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! 

Staying Home Part 2: Day 22

Last night was cold again, with temperatures below freezing, so I felt extremely smug this morning as we got into a nice warm, defrosted car to go to school. I think I have finally cracked the timing on the climate control.

The weather forecast was for a cold but bright day, so I decided to make today my archive free morning. I did an hour or so of freelance work, and then we went out for a walk up Ivinghoe Beacon, a hill about 20 minutes drive away. Like Dunstable Downs, this is an an area where ancient ways meet - the prehistoric Icknield Way and the Ridgeway (now a National Trail), which starts at Ivinghoe Beacon and ends at the neolithic stone circle at Avebury in Wiltshire. According to Wikipedia there are the faint remains of an Iron Age fort up there, but I didn't notice anything. 

The day started foggy as well as frosty, but by the time we started our walk there was mist over the valley below us, but it was clear and sunny on the path up to the Beacon. The valley below us in the picture above is called Incombe Hole - the white at the bottom is not a river, but bare chalk. The atmospheric beauty made the slipping and sliding down a muddy path worthwhile -  at least, it did for me. M might not agree. Fortunately only the first section of the walk was muddy (very muddy!).

This stone monument marks the top of the Beacon. The plaque on top is a map of the Ridgway. The height and visibility meant that the hill was once the site of a warning beacon. These days it is sometimes used for filming when somewhere a bit wild looking is needed, and it was used as a location in some of the Harry Potter films - apparently the scene where Harry and the Weasleys use a portkey to travel to the Quidditch World Cup finals was filmed here, and it was also used in the two Deathly Hallows films. I imagine it was picked because it was conveniently near to the studios where most of the filming took place. 

By the time we got up to the top the mist had almost cleared. We walked along to the end of the ridge which along from the top of the Beacon to the rather depressingly named Gallows Hill, then down and back across a field and some more open downland to the car park. For some reason we hadn't walked in this area for at least two or three years, but we definitely won't wait so long to go there again.

While we were out we checked the new covid restriction tiers, and were a bit disappointed to find we are in Tier 2. However, only Cornwall and the Scilly Isles, and the Isle of Wight have been put into Tier 1, so they obviously wanted to restrict it to areas that are quite isolated. I think they are going to decide the tiers on the basis of wider areas than before, so we are now included with the rest of Bedfordshire and Milton Keynes, all of which have higher coronavirus rates than we do. On the positive side, it should mean that our risk will stay low. For us the only major difference between Tiers 1 and 2 is that we are not allowed to meet people from other households indoors (except at Christmas when restrictions will be relaxed for a few days). Shops, gyms, swimming pools and restaurants will all be allowed to reopen, so for us things will be mostly back to the "new normal" of the summer and early autumn. It is a bit awkward for H and her BF as they get things organised for their house, but they will just have to muddle through for now.  

After this morning's fresh air and exercise, inertia largely set in this afternoon. I worked on my cross stitch and watched a couple of episodes of the new series of the BBC adaptation of Philip Pullman's  His Dark Materials trilogy. After dinner (burgers cooked by H) I did a bit of online Christmas shopping, and was able to take advantage of some Black Friday reductions. While in theory I would like to do more local shopping to support small businesses, in practice what the girls want is often clothes and other items that aren't available locally, so even when we aren't in a pandemic it means shopping online. 

Staying Home Part 2: Day 21

One of those days with not much to say today. It was wet and miserable, so we decided against attempting a walk. I finished work about 4, watched a bit of TV, and cooked baked potatoes and chilli for dinner. This evening we had a Zoom band rehearsal and, that was the day pretty much gone! 

The photo is from yesterday's walk. Rumour has it that this pub was built on the site of a lodging house used by the masons who built the church in the late 13th century. There isn't any real evidence for this, although it is plausible. The original building (assuming there was one) is long gone, as this one dates from the 17th or 18th century. Unusually, it is flying the flag of Bedfordshire, which isn't seen very often. 

TG had a postcard through from school today congratulating her on her work in French (each subject department has their own cards they can send out to encourage students). We usually reward good reports or any other positive feedback with a small treat, so she went to Tesco Express with M and got chocolates and cheesecake. H ordered a sofa bed for her new house - the first major item they have bought. It was on offer and has a long delivery date, so it made sense to order now. If it arrives before the house is finished, we can store it in the garage for a while. 

I checked the coronavirus stats for our area today and the figures have come down a bit over the last week. We are now down to under 100 weekly cases per 100,000 people, and in the bottom 10% of local authorities in England. This ought to put us into Tier 1 tomorrow, but there is speculation that very few areas (or possibly even none) will go into Tier 1 initially. Whatever happens, it is encouraging to know we are in a relatively low risk area. 

Staying Home Part 2: Day 20

With the short days, we seem to be falling into a pattern of working in the morning, taking a walk after lunch, and then I go back to work for a while in the afternoon. I must admit I find it hard to get going again after a long break, but if we wait until after M has collected TG from school it is almost starting to get dark. Today we drove into town then did a circular walk which took us through the park and back up past the church to the High Street, where a Christmas tree and lights had appeared since Sunday. I had a voucher for a "buy one, get one free" coffee, so bought seasonal coffees to take home for myself and H - M is not a coffee drinker and TG was still at school (TG was trained early in the art of drinking coffee by H, and at 14 starts her day with a double espresso!)

M has been signed off work for the time being, at least until the Covid outbreak in his office is well under control, and possibly until the New Year. Who knows! He had a notification yesterday that they are starting to roll out lateral flow antigen testing kits to 111 staff, so when he does go back he should get his own rapid testing kit with enough supplies for twice weekly home testing for 12 weeks - I say should, because who knows how efficiently the roll out of kits will be organised! With testing at that level, it should be possible to able to stop any further outbreaks very early on. 

At national level the government has confirmed that the current semi-lockdown will end on Wednesday next week and England will go back to a tiered system. Each area will be in Tier 1, 2 or 3, with more stringent measures in the higher tiers. They want to leave it as late as possible to make the decision allow the effect of the current lockdown to work through the system, and areas are going to be allocated to tiers on Thursday. The likelihood is that many places will go into higher tiers than they were in before this lockdown, in order to keep suppressing the transmission rate. I am hoping that we will stay in Tier 1, as the rate for our local authority is well below the national average. It will not make a lot of difference to us, but would be easier for H and her BF, and would mean we can see R indoors. Whatever tier we are in I will still be working at home, and M will go back whenever they decide it is safe. I haven't heard yet whether we will be able to start brass band rehearsals again - it will probably depend on what tier we end up in - but TG's dance school have confirmed they will be restarting classes at their studios again for the last couple of weeks of term after a month of classes on Zoom. 

It was my turn to cook dinner tonight - ling from the fish box with home made potato wedges (healthy fish and chips!), then the girls and I watched the final of Great British Bake Off. 

Staying Home Part 2: Day 19

Today got off to a great start with the news that the Oxford University / AstraZeneca Covid vaccine has been successful in Phase 3 trials - at least 70% effective and up to 90% depending on how it is administered. Although the effectiveness may be a bit less than the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines already announced, the most important thing is that the Oxford vaccine is cheap to produce and easy to handle, stable at much higher temperatures than the other two. It means it is affordable (£3 a dose) and practical for widespread distribution in even the poorest countries. This one is truly a vaccine for the world, not just for rich western countries. I know it will be a while before the corner is turned, but there is now real hope that the end of this pandemic is in sight. 

A much more minor good thing was that I managed to order matching Christmas presents for H and her BF - at the weekend there was only one in stock, but I looked again this morning and it had miraculously gone up to two. I grabbed them while I could!  After the cheering start to the day I suffered a minor disappointment when I went to take TG to school. There had been a frost last night and instead of going out to a nice pre-warmed, defrosted car it was cold and I had to scrape ice off it. On Friday I had carefully set the climate control timer for school days, so something had clearly gone wrong. When I got home I checked the settings to see if I could find the problem and realised I had set the timer for 8.20pm instead of 8.20am. Oops! All sorted now, I hope. 

My archive time this morning went quickly, with a staff "Teams" meeting, sourcing photographs for social media, writing a couple of emails, and doing research for a short article on a 19th century court case. I had a very productive lunch break, fitting in a half hour walk, mixing up batter for toad in the hole tonight, and managing to reattach the kitchen cupboard door that fell off a few weeks ago. If you ever need to try to fix a cupboard door where the holes have got too big for the screws, the answer (thank you Google!) is to glue a few cocktail sticks into the hole with wood glue (not too many); then cut off the ends of the sticks once the glue is dry, leaving a much smaller hole which will allow the screws to grip again.  

In the afternoon I worked on the latest batch of questions, then spent a bit of time on a cross-stitch picture of a badger I am making for a friend for Christmas. It feels as though it has been a very productive day. H cooked the toad-in-the-hole for dinner with veggie sausages in the batter, mashed sweet potatoes and sautéed cabbage. 

I didn't take any photos today, so I am posting some more from our walk in town yesterday. Unfortunately the sun was low and in the wrong direction, so the lighting isn't great.

One last thing to record - I woke during the night and realised an owl was hooting nearby. In fact, I think there were two, "talking" to each other. Oddly I don't ever recall hearing one from here before - I have no idea if that is just because I am unobservant (especially when half-asleep!) or whether they are moving into more built-up areas. 

Staying Home Part 2: Day 18

I honestly don't understand how weekends seem to go past so quickly. Today I did a few jobs - beginning what I hope will be a fix to a broken kitchen cabinet door (the holes for the screws holding it on got too large and it fell off), doing online grocery shopping, sorting out money stuff - watched the last two episodes of The Crown and the Strictly results show, went for a walk, read a little and knitted some of sock number two of a pair for my brother. Then boom! Day nearly over! 

We did a town walk today - into town, through a riverside park, back round through the town centre, then home - which came to nearly 4 miles altogether. The house above is one of the almshouses built by a local charity in the late 18th century. I love the shape of this door, though M commented that you wouldn't do well living here if you were either very tall or very fat1 Definitely not a standard size door. The houses are still almshouses, lived in at a low rent by elderly people I believe. 

While we walked we spent quite a while discussing whether or not to sell our little second car. It has had a lot of use over the years, but our life is now reaching a point where it is questionable whether we really need it or not. When one or other of us was working in an office either full time or several days a week, the other relied on it. Then both the older girls learned to drive in it and H drove it whenever she was home during her four years at uni. Between less need to go out during the pandemic and H now having her own car, it has been getting so little use that the battery died; we are now having to make a point of taking it for a run once a week even when we don't need to. This weekend one front tyre had gone flat (we think it may have a slow puncture as it does this occasionally) and it had to be taken out for a visit to the air machine at the garage. We were both leaning towards selling it, but after batting around the pros and cons decided it might be a premature decision - so long as nothing goes wrong with it the cost of keeping it is pretty low, and when life eventually gets back to normal we might regret getting rid of it. "Normal" seems so far away - both behind us and in the future - that it is hard to know quite what our weekly routine will look like post-pandemic. In the end we decided to keep it for the time being and see how things go. 

H went out for a walk with an old school friend this morning. They were going to walk round the local country park, but so many people had the same idea there was nowhere to park, so they ended up walking near her friend's house. This afternoon she went over to the site office for her new house to have another look at kitchen tiles - she and her BF had both changed their mind about their original decision, so they have chosen different wall tiles and also picked tiles for the kitchen floor instead of the wooden floor they originally wanted. They are hoping they may get a chance to look inside the house before Christmas - apparently it might be possible once the structure is completed, before they start fitting it out. All very exciting for her! While she was out I started making dinner, then she took over once she got home - her Sunday roasts are restaurant standard, so I am very happy to leave it to her. Going to miss her cooking when she moves out! 

Staying Home Part 2: Day 17

Watching the Covid figures it looks as though the current semi-lockdown is beginning to turn the tide and numbers are beginning to creep down. Hoping that is the start of a bigger trend.  

I enjoyed the chance to sleep in a bit this morning, then did a bit of social media stuff for work (I'm not meant to work on Saturdays, but it was only 30 minutes or so). I "finished" a Kindle book I had been reading about 19th century prison reformer Elizabeth Fry. I borrowed it on Kindle Unlimited but then stopped my subscription. So long as I kept the book open on my Kindle I could keep reading, but then today I forgot and closed it. As I was most of the way through I am counting it as finished.

H and TG went out later in the morning to B & M to get Christmas wrapping paper and a few other bits. H kindly bought me a Christmas mug as my old one got broken. They also got takeaway coffees from Costa Coffee and brought one back for me. After lunch M and I went out for a walk. First we went to have a look at the site where H's house is now partly built (up to roof level). Then we drove to the village of Bow Brickhill and did a new-to-us walk through the woods. 

At one point we crossed back into the village, coming out near the church and the cottage below. The autumn afternoon light was perfect. H also went out for a walk with her BF, but was back before we were. It is Saturday, so the girls and I watched Strictly. I also did a bit of online Christmas shopping. 

I was sad to see that the writer Jan Morris died yesterday at the age of 94. I feel in love with her writing when I discovered her book on Trieste when we visited the city back in 2017. She lived an extraordinary life, and in her death we have lost one of what she called the "lordly ones", the people of "humour and understanding" she describes in Trieste: 

"There are people everywhere who form a Fourth World, or a diaspora of their own. They are the lordly ones. They come in all colours. They can be Christians or Hindus or Muslims or Jews or pagans or atheists. They can be young or old, men or women, soldiers or pacifists, rich or poor. They may be patriots, but they are never chauvinists. They share with each other, across all the nations, common values of humour and understanding. When you are among them you know you will not be mocked or resented, because they will not care about your race, your faith, your sex or your nationality, and they suffer fools if not gladly, at least sympathetically. They laugh easily. They are easily grateful. They are never mean. They are not inhibited by fashion, public opinion or political correctness. They are exiles in their own communities, because they are always in a minority, but they form a mighty nation, if they only knew it."

Staying Home Part 2: Day 16

I forgot to pre-heat the car this morning and TG and I really noticed the difference. Of course, it would have to be the coldest morning we have had for a while! I have now set a timer so it should pre-heat every weekday morning ready for the school run. I then spent the morning doing archive work while M and H also worked. I had some freelance work to do this afternoon - a new job came in with a fairly tight deadline - but my eyes and brain both decided they had had enough so apart from a bit of prep work I left it to do on Monday. Next week will be busy.  

It was wet again this afternoon so I didn't go out at all and had a lazy afternoon and evening watching TV and knitting. I finished the fingerless gloves I have been working on as a Christmas present for H - the yarn is a merino and silk mix and beautifully soft and warm. I watched the Crown with M and Santa Clause with the girls this evening, as well as more documentaries about Orkney and Shetland. I honestly think I have watched as much TV this year as in the last five years put together - for some reason it just seems to be the right sort of escapism for me this year, perhaps because it took less effort than reading when my energy levels were low, and now I have got into the habit. 

Staying Home Part 2: Day 15

I took today off from archive work, thinking we could go out this morning but the weather forecast was unreliable again and it turned out to be wet and nasty. Instead of going out we ended up watching some more episodes of the new series of The Crown. Fortunately the rain cleared at lunchtime and we went for a longer walk down to the canal and back - four miles altogether. By that time it was beautifully bright and sunny. 

When we got back I had a craving for something sweet, so made a mini batch of scones while M went to get TG from school - just one for each of us (they don't keep well, so I didn't want to make extra). I had mine with some no-sugar blueberry preserve. 

Remember the swan family from the spring and summer? Here they are with the babies fully grown but still with their juvenile feathers. There were originally five cygnets, but (if local Facebook is to be believed) two got injured in the summer and were taken to a swan rescue centre. 

This evening I had a band committee meeting on Zoom, doing succession planning for when our secretary moves away in the new year. It was quite long. I'm now going to relax and recover by watching a documentary series about Scottish islands. Both the book I am reading and the audio book I am listening to have been talking about Shetland and Orkney, which has inspired me to start planning (semi-hypothetically) a trip at some unspecified date in the future. I had already been hoping to visit Shetland, and now very much want to include Orkney too. Fun fact for the day: the shortest scheduled flight in the world is between two Orkney islands, Westray and Papa Westray. It takes two minutes! 

Staying Home Part 2: Day 14

M spoke to the welfare officer at work this morning and has been signed off to stay at home until the Covid outbreak in his office is over. We get the impression they are on top of it, so hopefully that won't take too long. It is now a week since he last went in and he is still fine, so we are optimistic that he has dodged that bullet. 

I jumped out of bed early, thinking it was early morning French day and I was running late. Then I realised it was actually Wednesday and not Thursday so I went back to bed for 40 minutes. Oops! TG was quite chatty in the car on the way to school which is unusual - neither of us are morning people, so we are usually quite happy just to listen to music while we come round. 

I took a break part way through my archive work this morning so we could go for a walk while it was dry - or so the weather forecast suggested. The weather forecast was wrong and we got a bit damp on the second half of the walk. Unusually, I had trusted it and didn't wear my waterproof coat - I really should know better! We did a three mile walk down to the canal and back through the woods, which we did a lot during the summer but hadn't done for a while. M then went out for a second walk after lunch with a friend who lives nearby and who was getting a bit stir crazy. 

TG had cooked potatoes in cheese sauce in her catering lesson yesterday, so I heated them up for her to eat as a (large!) snack when she got home from school before her Zoom dance classes. I had a headache so while she was dancing I lay down on the sofa to listen to an audio book and dozed off, which is very unusual for me. H then cooked pasta with meatballs for dinner, which I ate before Zoom band. Somehow the day seems to have gone very quickly, although I don't feel I have done a great deal. 

Staying Home Part 2: Day 13

Quite a routine day today. After I finished my archive work M and I walked into town to buy sandwiches for lunch from Caffe Nero for a change - mainly because it was dull and drizzly and I needed an incentive to get me out of the house! H and I both had sourdough panini with vegan "turkey", stuffing and cranberry sauce from their festive menu; M was going to have tuna but they had run out and there wasn't anything else he fancied so he made himself eggs when we got home. 

The bit of question writing work I needed to do this afternoon didn't take long, so we watched a couple more episodes of the Crown and I caught up on the Mandalorian while M was collecting TG from school. More knitting happened. 

The photos are of a sculpture we pass on the way into town commemorating the production locally of Vimy aircraft during the First World War - the site where the factory stood is now occupied by a supermarket and its car park. 

I made a chicken and mushroom pie with suet crust pastry, mashed potatoes and veg for dinner, which took longer than I expected so we ate late. After dinner it was the semi-final of Great British Bake Off. It had been filmed during a heatwave in the summer and they kept having issues because of the high temperatures. Hard to remember during the miserable November damp that there was ever such a thing as summer! 

Staying Home Part 2: Day 12

I got up a bit earlier than normal this morning, then because I thought I had plenty of time I moved slower and distracted myself so that I was barely ready on time to take TG to school. This is a typical pattern for me - if time is tight, I focus and move fast and am just about ready on time; if I give myself lots of time, I slow down and end up ready no quicker than if I rush, and sometimes even end up later. When I got back, i just had time to make myself porridge for breakfast before our 9am weekly staff meeting. One colleague is having problems with band width, so we are now doing audio only (no video) to help her. That meant I could shamelessly eat my porridge during the meeting. 

I did a longer than necessary stint on my archive work, which means I can do a bit less tomorrow and finish off the current question writing job. I did part of that this afternoon and finished work just as M went to collect TG from school. By that time it was very dull and unappealing outside, so I decided to be lazy and opt out of going for a walk. Today's photos are pictures I took a couple of weeks ago on a much nicer afternoon when we walked into town for coffee, but didn't get round to posting at the time. Above is the 15th century market cross, and below is the old town hall, later used as a fire station, and now a Pizza Express restaurant. 

I decided that the fingerless mitt I almost finished yesterday had come out a bit small. I am using a pattern meant for aran / worsted yarn with sock yarn. I though knitting a large size might compensate enough but it didn't, so I unravelled almost the entire mitt back to a decrease round at the cuff and decreased less to give myself five extra stitches. I think that should be just right. I have now redone the wrist section and am about to start increasing stitches for the thumb. While knitting I watched the remaining episode of Michael Palin's Himalaya with M, then an episode of the Mandalorian. I have also been reading more of the Ancient History of Britain. I am finding the sections about the mesolithic and neolithic periods fascinating, as I knew so very little about them, even though I have always enjoyed visiting ancient sites like Stonehenge. 

Dinner was frozen potato wedges with whiting from the last fishbox, squeezed in between TG finishing her dance class and H starting an online quiz night with her work colleagues. M and I watched tonight's Only Connect quiz, and then I spent a while sorting out his phone for him. It had somehow stuck in dark mode, which he never uses and doesn't like, and I ended up having to reset all the phone settings, then reset things like Face ID and Apple Pay. Hopefully it is all working properly again now. 

Staying Home Part 2: Day 11

The day started with a torrential downpour and swirling winds - apparently quite a few fences locally came down. By late morning it had cleared so we were able to go out for walks in the early afternoon. H went out for a walk down the canal with her BF and came back with glowing red, sore little toes from wearing new(ish) trainers which rubbed. M and I went for a walk round the local streets, where even some of the pavements were squelchy and muddy; we went into Tesco Express on the way back for bread and soya milk, and I bought some sausage roll flavoured crisps to try. TG was only barely functional today after last night's virtual sleepover, which meant not enough sleep happened. 

I didn't take any photos today, but my phone chose this one for me. It was taken exactly a year ago in Milton Keynes shopping centre - we must have gone to do some Christmas shopping and to see the decorations. Since the latest iOS update the photos app has started selecting a few photos each day and showing them on a widget on my home screen. It is also making "Memories" videos from a selection of photos from a particular date or event, or a series of portraits of an individual - some of these have been lovely, like the Disneyland Paris firework display it put together for me yesterday. 

I caught up on a few jobs this morning, including phoning Disney to change the date of our trip to Disneyland Paris next year. We had booked for February, but that was looking less and less feasible thanks to Covid, and in any case clashes with H's busy season at work. We have now switched it to early September, just before TG goes back to school. I was on the phone for quite a while, not because it was complicated, but because I ended up having a nice conversation with the lady in Florida who dealt with the booking - we ended up drifting off into chatting about our families, our travel plans (cancelled and future), and how Covid was affecting our lives. Although the call switches through to the US it is directed via a local number so no nasty phone charges to worry about! 

H is enjoying having time to do some cooking again, so she cooked roast lamb for dinner. M and I watched the first episode of the new series of the Crown, then H gave him a haircut. She and I spent a bit of time going through paperwork for her house purchase which came through yesterday. After dinner I read for a while and we watched a bit more TV (Strictly results show and another episode of Michael Palin's journey through the Himalayas). I did quite a bit of knitting during the afternoon and evening and almost managed a whole fingerless glove - just a few rows of the hand and the thumb left to do. I'm a very unfocused crafter and currently have three knitting projects and three cross stitch projects on the go simultaneously. Four out of the six are Christmas presents, but it doesn't matter what order I do them in; so long as I keep making progress I can just pick up whichever suits the mood of the moment.

Staying Home Part 2: Day 10

It has been truly miserable weather all day, which put paid to H's plan to meet her BF for a walk today. The girls then decided that we should go to Frosts garden centre this afternoon - garden centres are allowed to open, which makes sense for the outdoor section, but seems a bit odd where they have large indoor shops selling non-garden items. Frosts turns a lot of its indoor space into a Christmas shop, which was what attracted the girls, and I wanted to try to get a couple of large houseplants to brighten up a corner of the sitting room. I have black thumbs and very few plants survive my poor attempts to keep them alive, but I have managed to keep a large palm type thing from dying for three years, so decided maybe I could try adding more. We were shocked at the price of houseplants, and ended up with just a large poinsettia and a nice pot to put it in. True to form when I have anything to do with a plant, the poinsettia slightly lost a battle with the wind on the way back to the car and is now a bit lopsided.

After Frosts we drove a short distance to the building site where H's house is going to be. Some houses looked almost finished, other parts of the site were just mud. We couldn't see from the road if the foundations have been dug for her house yet. If it was drier we would have had a walk round. We then went on to Starbucks for takeaway Christmas coffees - I had a gingerbread latte and H and TG had toffee nut lattes. Starbucks now do coffees with a soya whipped cream which was a nice treat for H and myself. To add to the Christmassy vibe I had my first mince pie of the season.

After we got back TG and I went to M & S Food so she could buy some treats as a reward for yesterday's excellent school report. Apparently she is having a virtual sleepover with some friends tonight, so she got some popcorn as a sleepover snack. She also wanted to get some sweets for a friend whose birthday is next week. We found a nice houseplant in a basket which was just what I wanted - who knew that I should really have gone to a food shop, not a garden centre to find the right plant! Here are the plant and the poinsettia sitting in their corner (along with the box for a half-done Harry Potter jigsaw). 

We planned a takeaway for tonight to celebrate H's exam success, and after an 11th hour change of plan the girls went back to Milton Keynes to collect a takeaway from Nandos. They have just started offering plant-based "Imitation Chicken", which I tried in a wrap and enjoyed. After that we watched Strictly - at least, three of us watched Strictly and M stayed in the same room not watching. Despite the weather, it has been a good day.

Staying Home Part 2: Day 9

A much less busy day today, with just some bits of work to finish up this morning. H had her last exam this afternoon with an immediate result - another strong pass making it 5/5. Well deserved pay off for two months of very hard work. TG came home from school with a glowing progress report (they can't do parent-teacher evenings this term because of the pandemic) so we are having a proud parents day. 

We did another three mile walk today, this time a short drive away. We did a circular walk through woods and fields to a nearby village, then back through the woodland again. Loved this birdhouse in a garden we passed - or maybe I should call it a bird mansion! 

The pub was closed today because of the lockdown. The village is on a hill and the ground drops away steeply behind the pub, where there is a beer garden with an impressive view across to Milton Keynes. I love autumn walks, despite the mud. At least there was less of it today than yesterday, though we walked across another very soggy, desolate, unhealthy looking large field 

This has been a good week for news. Following on the heels of Trump's defeat, Boris Johnson's svengali Dominic Cummings has left his job with immediate effect, hot on the heels of another Vote Leave crony. I don't know who will replace them, but hopefully there will be at least some improvement after what has been an atrocious year of poor decision making, U-turns, lies and half-truths under their regime. Their main policy has been to break things - supposedly to build up better, but as they didn't appear to be capable of managing their way out of a paper bag, it didn't go well, especially during a pandemic. They lied with impunity, and the government's attempt to justify Cummings' trip from London to Durham while he and his wife were suffering from Covid pretty much broke the last lockdown. Few people will be sorry to see him go. 

H went for a takeaway coffee after her exam and brought cakes back for us. I cooked halibut from the fish box for dinner, which was delicious. We (myself and the girls, not M!) are in Christmas movie mode, so we watched Arthur Christmas, which I had never seen before. Then M and I watched the first episode of Queen's Gambit on Netflix. I don't normally watch a lot of TV, but since the pandemic started have watched far more than usual. I think it is partly because I have more free time, partly because I got into the habit during our Disney binge in the first lockdown, and partly because I have been in crafting mood - I like to half-watch, half-listen while I knit or do cross stitch. I have a few things I want to make as Christmas gifts and started one today - a cross stitched coaster with a badger picture for a neighbour who has a family of badgers which regularly visit her garden. I am also knitting the first of a pair of socks for my brother. I had not used this pattern before and the heel section is either odd or wrong. I tried following the pattern but ended up unravelling my first attempt at the heel and re-doing it using my usual method. 

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.