Passover and a Birthday

Passover started on Saturday evening, and last night we joined M's family for a Zoom seder meal - his sister and brother-in-law in one house, us in another, his nephew in a third, and his niece and her partner in a fourth. When we had a Zoom seder last year, none of us imagined we would be doing the same again this year. The seder ends by saying "Next year in Jerusalem". We joked that it should be "Next year in person"!

Today is M's birthday, and the government very considerately decided this was the date on which they would lift another stage of the lockdown and allow gatherings of two households or up to six people outdoors, including in gardens. That meant we were able to invite R and her partner over to have a birthday meal of fish and chips in the garden. I confess we cheated a little as H's boyfriend also joined us, making seven. Having a "normal" evening with the whole family together was the best possible birthday present for M. 

The weather warmed up dramatically today, to the point where I was able to get the hammock out for the first time this year. I quite shamelessly spent the afternoon working while enjoying the fresh air out in the garden. Tomorrow is forecast to be even warmer, so I intend to do the same again. 

This afternoon I had a Teams tea-break (in the hammock) with a colleague who is a close friend and we have arranged to meet up with two other friends on Friday for a walk. We haven't seen each other since last March, though we have been a mutual support group on WhatsApp all through the pandemic. I am so looking forward to us being able to meet in person after so long. Sadly the fifth member of our group won't be able to join us as she has difficulty with mobility and can't manage outdoor socialising. I think this time around the gradual easing of lockdown is even more of a joy, because there is now real hope that this is the beginning of the end. 

 

Lockdown Clothes Shopping

I needed to pick up a click and collect order from a clothing store in Milton Keynes, so M and I drove over this morning and combined it with a walk. After a nasty, rainy day yesterday it was bright but definitely on the chilly side. After struggling to find our way out of the car park on foot (it is a very large car park, serving a retail park, cinema and restaurants, and the football stadium, so there was a lot of potential for dead ends!) we walked to the canal and down the tow path to the old village of Simpson. 

Milton Keynes is a planned new town built over the last 50 years which swallowed up four towns and several villages, so has pockets of old buildings in unexpected places - like this 14th century church dedicated to St Thomas and the thatched house below.  

This doorway was so cheerful! There was also brightly coloured bunting all round the house. After walking through the old centre of the village we walked back to the shops to pick up my packages. I need new jeans - genuinely a need rather than a want, as the pair I am wearing are very comfortable but too large. I wish I could say this was because I had shrunk, but it is because the jeans fit when I tried them on but then loosened up when I wore them, to the point where I keep having to hitch them up to stop them falling down. This works while at home, but makes them awkward to wear out of the house! As all the shops are still shut I ordered pairs from three different shops to try. Today's pair are good and I'm going to keep them. I had also ordered three pairs of shoes - I need something comfy for when I go back to work, ideally smart trainers or something similar (the job includes step ladders and carrying boxes around, so footwear needs to be practical). Unfortunately none of them were right, so they will all be going back and I have ordered another couple of pairs to try. 

H has been busy getting ready for her move today. She went in to town this morning to go to the bank and transfer her share of the house purchase money to the solicitor ready to complete the purchase on Wednesday. She took TG with her and bought TG a new bedside table so she can take TG's old one (which is a pair to hers) to the new house. Then this afternoon she packed up all her clothes. While H was packing TG decided to tackle her flat packed bedside table by herself, and managed to successfully follow the instructions with only a couple of queries. Then the girls cooked lasagne from scratch for dinner. I'm very much going to miss H's cooking! 

 As H's coffee maker will be moving out with her, I ordered one for myself and TG to use (M is not a coffee drinker). I found a very reasonably priced own-brand one from John Lewis which arrived yesterday, but when I set it up it wouldn't work properly. It is supposed to automatically foam and froth milk and add it to the coffee, but the milk wasn't pumping through. M kindly rang up John Lewis for me this morning and they have sorted out an exchange. We should be able to pick up the replacement from our local Waitrose tomorrow. Hoping for better luck at the second attempt!

Looking Forward to New Beginnings

Thursday? Already? How did that happen! After a quiet spell we have some more freelance work this week so my working week is longer. Even after just a morning's work the rest of the day seems to fly by so quickly. 

Everywhere is looking more and more springlike on our daily (mostly!) walks. This year April and Easter feels very much the time for new beginnings. H will be moving out on 31st March, and our lockdown rules will be easing on 29th March and again on 12th April. I should be going back to the archives for the first time in over a year in April, and will start working in the office alternate weeks. We have been vaccinated (first dose only for me so far, but covid immunity should be building), and M and I are planning to make a real effort to eat more healthily. I feel as though I am reaching the end of a long winter hibernation. 

My subconscious is clearly anxious about H's house move, as I have had a couple of slightly chaotic dreams about it. One snippet I remember is that for some inexplicable reason she was increasing her mortgage by £5000 in order to buy a fridge-freezer, and wouldn't listen to me when I argued that this was a really bad plan! I really don't have any reason to be worrying, as she has everything very well organised, Sofas are being delivered the day after they move in, and dining chairs and a sofa bed for the spare bedroom should follow within a few days. The only hiccup so far is a bed frame which is delayed in transit somewhere - fortunately the mattress has already arrived and is in the garage, so it won't mean sleeping on the floor. I jokingly suggested the bed may be stuck in the queue of ships waiting to get through the Suez Canal after a giant container ship ran aground yesterday. At least, I hope I was joking!  

TG had an appointment with the orthodontist this afternoon. She had braces on her top teeth for a while when she was 10 or 11 to straighten a very crooked front incisor, but the rest of her orthodontic treatment has been on hold waiting for all her baby teeth to fall out. They have finally all gone, and the plan is now for her to get full braces in June when a couple of adult teeth have come through a bit more. Fortunately her treatment is the most straightforward of all three girls. R had an underbite which meant wearing nasty block braces for a while, and H needed four teeth removing before getting braces. I'm very thankful indeed that all their orthodontic work has been free under the NHS! 

I am in a scattered reading phase, having more-or-less by accident started a number of books at once. I am more than half way through Watching the English, an anthropologist's analysis of English behaviour - easy to read and interesting but also long, so it is taking me a while. I am working through the local history / archaeology book I picked up from the library at the weekend on the go, which is a large, heavy hardback,  not easy just to pick up and put down. Then I discovered this week that the library has switched to a new digital platform for e-books and audio books, so I downloaded the new app and borrowed a couple of books. I also put a hold on Matt Haig's The Midnight Library, which I have been wanting to read, and that landed on my digital "shelf" today. A blogging friend mentioned a book about Julian of Norwich, who has always been a favourite of mine, so I bought that for my Kindle and have started reading. Meanwhile I also have an audio book on the go. My focus hasn't been great since last year's months of brain fog. I think I need to consciously work on improving it - something else for April's new start! 

Another Lockdown Sunday

M has been at work again today, so we went for a short walk this morning before he went. I didn't see anything interesting enough to take a photo, so the one below is from yesterday. The market is still running in town as food stalls are counted as essential and being outdoors limits the risk; there were quite a few people there, but it was still much quieter than usual for a Saturday. I forgot to mention yesterday that I had ordered a library book using their Click and Collect system for the first time. It was very efficient. They have everybody's orders lined up in surname order in paper carrier bags and a service desk set up by the door. Returns go into a box in the entrance hall. 

For me it has mostly been a leisurely day, apart from sorting out the online grocery order this morning. My current routine is to order groceries for delivery on Tuesday morning. Delivery slots are not disappearing the way they did in the first lock down, but to get the slot I want I have got into the habit of booking a week ahead with a provisional order, then updating it later - so this morning I placed an order for Tuesday 30th, and then updated the order for this coming Tuesday. I occasionally get myself into a minor muddle by putting something on the provisional order instead of the current one, but mostly it works. 

I have also switched veg suppliers. For a year or so I had been getting an organic veg box delivery, but on R's recommendation I am now getting a box of fruit and veg delivered by a Bedfordshire company, which sources as much as possible locally (which at this time of year isn't much!) and delivers in our area on a Saturday.  So far we are very impressed with both the quantity and quality. Yesterday's box had potatoes, onions, carrots, broccoli, courgettes, aubergine, mushrooms, spinach, red pepper, apples, pears, bananas, plums, nectarines, a melon, strawberries and a grapefruit, all for £20 including delivery. 

This afternoon I watched Onward with the girls, another Disney movie which was released on Disney Plus last year, but which for some reason we hadn't got round to watching. After that TG took her first DIY lateral flow test. She read the instructions and did it by herself without supervision. The test was negative and didn't give a "failed test" result, so hopefully she did everything right. Then H cut my hair for me. Hairdressers are not reopening until April 12th, and after a first attempt last year which was definitely a bowl cut (she sorted it out, I'm glad to say!) she does a quite a good job of it. I then trim any uneven bits I spot and the end result may not be up to professional standards, but at least looks reasonable. I keep my hair pretty short - whenever I try to grow it out it never looks right. It has a life of its own and grows in different directions! H cooked a roast dinner for the last time before she moves out - we are definitely going to miss her kitchen skills. 

I worked a bit on the cardigan I have started knitting and read a bit of the book I collected from the library, which is an archaeological report on investigations into the medieval royal manor and priory which stood near this town. I have already read quite a bit of information about the site from associated documents which were published online, but the book is a lot more comprehensive. Some of the technical archaeological detail goes way over my head, but it is filling in gaps in my knowledge and making sense of some things that I already knew but in a vague and slightly muddled way. 

Spring Flowers and Cake

We enjoyed our visit to Ascott House yesterday. Looking back at old blog posts it looks as though the last time we went was in July, when it was warm, sunny and very green. The best that could be said about yesterday is that it was dry!

There were areas which will soon be completely carpeted with daffodils. Some are already in flower, but they haven't yet reached their full effect - another couple of weeks and it will look spectacular. 

After our walk round the grounds we enjoyed drinks and cake at the cafe, which was open for takeaway. Our order got a bit mixed up, so M ended up eating my slice of lime and coconut cake and I had coffee and walnut which they gave him instead of his Victoria sponge. No complaints, though, as it was very good. Then in the evening, H bought us all a takeaway from Nandos. As M was working this afternoon, we had a big brunch this morning before he left, then TG and I took advantage of his absence to have pizza (which M doesn't eat) delivered for dinner. Very lazy having two takeaways in a row! I am intending to get back into healthy eating habits after Easter, so it won't become a habit. 

TG and I have decided to go back to watching regular movies together, so this afternoon we watched The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. We are building up a list of things we want to watch or rewatch. Part of the plan is to tackle the Marvel movies. We have only seen a couple of the Avengers movies and one (or maybe two?) of the Guardians of the Galaxy series. 

Isn't this colourful planter full of spring flowers gorgeous! Makes me wish I didn't have black thumbs and could achieve beautiful things like this. At least I have managed to keep two pot plants alive which for me is a huge achievement!

Over Thursday and Friday I wasn't feeling great, with a sore throat and tight chest - nothing awful, just a slight cold, but enough not to want to do too much so I skipped my yoga "splits challenge" classes. I did at least manage a shortish walk on Thursday and the walk round Ascott yesterday. I didn't have any Covid symptoms and my vaccine should be giving me at least some immunity by now, but I used one of M's lateral flow tests just to be sure. I know they are not particularly reliable, but a negative test is still reassuring. I'm feeling much better today, so did a yoga stretch class and went into town with M this morning to run a couple of errands. 

The vaccine rollout passed a milestone yesterday, with half of UK adults now having had at least one dose. Most will only have had that single dose, as the decision was taken to allow up to 12 weeks between doses so that more people would get at least some level of protection more quickly, but the data so far is looking as though that was a good call. Death rates and hospitalisations are falling fast, although the drop in cases is slowing down. Sadly across most of mainland Europe cases are rising and many countries are heading into a third wave. I hope they can catch up with their vaccination programme and that it won't be too long before they can turn things around. 

Knitting Frenzy

During the first lockdown last year I had an urge to do cross stitch projects. This time around it has been a knitting and crocheting frenzy. I have been working on a cotton jumper for myself, which I finished on Sunday. I see from my Ravelry project that it took me five weeks and a day from start to finish, which I am quite certain is by far the quickest I have ever knit an adult size jumper. I am really pleased with the way it came out - it fits well and is soft and comfortable. The next project is a summer cardigan with a lace and cables pattern, using a cotton / bamboo mix yarn.

The stiffness eased up and I did my splits challenge yoga sessions on Sunday and Monday. I took yesterday and today as rest days as I am feeling a little under the weather (mild cold) and learned the hard way last year not to push myself if I'm not feeling 100%. Back to it tomorrow, I hope. I'm sure the extra stretching is doing me good. 

It rained this morning but cleared this afternoon and was nice and bright when we went out for our walk. Daffodils in spring always brighten my mood, and I am appreciating the longer, lighter days, even though the weather is a bit variable. I missed Zoom band this evening so that I could attend a Zoom talk with the local history society - I am giving one in April and wanted to see what the format was like and how it worked, plus I was interested in the topic. It was about the Rothschild family, who at one point owned no less than seven country houses in this area. Coincidentally our nearest National Trust property is a Rothschild house which reopened this week (gardens only), and we have booked to visit on Friday. It is only two miles away so counts as staying local, and it will feel like a small step back towards normality. 

Deer Spotting

It is R's birthday on Monday (26! how did that happen?) so after M got home from work we met her at Woburn for a walk and to deliver her birthday presents. The deer in the Duke of Bedford's park were out in force today, with some large groups in the area where we were walking. 

TG's first day back at school yesterday went OK. She was happy to see her friends, but found having to wear a mask in all her lessons uncomfortable - last term the rule was masks in corridors and a break time, but not during lessons - and complained that an extended tutor time first thing meant missing PE. Her latest growth spurt has meant she has overtaken a couple of friends who were always much taller than her, rather to their annoyance! I rather enjoyed the novelty of getting up and driving her there in the morning. It was nice to have a little bit of normal back. 

A steady stream of packages are arriving for H as she gathers up stuff for her new home. They are now working towards a moving date of 31st March, which works out quite well as she doesn't have any work commitments that day, and will have the long Easter weekend to sort things out and get settled in. 

I am doing a three week yoga "splits challenge", which is a mix of live and recorded classes. The idea is not so much to seriously aim at achieving the splits, but to loosen tight muscles and increase mobility. Last night's stretching class left me stiff and achy today, so I decided to have today as a rest day instead of tomorrow. No pain, no gain? 

Back to School

Even after a year of being almost entirely at home, it still surprises me how quickly time passes. I have mostly settled in to working two full days at my archive job. Occasionally I will have a day when I just can't get into what I am doing, or spend too long on one thing, and then it can drag, but fortunately that isn't happening too often. Although M went back to work last week he had the weekend off and will not be working again until Saturday. H has a week of (remote) college this week, and TG has been doing online school but is back to school in person tomorrow. We had to do an emergency order for a new pair of school trousers as she had outgrown her previous pair, and rather a lot of mud had to be got off her trainers. I am very grateful that her school's uniform rules allow black leather trainers (sports shoes) as they are comfortable, practical and robust. In fact, her uniform generally is comfortable and practical - burgundy cotton jumper, white polo shirt and plain black trousers (not jeans or leggings). No faffing with ties or blazers.   

I am usually managing to squeeze a walk into my working day and we managed to get out on both Monday and Tuesday. Yesterday was wet and nasty, so I stayed in, though M decided to walk down to Tesco to get a few bits. I did drive to M & S Food in the afternoon, also to get a few oddments, but mainly to pick up a click and collect order. I got the oddments but completely forgot about the order until M asked about it this morning. Oops! He then kindly went and got it for me. This afternoon he also went to Waitrose to pick up a John Lewis click and collect order. Our vacuum died at the weekend; it was a cordless one and refused to recharge. Fortunately it was still under warranty, and as the John Lewis stores are closed we were told to send it back via a courier and given a refund. We ordered a replacement which has a five year guarantee - given the speed we seem to get through vacuums this is a very good thing! After he got back from collecting the vacuum we set it up and tested it. The last one was a Bosch; this one is a Shark and on first impressions we like it a lot better, so the unexpected demise of its predecessor has turned out to be a good thing. We then went out for a short walk before cooking dinner. 

Covid rates are still falling steadily, though a bit more slowly. Our local council issues a Covid report every week, and today's really showed the effect of vaccinations on older people working through into falling cases. The graphic on the left is all cases in our area since the start of the pandemic, and the one on the right the last week, with no cases at all in the over 70s and none in women over 60. Very encouraging! Here's hoping that things don't start to go downhill again now the schools are back. 

A Busy Weekend

Although it was only two days ago Friday has already receded into the mists of time and I can't remember much about it, except that we ordered fish and chips for dinner. In times of lockdown even small things like a takeaway provide some excitement in a day. Ah, yes ... M also took TG in to school for her pre-return Covid test. He had emailed in a copy of the consent form, and gave her the hard copy to take in just in case. The email had gone astray and TG forgot the form, so she had to come back out to the car and get him to fill in another one. Shades of past frustrations when we have sent various daughters to school with forms, letters and so on which they have then failed to hand in. Something about school bags apparently causes them to grab pieces of paper and refuse to release them - I used to periodically ransack their bags for "forgotten" letters home, fortunately now I can usually just check the school website! 

Yesterday we went for our longest walk in months, coming in at over 5 miles according to my watch, with a long stretch along the canal. The new lock gates are now in and working. There was a boat going through as we passed. There hawthorn bush we saw beginning to bloom last week had more flowers, and I noticed a few others flowering. After the canal we walked round the lake, which looked beautifully blue in the sun. On the way back home we ran into someone we know but hadn't seen for a long time, so stopped for a (socially distanced) chat. 

Our holiday plans have evolved some more, and we decided to add in a trip to Greece at the beginning of August. Greece is supposedly planning to accept British tourists from May onwards if they have either been fully vaccinated (M and I) or have a negative Covid test (TG, we hope!). Their record on Covid has been pretty good, and we think it is likely that if the British government allows us to go abroad Greece is one of the most likely countries for a travel corridor. We are usually independent travellers, but this time we booked through a large travel company as it has good policies in place for refunds and alterations if necessary and we wanted that security. Whether it will happen or not, I don't know, but now we have been vaccinated, we are comfortable with the idea of flying again. TG says she misses airports! If it happens, it will be our first holiday on the Greek mainland rather than an island - we have booked to go to Parga, on the western coast opposite the Ionian islands. 

Yesterday was a big day for H and her BF as they were able to go inside of their house for the first time so they could take some measurements. It is now all done except for flooring and turf in the garden. Apparently the NHBC inspection needs to be done before they put the flooring in. That should take place at the beginning of next week and everything should be finished soon after. Then it just needs the final paperwork doing and the money transferring, and the house will be theirs. Very exciting for them! 

M went over to Milton Keynes bright and early this morning for his second vaccine dose, so he is now officially "done". He had the Pfizer vaccine, which has again left him with a very sore arm. No other side effects so far, though he was warned the second dose is often worse than the first. While he was out I did a yoga class - or, rather, attempted a yoga class. I haven't slept well for much of this week, though last night was much better, and that combined with yesterday's long walk had left me overtired and wobbly. My balance is poor at the best of times; today it was atrocious. I stuck it out to the end, though I had to take lots of rests. We went out for a walk again this afternoon, but only a short one. I cooked our Sunday roast today instead of H. She usually likes to do it but had quite a lot she needed to catch up on this weekend and so was short of time. I'm hoping for another good night's sleep before my working "week" starts tomorrow (not sure I can really count two days as a working week!). As I write this our neighbourhood owl is being very noisy - lots of hooting. Do owls get louder in the spring like other birds, I wonder? 

Travel Plans

A couple of unusual photos today. We took a slightly different walking route a few days ago and I spotted these old calculating machines in the window of an accountant's office. The top one I know is a comptometer - I am just old enough to have worked in an office with someone who was originally a comptometer operator, and still had one on her desk as she found it quicker for some types of calculation than an electronic calculator. This was a probably about ten years before PCs became commonplace in offices. 

I felt fine after my vaccine with no side effects at all on Tuesday, then yesterday it hit me with tiredness so that I spent the day blundering around with a foggy brain and general wobbliness. Today I am back to feeling fine again. 

We have been in holiday planning mode lately. We realised that our original plans for this year were not going to work out, but wanted to have something to look forward to so booked a short break at Brighton (one of TG's favourite places) during summer half term at the beginning of June. We have also booked a week by the sea at Tenby in Wales in August. Somehow M and I have never been to Wales together, though we both spent holidays there when we were younger. The last time I went was to an academic conference over twenty years ago, and none of the girls have ever been. It will be nice to visit a different part of the UK.  

Over the last couple of days we have also started developing a plan for next year, by which time we are assuming that international travel will be possible again. We had been hoping to visit Canada sometime over the next couple of years, and we also want to replace our cancelled trip to Disney World. M suggested that maybe we could combine the two, and after much calculating and budgeting it looks as though a combined Canada / US holiday will work. The plan is to fly to Toronto and spend a few days there, followed by a few more days at a lakeside resort a couple of hours away. Then we will fly down to New York for 3 days. After that M will fly home, and TG and I will fly down to Orlando where H will join us for our Disney trip. M thought about coming to Florida with us, but came to the conclusion that he really wouldn't enjoy it enough to be worth the cost. For TG and myself in particular it will be an amazing adventure if it works out. Even just planning and discussing possibilities seems an act of faith that the end of the pandemic is in sight. Here's hoping it really is! 

Celebrating with my Vaccine Recovery Kit!

So, vaccine dose one is done! And I am so very grateful for the scientists and healthcare staff who made it possible. M and I watched an interview with one of the leading vaccinologists working on the Oxford-AstraZeneca back in April last year and she was so clear and calm and confident that there was a high chance that the vaccine they were working on would be viable. It was, and is now being rolled out around the world. What an extraordinary achievement! 

This evening I celebrated with a glass of gin from the "Covid recovery kit" (his description!) that M brought home for me at the weekend - a gift box from from M & S with four small bottles. So far I feel fine, with not even a sore arm. I know a lot of people feel under the weather to various degrees the day after the vaccine, so I am prepared for the possibility of an "off" day tomorrow. 

I started work early this morning and managed to get a full day of archive work in despite the trip out for the vaccine. There was quite a queue, and it took nearly an hour between arriving at the vaccination centre and getting out at the other end. On the way home we stopped at Next to pick up a couple of click and collect orders. After two months of lockdown this was a major excursion!

Apart from the vaccine trip I have been very lazy today and not exercised at all. However yesterday I did my first yoga class in a couple of weeks - my back didn't object, which is great - and followed it with a four mile walk in the afternoon. There was blue sky and some early blossom in a couple of places. Between the beginning of spring and the speed of the vaccine rollout, everything looks so much brighter and more hopeful.