Habits and Exploring

For the 100 days of lockdown (or thereabouts) I got into the habit of writing this blog every night. I would come upstairs and write in bed, while M would stay downstairs and watch TV for a while. The quiet time writing helped me to relax and wind down, and - mostly - I slept better and more regular hours. Over the last couple of months I have got out of the habit, and my sleeping patterns have gone downhill. Maybe I should try getting back into the habit of daily blogging again. 

We have managed another week of new normal, with M working two 111 shifts and writing exam questions, TG having a full week of school and dance classes, H busy with her induction week, and me getting on with my archive work and checking M's questions. We have one job to finish and another to do over the next two weeks, which will be quite time consuming. I'm hoping to get my work done over four days this coming week, and to take Wednesday off so that M and I have a day when neither of us are working - this takes more planning now that he is back to working shifts most weekends. H starts her accountancy course (online) tomorrow, and has an intensive few weeks of studying to look forward to before her first exams in October and November. 

It feels as though we are hovering on a precipice again with Covid. Cases are now increasing exponentially again, and it is clear something is going to have to be done. Large parts of the country are already under tighter restrictions, with no mixing between households allowed, and it seems likely this and other measures will be extended to the whole country sometime next week. The theory is that a short period of semi-lockdown will act as a circuit breaker and get the case numbers back down again. We have to hope it will. The government lurches from one plan to another, promising great things and failing utterly to live up to them. Testing is now a mess, with overloaded labs and test centres not able to offer appointments. Track and trace has never worked as intended and is limping along. With typical hyperbole Boris Johnson promised a "world beating" system; we would settle for a working system. Although we are (so far) in a part of the country which is not too badly affected I'm feeling generally pessimistic about the next few months. A combination of Covid, Brexit and incompetence makes it hard to be anything else. 

The best thing about lockdown was that my days were calmer and more rhythmic. With life for all of us getting busier I need to find a way to recreate that rhythm, with a more consistent daily routine and building in time to relax - to read, write and craft.  I am aware I need a good combination of healthy eating, exercise, and regular sleep if I want to feel better and more positive in myself, whatever is going on in the world around me. I also need to avoid letting myself spiral into a negative Twitter / news vortex, which is far too easy to do. So ... good habits are needed! 

At least I am still doing well with exercise. We walk around 3 miles most days, and I am doing reasonably regular yoga using the Fiit app. Our notable walk this last week was in the Northamptonshire town of Towcester (pronounced "Toaster", in a bit of English place name oddity) We plan to downsize and move to a slightly cheaper area once TG finishes school, and on paper Towcester ticks a lot of our boxes so we decided to explore. We walked about four miles round the town and the water meadows on its eastern edge, trying to get a good feel for the area. It is a very ancient town, with evidence of continuous settlement since the Stone Age, and became an important garrison town on Watling Street under the Romans. It also had a Norman Castle, though all that remains now is the motte (or mound) in the picture above. These days it is a moderately sized market town, with decent facilities and lots of green space for walking. We came away feeling it was somewhere we could happily live.