family on the lake when one of the adults kindly did this for me! Shortly afterwards the swans  - all five of them, parents and young adult offspring - got very agitated when an excitable dog ran down to the lakeshore. There was much hissing until the dog backed off. 

The beetle below is one of a number of wooden sculptures in the newer area of the country park. After we got home from our walk I got on with my archive work while M went for a swim. He normally swims once or twice a week, but obviously had to stop when everything shut down in the spring. The pool reopened in the summer, but he never got round to going back. Over the last few weeks he has been getting backache - not at all unusual for him as he suffers from severe scoliosis, but this was a particular muscular ache which he suspected may be down to the lack of swimming exercise. The pool was open again today, so he booked himself a slot for late morning. 

 

I had to work through the afternoon to get everything done, but did manage an hour or so of downtime to read and carry on with the socks I am knitting as a Christmas present for a friend. I also poured myself today's gin to drink while I relaxed. Advent calendar gin number 2 was "moonshot". I just looked it up and it was made with botanicals and moon rock that had been sent into (near) space. What? Really? It seems so! I can't imagine how someone thought that one up. It was good gin, but I would have appreciated it even more if I had discovered its origins before drinking it. 

This evening TG had in-person dance classes, H had a Zoom quiz with her work colleagues and I had Zoom band. We now know that we can go back to in-person rehearsals, under stringent conditions, but the guidance came out too late to organise it for this week. I actually quite enjoy the Zoom band. We use breakout rooms which allow for more direct coaching than we would get normally. I am also lazy enough to appreciate not having to go out in the cold and drive to a rehearsal! 

Staying Home Part 2: Day 27

Today is the last day of the current coronavirus restrictions. From tomorrow all shops and restaurants can open again, and pubs so long as they serve meals, with eating out restricted to household groups. TG's dance classes can take place at the studios again, and we can hold in person band practices again, so long as we stick to the same Covid safe arrangements as before (2m distancing, bell covers, masks when not playing, and so on). 

For the first time in many years (decades?) I have an advent calendar, with a small single measure bottle of gin for each day of the month. Part of me feels a little guilty for succumbing to the commercialisation of Advent, but this year of all years it the rest of me likes the idea of having something a bit fun to look forward to each day, and that part won. I am not a big drinker, but my current preferred indulgence is a gin and tonic in the evening, so I will enjoy working my way through these. 

Today's bottle turned out to be cherry gin, which I have never had before. Neat, it smelled a bit like old-fashioned cherry-flavoured cough medicine, but it tasted good with tonic. I think it would also be a good base for cocktails. While I am on the subject of little luxuries, Whittards are kindly replacing not just the spilled hot chocolate, but the entire box of items. Unfortunately the orange flavoured hot chocolate H and TG were looking forward to is now out of stock, so we are getting cinnamon flavour instead. 

Today was another routine work / school day. The timer on the car climate control is now working well, which makes going out early on cold mornings much more pleasant.  It was a nice, cold but bright day, so M and I did a 2 mile local walk (avoiding mud today!) after he collected TG from school. TG had a catering practical class today and brought home lasagne she had made. As she is the only person who both can and will eat the cheese in it, she ate half of it as a pre-dance "snack" today, and will have the rest tomorrow. She has grown a lot this year and is still getting hung, so maybe the growth spurt isn't over. H had her first trip out of the (home) office for work, to help with a stock count in a cold warehouse about 75 minutes drive away. It didn't take too long and I think she enjoyed the opportunity just to go somewhere and do something!  

Staying Home Part 2: Day 26

A couple of years ago I started collecting Christmas ornaments from places we visit. This year has obviously not been a good one for the bauble collection, but I did manage to get one in the Isle of Wight, where we discovered a Christmas shop on the last morning of our holiday. We decided we liked this one with a combination of Santa's sleigh with beach huts! 

This elephant was added when we visited Waddesdon Manor just after Christmas last December. They have an extraordinary elephant musical box on display inside the house, so he seemed an appropriate choice. There is a long walk from the car park to the house, and although there is the option of a shuttle bus, we normally enjoy the walk. Last year, I started to feel ill as we walked uphill to the house, and had to sit down on a bench outside the gift shop to recover. With hindsight, this was probably the start of whatever virus laid me low for the first part of the year, although it was another day or two before I started to feel feverish. It was almost certainly too early to be Covid, but as viruses go it was both nasty and persistent. We have tickets to visit Waddesdon again this December, just before Christmas this time and only the grounds are open, but it will be nice to keep the family tradition going despite the pandemic. 

Today has been a very routine Monday. I only needed to work this morning, which made a nice change after being busy last week. The weather was foggy and murky again, with added damp. Really not very nice, but M and I did manage to go out for a walk for half an hour after he collected TG from school. I checked the weather forecast tonight and it is forecasting snow on Friday morning. We don't usually get much snow, so whether it will materialise or not remains to be seen - it only takes a rise of a degree or two in the temperature and the snow will just be very cold rain. Good news on the Covid front is that cases have fallen significantly over the past month. Whether they are falling enough to improve things in more than the short term remains to be seen, but at least we are going in the right direction. 

Staying Home Part 2: Day 25

I slept much better last night. Despite waking up for an hour at 5 o'clock, I went back to sleep and ended up with around 9 hours sleep and felt much better for it. As it turned out, it was as well that my energy levels were better as it has been a much busier day than I expected. 

I sat in bed and sorted out various financial things this morning, both for ourselves and for the brass band. A package I had ordered from Whittards with coffee and hot chocolate arrived, so M brought it up for me. Just as we realised the package smelled suspiciously chocolatey, we noticed chocolate powder falling onto the bed. Oops! When we opened it, an entire tub of orange flavoured hot chocolate (the girls' favourite) had burst open. No real harm done, as everything else in the box was easily cleaned up and we were able to hoover the spilled powder off the bed and carpet. I wrote them an email asking for a replacement. 

The chocolate disaster held me up, so by the time I was dressed and ready for a walk it was midday. We did a three mile circuit in foggy, muddy murk through the fields, but it didn't rain and was good to get some fresh air. I had promised the girls we could put the Christmas tree up today, so after a late lunch we did that. Usually I wait until we are at least into December, but this year everything is so grey and miserable that I succumbed to persuasion. We originally decided on 1st December, but TG pointed out that as that is a Tuesday, it would be tricky to fit it in between school and dance. At least today is officially Advent.  

I then got bogged down in band matters again, trying to set up an account that would allow us to take online donations. This turned out to be more complicated than it looked, and two of us between us finally managed it by working through it together while on the phone. I then discovered that Facebook no longer allow donate buttons on their pages, unless they use Facebook's own set up, but I did eventually manage to set up a page on our website with a Donate button. We are hoping to go out carol playing in small socially-distanced groups, and we needed a way to ask for donations which does not involve cash. By the time that was sorted it was dinner time - salmon, potatoes, brussels sprouts and peas - then I still had to update the online grocery order for Tuesday and finish a little bit of work. At least it was a productive day, although not quite what I had planned. 

Staying Home Part 2: Day 24

Only three more days of this "lockdown", although really compared to the spring it is only a partial one, and the "end of lockdown" on Wednesday for most people only means the lifting of some of the current restrictions, and not a return even to what we were able to do before this second shutdown started. More restrictions will mean more people getting through the winter alive and well, but it will also mean more businesses struggling and more people unemployed, particularly in hospitality and entertainment, and more people suffering from the impact of isolation and anxiety. There are no easy answers. 

My good intentions regarding getting to sleep earlier sort of worked last night. I did get to sleep a bit earlier, but then woke too early this morning with a nasty headache which has slowed me down all day and is only now beginning to clear. Despite the headache M and I went out this afternoon to do some "shopping", which was mostly collecting pre-ordered items.  N and I had both ordered things from Next as Christmas presents using their Click and Collect service, and I had other items waiting for collection from M & S (we only have a food store, but they have a collection point for other online orders). We drove over to Next in Milton Keynes, where there were quite a few people queueing for the collection point, then back here to M & S, where we did a bit of food shopping as well as collecting the packages. Again, there was a long queue of people waiting to get into the store - much like the spring lockdown. H and I were going to have curry tonight, but I had a very hot chinese dish last night and didn't feel like more spice, so I bought a pizza deal - 2 pizzas and 2 sides for £10. They do an excellent vegan pizza and vegan dirty fries for the two of us who don't eat dairy, TG had a cheese pizza and we got chicken wings as the second side. M doesn't eat pizza as he doesn't like cheese (dairy or non-dairy!), so he fended for himself, though he did have a few of the chicken wings. 

While we were out H went to the Post Office then out for a walk with her BF, and TF stayed home and baked some mince pies. I bought home takeaway coffee for myself and a hot chocolate for TG, and enjoyed a mince pie with the coffee. I had a bit of work to do after that - I usually avoid working at weekends, but it was just cutting and pasting material into an app, which is a bit slow and tedious but can be done while watching a video or TV.  I decided not to watch Strictly as I didn't think my headache would enjoy it, so I came upstairs and finished off a pair of socks while watching quieter things on my laptop.

 

Staying Home Part 2: Day 23

It was another foggy, murky day today. So foggy I decided to drive through town to take TG to school, but then regretted it because of the traffic. Taking yesterday morning off for a walk was definitely the right call. M went for a short walk this afternoon but I opted out because it looked so miserable, and in any case I had work to finish and was very tired. I haven't slept well this week - I have been going to sleep far too late and then been woken too early by the alarm - and it caught up on me today. My brain was in the same foggy state as the weather. I have decided I need to find a better night time routine so that I go to sleep earlier. 

I have organised a pre-Christmas day out for myself. Reading about neolithic Britain gave me a yearning to visit Stonehenge. It must be nearly 40 years since I last went there. We used to visit quite often when I was a child, because we had relatives in Cornwall and the route passed nearby, making a it a good stopping off point. In those days the site was pretty much unrestricted. I have a feeling there wasn't even an entrance fee. The stones were not fenced off and visitors could wander around freely. These days a combination of its popularity with tourists and awareness of the need for conservation mean that the stones themselves are fenced off and it is only possible to walk round the outside - though still with a good view, I think. There is also a large visitor centre which is new since I last went, over a mile away from the stones so that it doesn't spoil the open aspect of the site. 

So, once I got Stonehenge in my mind, I decided I should organise myself to visit. M really isn't interested, and although he would have come with me as company, we both decided I would enjoy it more on my own so I can potter at my own pace and not worry about him getting bored. Last night I booked myself a ticket, for the afternoon of December 21st - the winter solstice. From the reading I have been doing it seems that the latest thinking on Stonehenge is that it was deliberately built to align with the setting sun on the winter solstice (it also aligns from the other direction with the rising sun on the summer solstice and it used to be thought this was the point, but other evidence now suggests the winter alignment was more important), so I will actually get to see the henge at the very time it was designed for. 

I was slightly surprised that there were tickets available. I know Druids, pagans and so on gather to see the summer solstice sunrise at Stonehenge, and I assumed that the winter solstice sunset would also be popular, but it seems that what interests them is the sunrise rather than the sunset. The usual winter solstice morning event can't be held because of the pandemic, so the sunrise is being live streamed and people asked not to visit, but there was no probably getting a ticket for the afternoon. Whether there will be many people there, I don't know, but ticket numbers will be limited anyway because of Covid. My plan is to drive down to Wiltshire in the morning (it is about 2 hours away) and visit the stone circle at Avebury in the morning, then to stop somewhere to get some lunch and a bit of electrical juice for the car before getting to Stonehenge for my 2pm entry slot. Sunset is just before 4pm, so the timing should work out perfectly As a bonus, when I went to buy a ticket, I discovered that although the site is run by English Heritage, of which I am not a member, it is owned by the National Trust, and I could get a free ticket using my National Trust membership. 

No photos today, so I have added some from Mayburgh Henge near Penrith, another Neolithic site we visited when we were in Cumbria last month.  I am feeling very excited about Neolithic things!