Staying Home: Day 100

One hundred days. When I started keeping this lockdown diary, I thought it would be over around now. I suppose in some ways it is. Restrictions are easing, with significantly more opening up to come next week. We can see other people, shops are open, many people are going back to work - though I am still working from home and likely to be doing so for a while yet I think. The risk of catching Covid is massively lower than it was three months ago, and things are gradually moving into a new normal. For us, the last 100 days have been mostly good, but I know we are very fortunate - we have our health, our family, a comfortable home and financial security. I am grateful and am aware of just how lucky we are. I was thinking I would stop keeping this diary after this milestone, but I have got into the habit of writing so will keep going, though maybe not every day (100 consecutive days of blogging is something I never thought I would achieve!). I wonder how things will look in another 100 days? 

Today was the hottest day of the year so far. I took my laptop out into the garden and sat with my feet up in the shade while I worked this morning. H joined me after a while, and I think spent most of the day on a sunbed. After lunch M and I went to Stowe Gardens, our National Trust trip for this week. Again, it was a lovely touch of normal. The "house" at Stowe is rarely open - it is a very expensive boarding school, and although there are sometimes tours during school holidays, we have never been inside. The grounds are huge. Although we walked nearly 4 miles we still didn't get round everything. 

Stowe isn't a cultivated garden in the modern sense; it is a whole landscape, carefully designed in the 18th century with temples, statues, follies, a Grecian valley, a Palladian bridge, columns, a rotunda ... it is really quite extraordinary and it would be hard to get bored of visiting. According to the National Trust website everything was designed with a specific meaning, to fit into three paths - Vice, Virtue and Liberty. M and I both agreed that it is our favourite National Trust property to visit. Hopefully we will be able to get tickets again before too long. 

By the time we finished our walk we were hot and tired. The visitor centre and cafe are closed, but there was a van selling drinks and snacks, so we each had a cookie or cake and a cold drink. The only thing wrong with my iced coffee was that I could easily have drunk three of them! 

Full of confidence after yesterday's success, we lit the BBQ again tonight - and ended up eating nearly an hour late! H's theory was that because we were having fish, it would cook quickly and would not need as much heat, so she used less charcoal. It seems there is a minimum amount of charcoal below which it doesn't get hot enough. We don't know what the minimum is, but it is more than she used. In the end we added some extra and waited more or less patiently until it reached a cooking temperature. We used up some corn from yesterday, added some courgettes, mushrooms and red onions, and grilled mackerel fillets from the fish box. On the side we also had homemade potato salad and coleslaw made with carrots and kohlrabi from the veg box. After dinner we started Episode V of Star Wars.