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!