Friday 17 April 2020

Staying Home: Day 32

This morning I reactivated a long ignored blog that I set up four years ago to write about local history, which then morphed into genealogy before I ran out of steam and stopped writing a few months later. I turned the research I had done on our old family friend into a post, which if you are interested you can read at History Roundabout. Over the weekend I am hoping to write a follow up post about her 19th century ancestors who, rather to my surprise, lived only 15 miles away from here.

M and I went for a morning walk as there was some rain forecast for this afternoon. H went for a run and came back feeling pleased with herself for running 4K in 27 minutes. She is not a natural runner and has been gradually working up her distance and speed. TG didn't do any exercise and spent most of the day on her laptop either watching Netflix or playing Sims. She did do a bit of outstanding schoolwork so she is all caught up for when school starts again on Tuesday.

After lunch I drove H to the Marks and Spencers Food store, both to do some shopping and to collect a couple of packages with items I had ordered from the main Marks and Spencer website - a replacement frying pan after the non-stick coating on our old one lost an unfortunate battle with a scourer, and a couple of comfy bras (let's face it, who needs underwires during lockdown!). When we got back H was notified that her university graduation has been officially postponed to some unspecified future date, so I cancelled the hotel booking I had made for the night before. Having to cancel things that are still over three months away is a dispiriting reminder of how long it is likely to be before life returns to a semblance of normal.

We watched Pirates of the Caribbean while I carried on with my Jemima Puddleduck cross stitch kit. It didn't go well. Jemima is white. The fabric is white. White on white is not easy, especially when the lighting isn't great and the stitcher can't be bothered to move to the chair which has a convenient lamp. I sewed. I unpicked. I sewed some more. I unpicked some more. Eventually I moved to the well-lit armchair and made a bit of progress, but then ended with another mistake where I got the crosses on a number of stitches the wrong way round. At that point I decided to give up and hope tomorrow is better. I am following the instructions regarding the direction of the crosses, but I think I must normally make mine the other way round as I keep instinctively doing them wrong. Unfortunately I have got too far into Jemima to change it now.

Dinner was home made beef and mushroom pie with mashed potato and broccoli, cooked by H. She made two pies, one for tonight and one for the freezer. We then watched the Masterchef final - I thought H had said it was last night, but apparently it was just the final week.  

4 comments:

elli said...

It is disconcerting to have to cancel an event a few months off and yet .... Yes, it is looking increasingly likely that the wisest course will be to not let our guard down for a long while ... I've been discussing with my son (newly 18, oh my) the necessity of us (us all, planet-wide) learning how to live, and live well!, *with* C19. We learnt with polio and so many others, to still sustain a fully functional society. We will get there with C19 too, in time ... For now, our governor has extended our stay at home for a further six weeks, and our bishop has extended the no in-person worship for seven ... sigh and pray and carry on, right!?

I am so enjoying your daily notes. Thank you so much for sharing. I write on paper every day, but haven't the physical wherewithal for daily computering :-)

Kathryn said...

Belated happy birthday to your son. Astonishing that he is 18 - I think when I first started reading your blog he was 10 or so, or maybe even younger? Our lockdown has been extended for a further three weeks, but I think it will only be lifted very slowly. Yes, we will learn to live with it, and live well. There seems to be real hope for a vaccine too, with trials already taking place in a number of countries. Scientists at Oxford are genuinely hopeful that they could have 1 million doses ready to go by the autumn - that may be over optimistic, but it would be wonderful if they can pull it off.

elli said...

Thank you for the birthday wishes. Yes, astonishing how old our ‘babies’ now are!! When I began reading your blog your older girls were yet homeschooling ... I don't recall how long ago that was, but some while ... I started blogging myself when my lot were aged 4 to 17 ... my, how the years have flown.

For certain, we need a good vaccine, easily available testing, and full contact tracing ... (a year and a half ago, when my teens and I all had whooping cough — which vaccine has high failure rates — I went thru the whole contact tracing routine with our local Department of Public Health, and was grateful the system was in place).

Kathryn said...

We stopped homeschooling over 12 years ago, and I think I was already reading your blog then. Time flies!