More Water

After another day of rainy-snow and snowy-rain yesterday (we stayed in, it was horrid!) for our exercise today we walked the canal / woods loop and the water meadows were the wettest I have seen them. At least they are doing their job and (mostly) containing the flooding to the open area. There is a footpath under this somewhere! 

This is where overflow from the canal drains into a sluice and then down to the river. The overflow has overflowed.

And nobody will be going through this gate which accesses a path through the water meadows for some time! At least the canal towpath next to it was still dry. 

It has mostly been a lazy weekend. We ordered in pizza last night for our takeaway evening, then H cooked a roast again tonight. Her boyfriend (who I am going to call G as his initial has already been taken)  has moved back in as he did during the first lockdown, which will be better for them. He is also working from home and has not seen anyone outside his family, so it seems a low risk which significantly boosts their wellbeing. Hopefully within the next few weeks they will be moving into their new home. Tonight we had a Zoom call with our neighbours and former neighbours. It was good to catch up, though Zoom conversations are never as easy and natural as seeing people in person. Hopefully it will not be too long before we can all meet up again, even if it is just outside in the garden. Yesterday was a record breaking day for vaccinations, which is good news. 

Water Everywhere

As neither of us were working today M and I originally planned to go for a walk at the country park again, but this morning it was raining again and I had some finance stuff I needed to do ahead of a trustee meeting for the brass band tonight. It brightened up by lunch time, but in the end I just couldn't face paddling through mud and puddles again, so we went for an afternoon walk into the town centre, sticking to paved paths. There is a slightly complex water system running through the town: the canal, which often features in my photos as we walk along the towpath a lot; a fairly small river which runs more or less parallel with the canal, though it wriggles about quite a bit; and a series of flood plain water meadows. In dry weather the river tops up the canal, in wet weather the canal drains into the river, and in very wet weather it all overflows into the water meadows. However, we have had so much rain recently that the overflow is encroaching into places it shouldn't be, and it is getting harder and harder to find places to walk that aren't under water. Today we planned to circle round through a riverside walk and back into town, but half way along the path turned into this ... 

Path? What path! We diverted, and cut along a dry section back to the road! Both the canal and the river are looking very brown and muddy, and the river was flowing much faster than usual. It isn't a pretty river at the best of times, and it looked very unappealing today.  More snow is forecast for tomorrow, which I for one very much prefer to the rain. 

I have made myself a small bucket list of ten things I am looking forward to doing again when the pandemic restrictions are eased. They are all things I would have taken for granted until last year, and don't include any of the big stuff like trips abroad. In no particular order:

1.  Go to the cinema

2.  Attend a live theatre performance

3.  Visit the Thomas Becket exhibition at the British Museum (supposed to be starting in the spring)

4.  Spend a day working at the British Library

5.  Go to work! 

6.  Spend an evening with one of my closest group of friends who I haven't seen since last March. 

7.  Play in an orchestra

8.  Go to Stonehenge (I almost managed that one in December!)

9.  Have a drink in a pub with friends

10.  Go swimming

I'm sure there are plenty more things I could think of, but if I manage to do all - or even most of - those this year I will be very happy. 

Small Plastic Free Steps

So ... two days of freelance work over and that is my work finished for the week. After I finished this afternoon I went to M & S Food as my menu plan had got in a muddle and I needed something for dinner. I had been avoiding shops because of the high Covid rates and leaving it to the younger and vaccinated members of the family, but the Covid rate locally has now come down a lot and I was getting a bit stir crazy so a trip to the supermarket was a minor excitement in my week. My 21 day yoga challenge fizzled on day 18 and I missed both yesterday and today, partly because I was tired (yesterday) and partly because the day ran away with me (today). I had Zoom band last night and we had a long FaceTime chat with R tonight, and I just didn't manage to make time for it. Yesterday should have been a flow class and today should have been pilates - I guess I'll have to do them next week instead. I am signed up for live classes tomorrow and Saturday, so should at least finish with a burst of effort! 

Another minor challenge I have given myself is to make small changes to avoid single use plastic in toiletries, even if it is only for myself - I am not managing to convert the rest of the family (apart from TG who has joined me in using Wild deodorant), but anything is better than nothing. Before Christmas I tried Ben & Ann's natural whitening toothpaste, which comes in a glass jar with a little wooden spatula to scoop it onto the brush. I really like this! The peppermint taste is lovely and fresh, and the couple of times I have used "normal" toothpaste since switching it has tasted chemical-ish and too much like chewing gum. They also do an activated charcoal version, but I can't get my head around the idea of brushing my teeth with something black to turn them white. 

I had various things I needed to order from Boots (lots of plastic for everyone else, but it is as it is!) so decided to try a new shampoo bar. I have been using shampoo bars for a few months, switching between bars from Lush and Faith in Nature bars, but haven't really found one I am totally happy with. I picked this one by Garnier as it was on offer, not realising that the offer also included a free tin in the same shape as the bar. It smells good and I like the tin; let's hope the shampoo matches up to the first impression. I also rarely use shower gel now, and have switched that out for nice moisturising soaps from the Body Shop. Another plastic free item I love are Hydrophil bamboo interdental brushes, which I actually find much better to use than the plastic ones - they seem a bit more robust. I haven't moved to a plastic free toothbrush - yet? - as I use an electric one on the dentist's advice. 

I am very much enjoying my current book - Sightlines by Scottish poet Kathleen Jamie. I read her most recent book, Surfacing, last year and loved it. Both are collections of essays, with those in Sightlines generally shorter. She writes beautifully and descriptively, travelling slowly and taking the time to see deep into things. So far in this book I have seen the aurora in Greenland through her eyes, been on a 1970s dig at a Neolithic henge, and visited a Shetland gannetry, a pathology lab, and a hall full of whale skeletons in Norway. 

Pretty Food Day

Another working day - I am finding that doing two full days of archive work is working out well as far as time management goes, though I'm not convinced I get as much done as it is hard not to slow down in the afternoon. We went for a 30 minute walk at lunchtime, which it very much a good thing as it gives my eyes a rest from the laptop screen, my brain a bit of down time, and getting out into daylight helps my mood. TG, on the other hand, has turned into a troglodyte and rarely leaves the house - it's a good thing she has her Zoom dance classes, so she is at least getting a decent amount of exercise. She wanted an avocado today for a task for her catering course, so we insisted she go out and get it herself, though she managed to get M to drive her down to the shop rather than walk through the icy slush. The task was about presentation, and she wanted to make this avocado, cucumber and smoked salmon starter she found on Pinterest. Slightly to her surprise it came out looking very impressive. It tasted good too! 

After I finished work I prepared the dinner and then gave M instructions on what to put into the oven and when, so that I could do a live yoga class between 6 and 7pm and dinner would be ready when I finished. Today was fish box day and I hit lucky as it had salmon, which was what I was hoping for as I wanted to roast it with new potatoes. We also had other roast veg (courgettes, mushrooms and tomatoes) and the leftovers of some red cabbage I cooked on Sunday. After dinner we ate some of this chocolate box from my Hotel Chocolat trawl. It was half price as it was left over from Christmas stock. The chocolates were so pretty it almost seemed a shame to eat them.  

Covid news is mixed. The UK death toll hit 100,000 today, and there are still many, many people in hospital so it is not going to improve for a while yet. However, case numbers are falling steadily and vaccination numbers are rising - over 10% of the population have now had their first vaccination. Our local vaccination service is almost up to 5,000 jabs given, but I think is now waiting for more vaccine to arrive. Things are now definitely going in the right direction, it is just going to take a long time to arrive at the destination. 

Snow Days

It snowed yesterday! We usually get snow that settles at least once in a year, though often it is very short-lived. Yesterday we had our first (and possibly only!) snow of the winter, with about two inches settling. At 14 TG has decided that staying snuggled up in the warm is where it's at and playing in the snow is now no longer appealing. M and I went out for a walk in the afternoon, by which time the snow on the footpaths had mostly been trampled into ice or slush. We ended up doing Saturday's walk in reverse, along the canal and back up through the woods. There was a little more snow in the evening and today has been cold so it hasn't yet melted. I don't think it will last past tomorrow though. 

By the time I got back from yesterday's walk I was exhausted. I think two weeks of daily yoga that I am not used to, together with 3 mile walks on three consecutive days, was more than my body needed. It seems I still need to pace myself a bit after last year's post viral slump. In the end I missed yesterday's yoga, although I wanted to do it as it was only a wind-down stretch. I am having issues with playing on-demand classes, which I think may be down to the yoga studio's system as I have tried everything I can think of to make it work, and when I checked our download speeds they seemed fine. Tonight I gave up and did a Yoga with Adrienne class on You Tube. I also didn't go for a walk. M had arranged to meet up with a friend for a walk while I worked this afternoon so he still got some exercise. I must admit I was glad of the rest! 

I am finding even days when I am not working are full, despite lockdown. I finished the book on Endell Street hospital I was reading yesterday and used its bibliography to pad out the list of things I want to read as background for the story of my adventurous women. I also have quite a list of archives and libraries I want to visit once it becomes feasible again. H cooked roast chicken for dinner yesterday and I was hoping there would be enough leftovers to make a chicken pie this evening. There weren't so we ended up having brunch for dinner - hash browns, scrambled eggs, baked beans and vegan sausages. 

H suggested that we spend an hour playing a board game yesterday evening before a Face Time chat she had arranged with her friends, so we played Mega Monopoly. We definitely prefer this to the standard Monopoly - it has extra properties, an extra dice, and skyscrapers as well as hotels. It sounds as though it would make the game take longer, but it actually speeds it up and makes it more interesting. TG won, making it two out of the last three games for her. She is a cautious hoarder of money and it seems to be paying off! 

One small task I did over the weekend was to download the NHS (National Health Service) app onto my phone. I hadn't realised it existed until I read a reference to it somewhere and wasn't sure quite what it would do. It turned out that it logs in through the government web portal, which means having to go through various steps to prove identity including facial matching with photo ID, but it only took me about ten minutes to get it done. I can now book medical appointments, order repeat prescriptions and view my medical records through the app, which makes things very easy. I did think about data security, but reckoned that the iPhone data is probably more secure than the NHS system, and as my data is on that already it wouldn't make much difference. 

While I remember ... we have an owl in the neighbourhood. I have been hearing it at night a lot over the last few weeks. For some illogical reason I assumed it was a barn owl even though there are no barns or similar buildings nearby, but when I listened to owl calls online I realised it is a tawny owl, which makes much more sense.    

Bacon Butty Day

Two days off have just zoomed past. Although I am sometimes fed up of lockdown, at least I am not bored! Yesterday morning we decided to repeat the woodland walk we did a week ago with our friends. The first track was very much muddier, which we soon realised was due to trucks driving up and down. A lot of trees had been cut down in a week. This part of the country park is a commercial pine plantation, with trees planted after the Second World War. The conservation trust which runs the area has decided to take down the spruce trees, leaving just native trees and some of the better fir specimens, hoping that once the land is more open it will revert to heather-covered heathland. Apparently heathland is quite rare as it depends on a particular type of soil, and the native heath was destroyed when commercial woodland was first planted in the 19th century. Walking past it smelled very strongly of pine resin! 

Further on in our walk we passed the ancient woodland, which is believed to have been there for many thousands of years. You can really see the difference between the native woodland and the plantation in these two photographs. The woodland has been "farmed" for centuries, with trees pollarded and coppiced to supply sustainable timber, while keeping the wood from becoming overgrown and overshadowed. The conservation trust now carries out this sort of work again in order to keep the wood healthy. The National Trust has a good explanation of coppicing and woodland management here. 

As usual there were a lot of water birds on the lake. I think this duck may be an accidental crossbreed involving some sort of crested duck. We timed our walk so that we could stop for a takeaway lunch again - bacon roll and coffee for me. I try to avoid eating meat when I don't know that it is ethically sourced, but I'm afraid my principles just evaporate when faced with the prospect of a hot bacon roll outdoors on a cold day. I justified it on the grounds that exceptions can be made under the pressure of a pandemic, and it is better to try and fail sometimes than not to try at all. I suspect Fridays could become bacon butty day as a lockdown treat.

Although it was a lovely morning, you can see just how wet it has been, from this path masquerading as a puddle and stream. There was also mud. After we got home I spent quite a lot of the afternoon trying to disentangle genealogical mysteries, with a certain amount of success. I cooked a slightly experimental dinner with some sea bass that came in last week's fish box, which came with a recipe for teriyaki sea bass with noodles. I suspected it would not be as easy as it looked, or as tasty - I am delighted to report that I was wrong! I will definitely cook fish this way again. 

This morning I cut M's hair for the first time as H has got bored of the job after nearly a year! It took me a while to fathom out how to use the clippers, but the end result was surprisingly good. Put it this way, he looks normal! I also did a few more necessary tasks - packaged up some jeans to return (I ordered three pairs to try, and needed to return the two I didn't want to keep), updated the supermarket order for next week, and so on. M went out and dropped off the parcel at a collection point and bought a few bits at M & S Food. He is now the designated shopper - as he has had his vaccine (1st dose, at least), there doesn't seem any point in putting myself at unnecessary risk while virus levels are still high. This afternoon we walked round one of our standard three mile circuits,  through the local woods and along the canal. 

No cooking today as it was our takeaway evening. I had an Uber Eats discount code so ordered in from a local fish and chip shop and we ate while watching the Masked Singer. M and I have also watched a couple more episodes of The English Game on Netflix, a historical drama about a football team from Blackburn which was the first professional team to win the FA Cup. It was this series which started me on my genealogy kick, as my adopted "aunt" and "uncle" (who were my grandparents in all but name) both came from Blackburn, and I remember being told that Auntie's father won an FA Cup medal - I haven't found any evidence this was true, though.  

A Sunset Walk

I am getting better about being organised with my time and pacing myself, and have got through all my work this week quite efficiently. I now have a three day weekend to look forward to. I have kept up with my yoga challenge and I am now past the half-way point - 12 days done out of 21. The afternoons are starting to get lighter, and today we didn't go out for our walk until 4pm. On our way back I was able to get some good sunset pictures. 

Yesterday afternoon I was feeling generally grumpy about what is beginning to feel like never-ending lockdowns, and realised that in large part it is the lack of anything specific to look forward to. Usually we have a holiday planned and some social events on the calendar, but for now it just isn't worth planning anything. In theory we do have holidays booked but I don't think the chances of them actually happening are very good - two have already been postponed once, and the other was booked before the pandemic. Maybe  our weekend at Disneyland Paris which has  been postponed from February to September will happen. There have already been too many disappointments over the last year to want to line up any more. M suggested that as we can't go out and do anything other than walk, we should look for small treats to cheer me up from the coronavirus blues - so yesterday I ordered some posh chocolate from Hotel Chocolat, and today we did a click and collect order from Caffe Nero for coffees and / or cakes according to everyone's preference. A gingerbread latte while I worked definitely perked up my afternoon. 

I have put together an alternative outline for my book-in-progress, though whether I can make it work, I am not sure. I have also been playing around with some genealogy, researching the families of my adoptive grandparents. I started to do this a few years ago but didn't write much down, so I am effectively starting from scratch. Yesterday evening was Zoom band practice, and I am nearly through my book about a World War I hospital in London that was run entirely by women. All in all quite a productive few days, though I still keep complaining that there isn't enough time in the day to do everything I want to do.  

Monday Flowers

Another busy work day today for all of us. M finished at lunchtime and went out to the local shop to buy bread and milk. He also picked up a cheap bunch of crysanthamums to fill a gap in the living room. The large poinsettia I bought back in November had been sitting on this table, and since the plant wilted and died it has looked rather bare. I can't remember whether I mentioned before that after Christmas I decided we needed new vases. I eventually realised that the reason flowers somehow always looked disappointing was because for years I had been shoving them into vases that were just the wrong shape. This one allows the flowers to spread out and gives them much more water to drink and makes it look as though my flower arranging skills are less pathetic! As they were very reasonably priced I bought the same vase in two sizes: this large one and a smaller one which will be nice for things like daffodils. M and I like the simple glass, though H thinks it is too plain. The flowers are really brightening up this corner. 

After lunch we went for a 30 minute walk, and when I finished work I did a 25 minute yoga class. It would have been a longer one, but the broadband was not cooperating and it kept freezing so I had to switch to another class on You Tube. While we walked we were talking about how impressed we are with home working and home schooling is going, and with the way everyone just gets up and on with their work in the mornings. You would expect it with H, but for a 14 year old TG really is very self-contained and self-motivated. Partly her own personality, and partly following H's example, we think. She gets herself up with plenty of time to start her day with an espresso (she likes strong coffee!) and breakfast, works through her online school day without any fuss or input from us, makes her own lunch, and generally functions more like a young adult than a young teen. Definitely a strong independent streak there, though perhaps not quite as extreme as her eldest sister who at two declared "I do it mine self! I do everything mine self!" and never looked back. 

Rest, Renew and Restore

Rest, renew and restore ... that was the name of tonight's yoga class, but also sums up this weekend. I caught up on sleep - a blissful nine hours each night - and I will be starting work tomorrow feeling much more ready for a run of busy days than I did last week. I am now eight days into my 21 day yoga challenge and loving it. The classes are varied, and today's restful class was a lovely way to end the weekend, including 30 minutes of yoga "sleep". 

Yesterday was another of the grey, damp days, but it brightened up this morning so after I had tackled some band finance stuff (I managed to get the end of year accounts to balance. Woo hoo!) we went for a walk around the lake. When we got home H went out to meet her BF for a walk, wearing my hiking boots as she doesn't have any of her own and is fed up of trying to get mud off trainers. 

Yesterday evening we had a video chat with some old friends, and M had a call with another friend while I was doing my yoga today. We also watched some light TV as a family - The Masked Singer yesterday and Who Wants to Be a Millionaire today - and I have read, knitted and crocheted. Between us H and I cooked roast potatoes and yorkies for dinner to go with the last of the frozen turkey leftovers from Christmas. 

As well as resting and relaxing I did a bit more research and writing. It still surprises me how often a bit of judicious digging through Ancestry, the newspaper archive and other oddments on the internet throws up answers to questions. I have no idea yet of what this attempt at a book will look like. I am working on a draft which is just a chronological account of the lives of the women I am researching, but I feel that there will be a more interesting and readable way to tackle it once I have got the outline of the story down. My current plan is just to work through to the end of the chronological draft, read through it a couple of times and see what better plan, if any, jumps out at me. Goodness knows how long it will take even to get to that stage. I am still only on Chapter 3 of what my current outline expects to be 12 chapters, and while I am still working two paid part-time jobs it isn't going to progress very fast. I also have another writing project I should be working on which has been sadly ignored - one which I know will actually be published when it is eventually finished it as it is for the local historical society. I may be doing things badly out of order, but I am hopelessly distracted by my Edwardian ladies and their war time adventures. 

Friends on Friday

I finished a freelance job yesterday, so today was a free day. In what made a wonderful change from the isolation of the last few weeks M and I met up with friends for a walk this morning. We are allowed to meet with one person from outside our household for outdoor exercise, so as we were two couples we split up into two pairs - I walked with one friend, while M and her husband followed us 50 yards or so behind. We went to the local country park which, inevitably at the moment, was damp, but because it is sandy soil the mud wasn't too bad. The final path we took was more of a stream than a path, but nothing we couldn't handle with boots on.

We walked round one part of the country park, then up to another section where there is a lake, which was looking very full and very brown. This is an artificial lake, constructed when the park belonged to a large country house, so it isn't very deep. I think all the rain had churned up a lot of silt. Past the lake, near the entrance to the park is a takeaway cafe which was open, so we stopped for a coffee and bacon rolls, with a burger for M who doesn't eat pork products. We then sat down at picnic tables several yards apart, but near enough to chat across the gap. Hot coffee and rolls was a true luxury after a cold January walk, and the combination of seeing friends with an unexpected outdoor lunch was a treat after so much isolation. 

This afternoon I did a bit of research and writing, followed by a yoga stretch class. I managed to find a sibling of one of the women I am researching who I had lost somewhere in the early 20th century - thanks to a newspaper mention I discovered she had married again after a divorce. I subscribe to the British Newspaper Archive which is a fantastic resource; it has often both solved mysteries and found unexpected treasures for me. I was hoping to spend quite a bit more time on this project next week, but a new job came in this afternoon which will keep me busy for the next three weeks. I'm still hoping to be able to keep one weekday and the weekend free. Working four days rather than five still feels part time, though it's not quite the leisurely semi-retirement I was expecting when I dropped my archive hours down to two days a week four years ago. At the time we didn't imagine that we would get offered so much freelance work, and the pandemic doesn't seem to have affected it at all. It is unpredictable though - we can have a run of busy weeks followed by a slack spell, which can make it difficult to get our work-life balance right. 

H has been on a team working on a job which had a major deadline today. She was expecting it could be a long day but they finished by mid-afternoon so she was given the rest of the day off and took herself out for a walk. The day ended with a Chinese meal and a glass of red wine - we are back to our lockdown habit of a weekly takeaway. Another week done, and the Covid news is looking better. The case numbers are slowly starting to fall, and our local vaccination centre opened yesterday at the rugby club in town. I'm hoping that if everything goes to plan in a few weeks it will be my turn for my first jab. 

Raindrops and Roses (or Pot Plants)

It has got a bit warmer this week, but today was wet and miserable. Despite that M and I managed a walk this afternoon, but it was more a duty than a pleasure! I got started reasonably early this morning and managed to get my chunk of freelance work for the day done by lunchtime, then I read for a while this afternoon - I am now reading a history of a hospital in London during the First World War which was run entirely by women. I am always interested in anything about women in the medical services as I am researching and writing the story of three women who served as ambulance drivers and medical orderlies in France, Belgium and Serbia during the War.  

Talking of medical things, H phoned 111 this morning and was given a list of dentists to phone. She spoke to one and has been given an appointment with a local dentist next week, but the jaw pain seems to be easing a bit. M went out to M & S Food to pick up a pair of pyjamas he had ordered online - our store is food only, but they also operate a free click and collect service for other M & S products, which is very handy. I asked him to look for a pot plant while he was there to replace the large poinsettia we bought a few weeks ago which was dying. After showing me all the plants by FaceTime and much discussion, we ended up with a very small cyclamen that looked lost in the living room so has gone to live on the kitchen windowsill instead. He also had video chats with friends at lunchtime and again in the late afternoon. TG had Zoom dance and I had Zoom band this evening. After three days of yoga which was quite tough today's is a gentle wind down session, which I plan to do before going to bed. All in all a comfortably routine sort of day. 

Learning Lessons

I only went for a short walk yesterday and none at all today, so no pictures to post today. I am three days in to my 21 day yoga challenge and hoping that this might be the worst day for aches and pains! I have definitely been using muscles that are unaccustomed to exercise. So far I am enjoying it. I like the live classes, knowing that other people are doing the same thing at the same time is companionable, even though I can't see or hear them. I like the teachers, and I like the variety of the challenge with different daily activities and classes, which is definitely motivating me. On the other hand, I don't like the aches and cramps which remind me that at I am at an age where if muscles aren't exercised they get very, very unhappy. I also don't like that I sometimes have to give in and take a rest, but ... slowly, slowly! Charging into it full tilt, overdoing it and giving up is not the way to go. 

I am adjusting to working full days on Mondays and Tuesdays. Yesterday was not good. It was cold and I was tired and wanted to hibernate, so I stayed in pyjamas and worked tucked up under blankets on the bed. Apart from a couple of short breaks I worked for six hours straight, working through lunch which M kindly bought me. Then I showered and dressed and was in a very bad mood. Tired, muzzy headed and thoroughly grumpy. We went for a walk and poor M had to tolerate a ten minute tirade on everything that was WRONG. Then the fresh air cleared my head, I got it out of my system and felt better. I came back and finished the day without further grumpiness, and loved doing my yoga challenge between finishing work and cooking dinner. Today was much better. A little late getting up and showered and ready to start, but I balanced the day much better with a proper lunch break, and another break mid-afternoon to prepare a beef stew and put it in the oven to cook slowly. I finished in time to do a one hour live yoga class at 6, and the dinner was ready to eat as soon as I finished. 

So, lessons learned this week (so far):

• Regular yoga is good, even when it hurts. 
• Working in pyjamas is bad.
• Not taking breaks is bad.
• Exercise to wind down after finishing work is good. 

You would think I would have learned these lessons long ago, but time management and self discipline are not my strong points. 

Not much else has happened over the past couple of days. The Covid news is mixed. Numbers of deaths are horribly high, but the number of cases seems now to be coming down and vaccinations have kicked up a gear. Our local health care trust has now set up a vaccine hub at the rugby club in town, which started operating yesterday. Poor H is suffering from a painful jaw. She doesn't think it is toothache, and may be related to a nasty mouth ulcer. I think she is planning to phone the 111 service tomorrow to see if they can sort out either a medical or dental appointment for her. I suspect she may need antibiotics. 

Word for 2021: Slow

I like the idea of picking a word at the beginning of the year as a focus for changes I need to make. It is less specific than new year resolutions, more of a guideline than an instruction. I don't by any means do this every year; even when I do I may forget about it by the end of January, but I still like the idea. Last year I decided my word would be Rest. I felt over-tired and over-stretched and, well ... in need of a rest! Let's just say I got rather more than I bargained for, between a nasty non-Covid virus (I got ill on 1st January, so too early for Covid), a long post-viral recovery, and the pandemic. There was far more Rest in 2020 than there had been in several previous years put together. Unfortunately, despite the amount of rest, the virus I had means my energy levels still feel lower than they should be and tend to wilt quickly if I overdo things. 

I have decided that this year's word is going to be Slow. It popped into my head unbidden and after a bit of pondering I realised it had a lot to teach me ... 

• Pace myself - take things more slowly so that I don't drain my energy levels. This includes getting plenty of sleep.
• Don't rush - I am a terrible time manager. I waste time, and then end up chasing my tail. It is stressful for both myself and the rest of the family. It also works the other way - my competitive streak (vs myself!) kicks in and I try to do things quickly just for the fun of it, but then I run out of steam and end up getting less done. The story of the tortoise and the hare has a lot to teach me. Instead of rushing, I want to take things slowly.
• Take time to savour the little things - slowing down gives time to be more aware and appreciative of the good things in life. 
• Accept that for at least the first part of the year life will have a naturally slower pace, and treat this as a positive rather than a negative. 

I talked this through with M on one of our walks, and I'm sure I came up with more points which I have now forgotten, but I think this covers the basics. 

After talking about going more slowly and pacing myself, today had been very active! I started the 21 days of yoga challenge with a one hour live online class at 9 this morning. I am out of practice and out of condition, and it has left me feeling tired for the rest of the day, though not too tired to do some other physical things. Later in the morning we took down the tree and Christmas decorations, then M and I went for a short walk in the afternoon. According to my Watch I burned over 800 active calories today. I was glad that H cooked dinner, which tasted as good as it looked. 

I am seven stripes in to my crocheted blanket. The photo was taken in the evening with electric light, and it looks a little darker and more yellow than it does in real life. The Meadow blanket is inspired by the colours of a wild flower meadow in spring, with slightly muted yellows, mauves, pinks and greens, and with blues for the sky. There is a "colour story" version with the flower and grass colours at the bottom merging gradually into the sky colours at the top, but I am making a mixed stripe version with the colours more randomly distributed. As well as making progress with the crochet I have made a good start on my third book of the year, an autobiographical account of life as the doctor on a remote Scottish island in the Orkneys. I have a longing to visit both Orkney and Shetland when travel becomes possible again. For some reason I am feeling very much drawn to the north and my travel wishlist also includes Finland, Norway and Iceland. I would love to make it up to the Arctic Circle!  

New Normal

I think I am adjusting to the current lockdown being the new normal. I suspect this may be how it will be until a combination of warmer weather and the vaccine start to get the pandemic under control. Lots about my life is good, and I am not going to fret about the things I can't do and the plans I can't make. 

Today was another murky, foggy day. This was about as bright as it got, so we went for a shorter walk again this afternoon. I slept late this morning, sleeping for over 9 hours altogether, which I guess I needed. I got a few jobs done, including paying my tax bill, finished reading Coronation Everest, knitted a bit more sock, crocheted a few rows of blanket, and watched TV in the evening. Not an entirely lazy day, but plenty of relaxation. We ordered a "click and collect" takeaway of fish and chips this evening. As in the previous lockdown, we are trying to support local businesses where we can. I also signed up for a subscription to both live and on-demand yoga classes with a yoga studio in Milton Keynes where I used to go for hot yoga. They are doing a 21 day fitness challenge, and I'm going to give it a try, starting with a 9am class in the morning. I feel I need to get back to regular yoga, so a challenge might kick start me into it. Nothing like good intentions for a new year! 

Socks and a Failed Coup

I am still in a sock knitting frenzy. I finished this pair for myself at the weekend - the wavy cable pattern doesn't show up well in the picture, unfortunately. I love this red and green stripy yarn, which is West Yorkshire Spinners Holly Berry. Now I am working on a pair for M, and I am already past the heel of the first sock, despite having to unravel three inches of leg when I realised I had made a mistake in the pattern. The sock knitting should slow down a bit as one of my Christmas presents was the yarn for Attic 24's new blanket crochet-a-long which starts tomorrow. I love crocheting blankets in winter. It just feels cosy! 

This morning we all worked, or in TG's case did school-at-home. The school is providing a fuller  programme this time round, with more online lessons and working to their normal timetable. H is about to start her first audit busy season. Over the next couple of months she is likely to be working very long hours - perhaps not so bad at the moment when there are so many restrictions on what she can do outside of work! M is waiting to hear when he will be expected to return to work, post-vaccination. We expect it to be over the next week or two. 

Before starting work I caught up on the news from the US about Trump's attempted coup. It seems to me it deserves the name "coup" as he was clearly trying to encourage his supporters to use force in an attempt to overturn the election result. I have a high enough opinion of American democracy to think that it was bound to fail, as indeed it did, but it does show the amount of damage he has done in peddling his myth of a fraudulent election to people who want to believe him. However, I think it has done more than anything else could to alienate many of the Republican politicians who have enabled Trump over the past four years, and that may well put paid to any attempt by him to win a second term in 2024. 

It was cold and murky today, and we couldn't face more mud, so just did a couple of miles around the local streets for our walk. I did spot this impressive fungus on an old tree stump. I ordered some grass-fed meat from a different source to my usual one to try - this company has a regular subscription option that I think might work for us. I am still trying to buy ethically produced meat as much as possible, despite it being more expensive. Apparently in the UK we tend to buy cheap food rather than good quality food, whereas elsewhere in Europe the balance is the other way round. I am trying to re-educate myself. I used a portion of diced chicken to make a chicken and mushroom pie, with mashed potatoes, roasted squash and broccoli for dinner. 

Mud Glorious Mud

I decided to reshuffle my working week. Since the pandemic started and I switched to working from home I have been spending four mornings a week doing my archive work, instead of the two full days I did in the office. It seemed easier to spread it out over the week and fit better with our spring summer routine. However, when we have freelance work on the go, it sometimes felt as though my supposedly part-time work wasn't being very part time at all! For the new year I have decided to switch back to my old working schedule,  spending Monday and Tuesday on archive work and then fitting any freelance work into the rest of the week. If we don't have any freelance jobs on the go, I will have three full weekdays free.  

The change of working patterns meant that by 5.30pm yesterday I was done with my archive work for the week, and I took today as a free day. I have some freelance work to do, which I hope I will be able to fit into tomorrow and Friday mornings, leaving the afternoons free. I did quite a bit of reading while sock-knitting. I have already finished my first book of the year - The Book of Lost Names by Kristin Harmel, a novel about a French Jewish girl escaping Paris and working in Vichy France as a forger of false documents to save Jewish children and help resistance fighters. This morning I started Coronation Everest by Jan Morris (or James Morris as she was at the time she wrote it), about her experiences as the official Times newspaper correspondent accompanying the expedition that first successfully climbed in Everest in 1953. Amazon had an offer on many of her books on Kindle last week and I bought several. 

 Beside reading and knitting, I did a bit of housework, cooked fish with fondant potatoes and greens for dinner, and had a band practice on Zoom. As I went into the dining room to log into Zoom the top hinge of the door came away from the frame. Fortunately the door did not fall off completely, and I was able to fix it afterwards by using some larger screws. Sometimes hoarding old screws in my toolbox comes in useful! (Note this is *my* toolbox - M would be the first to admit that fixing things is not his strength!)

We also went for a four mile walk this afternoon. Despite realising there would be mud  - there was, and lots of it - we walked down through the woods to the canal and from there across the water meadows. It was quite bleak and wintry, as well as muddy. The worst patch came just after we crossed the river, but by that time we were committed; we decided retracing our steps over all the previous mud was not an option! We then walked back through town, having managed to get the worst of the mud off our boots by wiping them on the grass. It was really the sort of walk that needed wellies (rubber boots) but we don't have any and our hiking boots cope with most things. 

Books To Read in 2021

I have been adding books to my "Want to Read" lists for 2021. If I was organised these would all be neatly together on Good Reads, but are actually scattered around Good Reads, Amazon wish lists and elsewhere, so I am going to jot down a list here as a reminder. 

Here are some books I hope to read in 2021:

Fiction

• The Book of Lost Names (Kristin Harmel)
• The Jane Austen Society (Natalie Jenner)
• The Midnight Library (Matt Haig)
• This is How You Lose the Time War (Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone)
• The Secret Chapter (Genevieve Cogman) - Invisible Library series #6
• The Dark Archive (Genevieve Cogman)  - Invisible Library series #7

Children's Fiction

• The Moon of Gomrath (Alan Garner)
• The Subtle Knife (Philip Pullman)
• The Amber Spyglass (Philip Pullman)

History

• Home: a Time-Traveller's Tales from British Pre-History (Francis Pryor)
• Endell Street: the Women Who Ran Britain's Trailblazing Military Hospital (Wendy Moore)
• Pax Britannica trilogy (Jan Morris)
• Coronation Everest (Jan Morris)
• Nye: the Political Life of Aneurin Bevan (Nicklaus Thomas-Symonds)

Travel / Places

• Venice (Jan Morris)
• Between the Woods and the Water (Patrick Leigh Fermor)
• A Time to Keep Silence (Patrick Leigh Fermor)

Science

• The End of Everything (Katie Mack)
• Breath: the New Science of a Lost Art (James Nestor)

Other Non-Fiction

• Sightlines (Kathleen Jamie)
• The Wild Silence (Raynor Winn)
• Craeft: an Inquiry in the Origins and True Meaning of Traditional Crafts (Alexander Langlands)
• How to Be a Liberal (Ian Dunt)
• Doughnut Economics (Kate Raworth)

I like to give myself an annual Challenge target on Good Reads. For the past two years I have set a target of 52 and only made it to 35. This year I have rounded down to 50, and as I am determined to read more this year I hope to achieve it. 

Winter Walking

The weekend was cold but much brighter than it has been so we enjoyed two good walks. The current Covid restrictions allow us to go out for exercise but not to travel outside our area - as we live right on the border of two local authorities, both in the same tier, we are exercising common sense and just not going too far. 

On Saturday we went to Stowe Gardens, our favourite National Trust place to visit. "Gardens" really means "very large park" where it is possible to walk miles. On a bright winter day it is glorious. The statues and buildings in the grounds where all carefully designed to form part of a themed whole. I can't pretend to understand what they are supposed to mean, but they are lovely to photograph! The building below is now available to rent as a holiday home. 

I love the ceiling on this covered bridge. I tried to get a picture without my shadow getting into the shot but didn't quite succeed! 

Yesterday's walk was round the village of Swanbourne. I have been on a genealogy kick this weekend and found out a bit more about my ancestors who lived here in the 18th century. One was a cordwainer (boot or shoemaker), which apparently was something of a local industry by the 19th century, focussed on one particular farmhouse which provided workshops. I wonder if he worked and lived in that corner of the village?). Both my 4x great and 5x great-grandfathers (and I'm sure other relatives) were baptised in this church.  

Isn't this a gorgeous building? I love the herringbone patterned brickwork, which is quite common in old houses in this area. This one dates back to the late 16th century. 

This farmhouse is a little bit newer, with a plaque bearing the date 1632. I love the contrast in this picture between the mossy wall in the foreground and the stone house behind. M says this blog is turning into a guided tour of our local area. He could well be right. I am just grateful that we have so many beautiful places nearby, particularly while our world is so much smaller. 

Our escalating Covid rates mean that the hospitals are on the edge of being overwhelmed, so the entire country has now been put into the same level of restrictions that already applies to us. In addition schools will now be staying closed, at least until half term (mid-February) and I suspect probably longer. Yet again the government has done a U-turn - yesterday most primary schools were being told to open this week. Some went back for one day, only to be told they have to close again tomorrow. At least today saw the first Oxford AstraZeneca vaccines being rolled out. We have to hope that the supply and distribution arrangements work well and that the government's ambitious plan to have all over-70s, health workers and extremely vulnerable people vaccinated by mid-February turned out to be reality and not fantasy. 

2020 Book List

I would have expected that the extra free time which has been a benefit of the pandemic would have meant I would read more. It didn't. For some reason I turned to TV and film, which is unusual for me - I have never watched a lot of TV, and this year I'm sure I have watched more on screen than in the previous five (if not ten!) years put together. Why? Maybe it takes a bit less effort than reading and I needed things to be easy this year; maybe because it was something I could share with other members of the family; maybe it just became a habit. 

For the record, here are the books I read in 2020, with a brief comment on each and my goodreads rating: 

1. Mudlarking (Lara Maiklem) - fascinating account of the activities of a "mudlark" and the artefacts she retrieves from the River Thames. ***** (I just upgraded this from **** because the book stuck with me all year)
2. The Peterloo Massacre (Robert Reid) - detailed account of the background and aftermath as well as of the events of the terrible day in 1819 when a peaceful rally in support of Parliamentary reform was violently broken up at St Peter's Field in Manchester. ****
3. The Shepherd's Life (James Rebanks) - the life of a sheep farmer in the Lake District. ****
4. Surfacing (Kathleen Jamie) - a collection of essays with a theme of digging below the surface. The longest sections are about archaeological digs in Alaska and Orkney and a journey to Tibet. Beautifully written. *****
5. Bluestockings (Jane Robinson) - a history of the development of university education for women and the experiences of some early women students between the 1860s and 1920s. ***
6. The Rowan (Anne McCaffery) - a re-read of the first book in a fantasy series ****
7. William Morris (Fiona MacCarthy) - definitive biography of the founder of the arts and crafts movement and early communist William Morris. ***** 
8. The Summer Book (Tove Jansson) - short novel by the author of the Moon books describing the summer spent by a young girl and her grandmother on a Swedish island ****
9. Rewild Yourself (Simon Barnes) - clear and realistic explanations of small ways in which we can learn to become more aware of nature around us *****
10. The Life and Loves of E Nesbit (Eleanor Fitzsimons) - a new biography of author Edith Nesbit, but I felt it didn't add much to another biography I read a few years ago ***
11. Countryside and Cloister (Marie Litchfield) - a re-read of a biography in which in the first half the author describes her childhood in the English countryside of the 1930s, and the second her life as a Carmelite nun ****
12. Project 333 (Courtney Carver) - the book of the blog in which Courtney Carver explains Project 333 capsule/minimalist wardrobe plan to wear 33 items for 3 months ***
13. The Bird in the Tree (Elizabeth Goudge) - the first of Elizabeth Goudge's Damerosehay trilogy about the Eliot family set in post-war Hampshire. A bit of familiar comfort reading for the pandemic **** 
14. The Herb of Grace (Elizabeth Goudge) - part two of the Damerosehay trilogy ****
15. Fashionopolis (Dana Thomas) - a book about the costs of the fast fashion industry, which also looks at how we can move to a more ethical approach to clothes ****
16. Destination Simple (Brooke McAlary) - suggests ways in which we can simplify our daily lives. I enjoyed it, but now can't remember any of the suggestions! ****
17. Secrets of the Capsule Wardrobe (Sarah Eliza Louderback) - another book I read as part of my thinking about the practicalities of reducing clothing and dressing more ethically ****
18. The Heart of the Family (Elizabeth Goudge) - the third of the Damerosehay trilogy ****
19. The Oldest House in London (Fiona Rule) - the history of the Smithfield area of London seen through the inhabitants of the oldest surviving continuously occupied house in London ***
20. English Pastoral (James Rebanks) - my favourite book of the year. Split into three parts, the author looks at the farming practices of his grandfather's generation, the changes that came with industrialised farming in the later 20th century, and ways in which farming can change to work with the land again instead of against it. As someone who grew up on a farm in the 60s and 70s, this was part memory lane and part an exercise in hope that the damage created by industrialised farming can be healed *****
21. Elizabeth Fry: a Biography (June Rose) - a biography of the 19th century Quaker prison reformer. I'm afraid I didn't like her very much! ***
22. Europe: an Intimate Journey (Jan Morris) - wickedly observant and clever tour of Europe as she knew it between 1950 and 2000 ****
23. A History of Ancient Britain (Neil Oliver) - I think this book was written to go with a TV series. It took a while for me to get into it, but once I did it hooked me and I now want to read much more about the Neolithic and Bronze Ages ****
24. Christmas Pudding (Nancy Mitford) - a random Kindle purchase as I have always been fascinated by the Mitfords (how could one family produce an author, a duchess, a communist, a wife of the British fascist leader, and a Hitler hanger-on?). An early book by Nancy Mitford and not one of her best ***

I see this works out as almost one book every two weeks. Alongside these, I was also listening to audio books. Usually I listen on my commute to work, but found this year that listening while lying in the hammock in the garden or in the kitchen while cooking where my main Audible moments. I listened to:

1. London in the 19th Century (Jerry White) - interesting, but I hard it found to focus and take in all the information. Might have been better if I had read rather than listened to this one? ***
2. Downsizing (Tom Watson) - a mix of political autobiography with diet and lifestyle advice from a former Labour politician who managed to turn around his health and weight ***
3. Unspeakable (John Bercow) - I expected to enjoy this more than I did, given the central role that Bercow played in the political shenanigans of 2019. Unfortunately his large ego rather put me off! ***
4. The New Silk Roads (Peter Frankopan) - a historian of the silk roads looks at modern politics and relationships in the region ****
5. Difficult Women (Helen Lewis) - subtitled a "history of feminism in 11 fights" the author looks at 11 women who fought to improve the lives of women in the 20th century ****
6. The Prosecutor (Nazir Afzal) - memoir of a lawyer who became a Chief Prosecutor determined to ensure that criminals faced the consequences for their crimes ****
7. Underland (Robert Macfarlane) - this description of the author's explorations of caves and tunnels was a counterpoint to Surfacing, which I read earlier in the year **** 
8. Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World that Won't Stop Talking (Susan Cain) - I'm one of those people who is on the cusp of extrovert and introvert, sometimes falling one side of the line and sometimes the other. This has definitely been an introvert year, so this book felt relevant ****
9. The Prime Ministers (Steve Richards) - I think this was based on a radio series looking at the prime ministers from Ted Heath and Harold Wilson in the 1970s through to Theresa May. Scarily, I am old enough to remember all of them! *** 
10. The Weirdstone of Brisingamen (Alan Garner) - a couple of references reminded me about this book from my childhood, set in Cheshire where the author lived. Superb fantasy, but pretty scary for a children's book! *****
11. Northern Lights (Philip Pullman) - inspired by the BBC adaptation I decided it was time to listen to / re-read the His Dark Materials trilogy. I had forgotten how well Philip Pullman constructed his fantasy universe and I am looking forward to rediscovering the other books *****

A New Year

I was tempted to go all Star Wars and title this post "A New Hope", but while there is certainly hope that we will see the end of the pandemic some time in 2021, there is going to be a very rocky path to tread for the first part of the year. This new Covid variant has us going backwards fast, and it is going to be a while before the vaccine digs us out of this mess. Then there will almost be post-Brexit bumps in the road to negotiate. Still, the vaccines are here and things should look very different in the spring. Meanwhile, I intend to keep away from people as much as possible - staying home and only going out for walks until I have had the vaccine. The young and vaccinated members of the family can do anything else that needs doing! Mind you, M was disappointed to hear that the second dose of his vaccine has been postponed. The plan is now to allow up to 3 months between doses so that more people can be given vaccines more quickly. I can only assume that the scientists you have made this decision know what they are doing, and that any risks of postponing the second dose are more than outweighed by the benefits of getting the vaccine out there more quickly. 

We enjoyed our Zoom New Year's Eve with our friends and watched the New Year fireworks from London on TV in our respective houses. There were none of the usual public celebrations, but we were impressed with the fireworks and accompanying drone light show which marked the turning of the year with tributes to the NHS, the Black Lives Matter movement and the way people have come together over the past year in the face of adversity. I took some photos of the screen from a slightly dodgy angle. 

Today was another day of walking in foggy drizzle, watching movies (Finding Dory) and playing games (Mega Monopoly and Bananagrams), edible treats (Christmas chocolate and M made a madeira cake) and general laziness. Getting back to work next week is going to be hard, especially as my body clock has reset itself to going to sleep late and waking late. TG will not be going back to school until January 18th at the earliest - my guess is it will be later - so will be starting back with school at home. Her dance classes and my band rehearsals will also go back to Zoom for the time being, which is a very good thing in the current circumstance. Studies are showing that the new variant of Covid is around 50% more infectious, which means shutting down as much as possible for the time being.