Thames Path: Hampton Court to Strawberry Hill

I worked an extra day this week, as I had a deadline to meet setting up an online photography exhibition. I was using a site which makes it possible to put together a 3D virtual exhibition. It is quite straightforward, but there were a lot of photos and text to put in so it was time-consuming. 

On Thursday M was working and TG at school, so I went out for the day on my own. At the beginning of 2020 I had decided that I would try to walk the Thames Path during the year. Covid of course put a stop to that. Now virus levels are low and I have had my first vaccine dose it feels safe enough to go out and about more, so I decided to make a start with the first leg from Hampton Court to Strawberry Hill. 

I took the train to Hampton Court station, crossed the river and started the walk outside Hampton Court Palace. There was a good view of the palace from the path. The gardens behind the palace looked lovely, but there was a double fence so I couldn't get a photo. I did manage to get one of this rather impressively decorative section of the inner fence. 

The first section of the path is Barge Walk, which runs from Hampton Court to Kingston and is owned and managed by the Hampton Court estate. The weather was a bit disappointing. The forecast was for cool weather but some sun; in practice it was cool but without sun. At least it was dry! I was surprised to see this paddle steamer running - I doubt it will be getting many passengers yet, but it was another sign of returning normality. 

At Kingston the path switches to the opposite of the Thames. There were quite a few smaller boats on the river here, including a number of rowers training. I walked past Kingston Rowing Club and enjoyed the pattern of the stacked boats.  

A little further on I was struck by the contrast between the houseboats on the river and the block of flats behind. I also passed some extremely expensive looking houses, with lawns running down to the river and boats moored at the bottom of their gardens. 

At Teddington Lock the path crossed the river again via a foot bridge. This is the point at which the non-tidal and tidal sections of the Thames meet. The view below is of the weir just above the lock, which I presume is the point beyond which the tide does not reach. 

The walk was 6 miles in total, with the last mile or so after Teddington moving away from the Thames and onto the streets - I think this may be the only part where there is no riverside path. I had planned the timing quite carefully. I have a discount railcard which allows me to travel more cheaply, but only on trains which leave our home station after 10. That meant I could not get to Hampton Court before 12.15. I didn't want to have to travel in the rush hour - though so few people are now commuting that I don't think the trains are particularly busy at any time - so I aimed to catch a train from Strawberry Hill station at 3.08. I reckoned that three hours should give me plenty of time, even though I am not a very fast walker and needed to take a break to eat my packed lunch. I made it with 15 minutes to spare, time to buy a coffee from a cafe next to the station. A journey planner app told me that the fastest way home was to take four different trains. Rather to my surprise everything ran to time and the three changes went smoothly, apart from the last one where I waited on the wrong platform and only just realised in time to catch my train. 

I had felt a bit nervous about going on public transport - the last time I caught the train was when I went to London to visit the National Gallery last summer, and moving out of the lockdown frame of mind is hard. The logical side of my brain that has studied the statistics had to talk firmly to the emotional side that hasn't yet worked out that it is safe to start doing things again! I am so glad that I did go, as I both very much enjoyed the walk and now feel more relaxed about going out again in the future. I'm not sure when I will do the next leg, but hope it won't be too long. Hopefully M will be able to come with me next time, but between his weekend work commitments and someone needing to be around to collect TG from school during the week it is a bit tricky at the moment to find a time we can both do. 

Weekend Notes

A quick post of short notes as I left it rather late tonight. 

Yesterday TG went over to see H for a while. M drove her over so he could see how H's house is coming on. TG was up unusually early for a Saturday as H had promised her breakfast from Tim Horton's. Food bribery goes a long way! H dropped her home later, and generously donated more bags of rubbish to us as she is still baffled by the lack for a wheelie bin and is still waiting for the council to deliver the right bags. I sent her home with some black bags to use, though she doesn't seem very confident they will get collected. House proudness has now spread to the garden and she has invested in a garden hose sprinkler attachment (cost her all of £5 from Tesco!) so that they can nurture their lawn.  

Meanwhile M and I went for a walk through the woods, where the bluebells are coming into flower, and down the canal. A swan was sitting on the same nest where the six cygnets hatched last year. Her (or his?) mate was preening on the bank opposite, oblivious to people walking along the tow path. 

M was working a late shift this weekend so left home mid-afternoon. TG had extra dance exam prep classes yesterday afternoon and this morning. After she got home yesterday we watched the final two episodes of Wandavision. I cooked curries for dinner - chicken for TG and vegetable for myself (with aubergine, chickpeas and spinach). 

This morning I cooked a rhubarb cake as there had been some rhubarb in last week's veg box and it needed using. The rhubarb sank a bit and the crumble topping was too crumbly, but it tastes good. At lunchtime we walked into town to meet friends in the park - one of them is moving to London in a couple of weeks so we wanted to catch up before she leaves. We were lazy and instead of making a picnic we bought lunch in town - Subway for M and a bacon roll and coffee for me. Assuming things continue to go to plan in another three weeks we will be allowed to meet up with friends indoors again, and pubs and restaurants will be able to serve customers indoors. Both R and H have been out to eat and for drinks with friends since they reopened for outdoor dining a couple of weeks ago, but M and I decided it is still a bit too cold for us to want to sit outside to eat.

Train Watching

After taking TG to school this morning we went swimming again. We moved our booked slot to an earlier one after our friend messaged to ask if we were going to swim, and if so to invite us back for coffee afterwards. My swimming stamina is building up and I did 36 lengths (900 metres) today. It was a lovely morning, as bright as yesterday but a bit warmer, so it was lovely to sit outside in our friends' garden drinking coffee and eating scones. D is a retired engineer and one of his lockdown projects last year was to build a garden pond and a miniature railway, so while we sat and chatted we watched the train chugging round and their high spirited young cat hunting flies with much dramatic pouncing. Their son and daughter-in-law had a blue plaque made for D commemorating the creation of the lockdown pond, with the slogan "Stay Home. Stay Safe. Dig a Pond" (imitating the three-part slogans the government here has used throughout the pandemic - the current one is "Hands. Face. Space").   

D's wife K is a keen artist and she painted a bridge over part of the pond and the tunnel below. The string is there to deter a heron which is after the goldfish in the pond! After we got home I spent a couple of hours out in the hammock in the garden, listening to an audiobook. Then our regular appliance repair man came over later in the afternoon to fix our dishwasher which had developed a fault earlier in the week and was flashing up an error code. He has been fixing things for of us for nearly 30 years, so he had a cup of tea and a long catch-up chat before tackling the dishwasher, which decided to work perfectly for him! He did a few tweaks and some filter clearing, which he hopes will stop it playing up again. 

This evening M led an online synagogue service for the first time. He had done lots of preparation and said it went very well, and he got very complimentary comments. He had asked me to make some challah (traditional bread) to bless at the end. I tried. Most unfortunately, when I put the ingredients into the bread machine I missed out the water. When I went to take the dough out, it was warm dry crumbs! Extremely pessimistically, I decided to try adding the water and running the 2 hour dough cycle again. Very much to my surprise when I baked the loaf it came out fine. All in all it has been a good day. Better weather and the easing of pandemic restrictions is making life seem so much brighter. 

Riverside Walk and Donuts

This morning I needed to take a swimsuit back to Next in Milton Keynes - I had ordered two different sizes to try - and decided to combine that with a walk. M suggested going somewhere we hadn't walked before so we went to Stony Stratford. Milton Keynes is a new town built over the past 50 years, which incorporated four existing towns, including Stony Stratford, and several villages. The river runs around the town and there is some lovely open parkland and river walks. We did about 2.5 miles altogether, so not a particularly long walk, but a very enjoyable one. The bright blue sky is a bit deceptive. It was a beautiful day, but there had been a frost overnight and it was still a little on the chilly side. 

After our walk we went to a donut shop that R and H had both recommended and bought donuts to take home for an afternoon treat - Biscoff for TG, chocolate orange for me (although in the end we shared them and had half each), and cinnamon sugar for M who has plainer tastes. TG definitely deserved a treat as she had French, physics and English tests this morning, in three consecutive lessons. She says she thinks they went OK. In the car on the way to school we chatted about assessments and exams, which led to talking about learning styles. Like me, she is a visual learner and finds it hard to keep focused for a whole day of listening to teachers talking. This is why school at home with online lessons suited her, as there was less talking and more time to work by herself. We both think she will enjoy Sixth Form (the last two years of school) as she will have free study time during the day, which will give her a change to refocus. 

My second day back at work yesterday went more smoothly. I was in our searchroom supervising researchers, and the computer in there was mostly working pretty well. I had to learn various new procedures but they are all pretty straightforward. As background work I was trying to reformat a large batch of photos to use for an online exhibition; it was a bit fiddly and occasionally the computer went on a go-slow, but after Monday's tech frustrations it was still a big improvement. Spending a whole day with different people was not as strange as it was on Monday, though it does seem odd having our already small group of staff split into two and never seeing the people on the other team. 

In good pandemic news, 95% of over 50s in the UK have now had at least one vaccine dose, which is quite an extraordinary figure. Another really encouraging figure is that of over 74000 patients admitted to hospital with covid between September and March, there were only 32 who had received their first vaccine dose more than three weeks earlier. What an extraordinary scientific achievement these vaccines are! 

Back to Work

Yesterday I went back to work for the first time since March last year. At the time I expected to be home for three months. For it to be over a year was beyond anything I could have imagined. It was good to be back, but I found it ridiculously tiring - I think mostly because the prospect (and the reality!) of sorting out the administrative side of going back was stressful, and also because being out and with other people for a long stretch of time was so unfamiliar. It was good to see colleagues again, though there are only four of us on the team I am part of - we have two teams working in the office alternate weeks, to keep the number in the office at any time as low as possible. One thing I had not missed was the 1960s brutalist concrete building. I now have to park across the road as the office car park is being used part of the time as a drive-in Covid testing centre. I took this photo as I walked across and can't believe there are no cars as this is a busy main road. 

I was pleasantly surprised that I managed to collect a new parking pass (mine needed updating as it still had the registration number for our old car) and get my swipe card reactivated very quickly and easily. Things then fell apart when I tried to log on to my usual computer, which gave me an error message I had never seen before. I phoned IT for help, only to find the computer had been decommissioned automatically as it had not been used for so long. It will need "rebuilding" (oh dear!) which is likely to take a couple of days, so I had to hunt for something else to use. At the fifth attempt I finally found one that actually worked properly; the third one I tried seemed to work, but turned out to have no internal memory left so it persistently refused to open things. By lunch time it felt as though all I had achieved was fight losing battles with technology! I will be working again tomorrow, this time supervising researchers. We are only allowing one person in at a time to look at pre-ordered items, so it should be quite straightforward. I'm just hoping the computer in the searchroom behaves itself and I don't have another "computer says no" day! 

We went swimming again this morning. I am definitely getting the hang of swimming freestyle for longer distances, and did a total of 30 lengths without feeling quite as exhausted afterwards as I did last week. We have now taken out membership with the leisure centre which makes swimming sessions much cheaper. This afternoon we had a Zoom meeting about a training session we have been asked to provide for a client in the Caribbean in the summer. This is the first time we have done any international freelance work, and it is a one off that isn't likely set a trend! It was a lovely spring day today, so after the meeting I spent a couple of hours out in the garden. I have also been busy meal planning. Over the last year R has regularly used Hello Fresh, a company which sells meal kits online. She sent me a voucher for a free box of three meals, so I have ordered that for next week. Assuming we like what we are sent, I'm planning to order from them through May to see if it is a good fit for us. I like the idea of trying out new recipes and that you are sent exactly what you need so there is no waste; M is prepared to be a bit more adventurous in what he eats, so long as there is no pork, seafood, cheese or curry, and TG has never been a picky eater and has quite adult tastes. I'm quite excited to give it a try. 

Enjoying the Sun

After a rather lazy day yesterday, I had two things on the calendar for today - very much of a novelty after three months of lockdown. Early in the afternoon I went to my first live band practice this year. When I say band, that is a slight overstatement - the current regulations allow for six people to play together outdoors, so there were three short sessions with 5 or 6 people in each. We are able to use a grass area behind the village hall where the band used to rehearse (after over 80 years in the same place we recently moved to a local school, where there is more space). 

When we finished I drove home to pick up TG, then we went to Milton Keynes to meet up with H for a walk. Poor M couldn't come with us as he was working today. We parked at the northern, quieter end of a lake which is a very popular place for locals, especially on a warm spring day. We walked past the Peace Pagoda, which when it was built was the first of its kind in the Western Hemisphere. It is next to a Buddhist monastery, which we discovered had a small but rather lovely Japanese style garden. 

It was a beautiful afternoon and there were a lot of people out and about, with groups enjoying picnics and BBQs. Some of these were definitely larger than they were supposed to be (socialising outdoors is currently supposed to be limited to 6 people or two households). There were also lots of people out on the lake, which has a water sports area and pedalos. The UK does not require masks outdoors (the risk of outdoor transmission of Covid is considered to be very low) and very few people wear them, so it felt very much like a normal (and busy!) warm spring or summer day. MK has joined the electric scooter boom, with scooters that can be picked up anywhere they happen to be and left anywhere, with rental paid through an app. There were quite a number of people using them and when we saw some waiting for riders we were tempted to have a go, but decided we would be better off testing them when there were less people around - we didn't want to put pedestrians at risk through our incompetence. 

After our walk we stopped off at a drive through Tim Hortons to pick up iced coffees and took them back to H's house. Their new sofa arrived yesterday and they are delighted with it - comfy and big enough to sprawl out on. It is supposed to seat four, but would probably take five or six at a squish. They also got some garden furniture, so we were able to sit outdoors in the sun to drink our coffees. With the big patio doors open, their house is beautifully light and airy. They still have a couple of minor wrinkles to iron out, but are pretty much there now with getting everything organised and how they want it. 

TG and I have been watching Wandavision on Disney Plus, me for the second time and her for the first, and we got through three or four episodes over the weekend. I have been reading a book about prehistoric Britain and have made a good start on knitting a jumper. It is a warm, woolly one, so probably not the best thing to knit as we are coming up to summer, but the wool was waiting to be used. I am trying to knit up yarn I already have rather then buy more. All in all, it has been a good weekend with a nice mix of relaxation and getting out and about and enjoying the new normal. 

Friday Update

Wednesday was a busy day - I was working and then had to give a Zoom talk to the local history society in the evening. It went OK, I think, but I discovered I don't really like presenting online as you don't get any feel for how the audience are reacting. My throat didn't like it either, and by the end my voice was starting to go. Fortunately I don't think I am likely to have to do another online as other talks that were in the diary have all been postponed to dates when it should be possible to give them in person. Giving talks relating to things we have in the archives are part of the outreach aspect of my job, and over the years things have evolved so that only two of us are left who regularly take on public speaking. Usually I quite enjoy it, so long as I am reasonably confident about the subject I am talking about!  

Yesterday morning M and I went swimming again. I enjoyed the swim itself, but it ran my energy supply down to zero - I was tired when I got up to take TG to early morning French, and exhausted by the time we got back from the pool. I am a reasonably strong swimmer, but whole I can swim breast stroke easily, I could never do more than a few lengths of front crawl (freestyle) without getting tired. I decided the time had come to work out why and thanks to Google I think I have cracked it. It seems I had been taking in too much air and not breathing out enough, and kicking too hard and fast. Yesterday I adjusted my breathing and eased up on the legs and .... ta da! Twenty consecutive lengths of front crawl happened! After a rest my energy levels perked up again in the afternoon, and I'm sure swimming regularly will be good for me once my body adjusts to the shock of a different sort of exercise.

This morning we were supposed to meet two friends - another married couple - for a walk but they had to cancel. She had some worrying symptoms and had to call out the paramedics, who took her to hospital for tests.  M and I ended up going for a walk at Woburn on our own.  When we got home I made a large pan full of vegetable soup for lunch as there were various root vegetables in the fridge which needed using up. Nothing showed up on my friend's tests so as she was feeling OK she was able to leave the hospital in the afternoon. Unfortunately, her husband has also had some health issues which mean he can't currently drive, so I collected her from the hospital and drove her home while M collected TG from school. It was the first time since March last year that I have been in a car with someone from outside our household. Another small step back to normality, though not for the best of reasons. 

New Normal

Yesterday was the most "normal" day I have had in a long time. M has been wanting to go swimming as he has been having what feels like a muscular problem with his back and he was hopeful swimming would help. Indoor pools opened for the first time since December, so we booked a morning swimming slot - I can't remember when I last swam, but it was certainly before the pandemic. M's back felt much better last night, so we are planning to go regularly. As a bonus, we ran into two friends at the pool who came back with us afterwards for a coffee and a catch up. 

In the afternoon I took TG to get her pointe shoes. We stopped off on the way to collect a couple of items I had ordered from Next, and had the novelty of going inside the shop to pick them up - they have been running a click and collect service with collection at the door which I have used a couple of times. We arrived at the dance shop a bit early for our appointment, but we were able to go straight in as they had finished with the previous person. I was extremely impressed with the time and trouble they took both in fitting the shoes and in making sure that her toes were padded in the most comfortable way. She has very long second toes, which they were very careful to make sure were well protected. After we got the shoes we treated ourselves to take away coffees.

Before they are used pointe shoes need to have the toes darned with thick cotton or protected with stick on suede pieces. When I tried the stick ons for one of the older girls it was a dismal failure, so I spent the evening chain stitching pointes. It is a fiddly job which has to be done with a curved needle, and my fingers are still sore from various pricks and scratches. I still need to sew on ribbons, but will do that tomorrow when my fingers have recovered a bit! At least the tough part of the job is done. 

TG went back to school today, which meant an early start as Tuesday is an early morning French day. I was back to my archive job today too. I am working tomorrow instead of Monday this week as I have a work commitment in the evening. TG then had two dance classes this evening, with a 45 minute gap between them. Normally she would wait at the studios between classes, but due to Covid precautions this isn't allowed at the moment so there was lots of chauffeuring involved. M kindly did it all as by evening the combination of waking early and staring at a screen all day had left me with a headache. 

Spring? Or Winter?

Another day of April weather channelling January. We had arranged for our neighbours and former neighbours to come round for tea in the garden this afternoon, and the forecast suggested it would be cold but probably dry. It wasn't far wrong, but what it didn't predict was that it would keep trying to snow! We were well wrapped up, and when it wasn't snowing and we were sitting in the sun it was almost pleasant. It was lovely to catch up with everyone, despite the cold. We fortified ourselves with Prosecco, scones, Victoria sponge and apple cake - I made the scones, and the others brought the cakes - and warmed up with hot drinks. At about 4.30 it made more determined efforts to snow, at which point we broke the rules and sat indoors with the door open. As our district of nearly 300,000 people had only two people test positive for Covid yesterday and we have all had at least one dose of vaccine, I don't think we were taking too much of a risk. 

After our friends left I made cauliflower soup to use up two cauliflowers that had accumulated from our fruit and veg box. I then watched a live talk by TV historian Michael Wood about Aethelflaed, Anglo-Saxon Queen of Mercia in the 10th century, which was part of an online history festival the British Library has been running this weekend. This morning I did some menu planning and updated the online grocery order, and M and I went out for a walk. In amongst things I have also been puttering about with genealogy.  

RIP Prince Philip

Yesterday saw the end of an era with the death of the Duke of Edinburgh. He was in hospital for a few weeks early this year and looked very frail when he was discharged so it didn't come as a shock. Of course, I feel desperately sorry for the Queen, who has lost her husband after no less than 73 years of marriage, but to die at home at a great age (two months short of his 100th birthday), having led an incredibly full life and remained in generally good health well into his nineties, seems to me more of a blessing than a matter of regret. What a hard role he took on as consort to a reigning monarch, a role he had to largely invent for himself. The Duke of Edinburgh awards that he set up to encourage young people to stretch themselves and develop skills and confidence while also contributing to their community are an extraordinary legacy. According to Wikipedia the award programme is now offered in no less than 144 countries. Rest in peace, Prince Philip.

We ventured back into the local woods today for the first time since we struggled round in ankle deep mud which nearly defeated our wellies several weeks ago, and all the mud has dried out. Green is just beginning to show through on the trees, and there are carpets of green which in a couple of weeks will be flowering bluebells. We headed down to the canal and past the canal side pub which will be reopening (outdoors only) on Monday. It was good to see it with flowers in the hanging baskets and tables ready to welcome customers. Everything looks so very much more optimistic now. Covid cases are low, vaccines are happening (primarily 2nd doses at the moment), and reopening shops and outdoor hospitality seems sensible and reasonable. Only another few weeks and it will be time for indoor hospitality and indoor socialising. 

I have made two bookings for Monday for things which have not been possible since last year. M and I have booked to go swimming in the morning as the pool will be reopening; then in the afternoon I am taking TG to get her first pair of pointe shoes for ballet. I used to take her sisters to Northampton to buy pointe shoes, but a shop has opened more locally which has a good reputation for careful fitting. I was pleasantly surprised that I was able to get an appointment for the day the shop reopens. It means TG will have the shoes in time for her next class. She is looking forward to being able to go back to dancing in the studio again next week. Her dance school has done a great job of keeping classes going by Zoom, but it isn't the same. 

I don't know when this wooden man appeared beside the canal tow path, but today was the first time I noticed him. I am an unobservant person in many ways, but I am surprisingly good at spotting things while walking, so I think it can't have been there long. 

I didn't write a blog post yesterday as I got distracted exploring Scrivener writing software. I have downloaded a 30 day free trial but have already decided that I will buy the full version as it will make writing projects massively easier. To try it out I have set up a project in Scrivener to keep my family history writing and notes together - it is so much easier to see what I have (and haven't!) done, and it has a facility to easily split the working space into two separate documents so that I can have notes open for reference alongside the section I am writing and switch easily between different documents. 

Rest and Recuperation

Seeing these photos from Stowe yesterday I realise that although the trees are not in leaf yet the grass is looking green and springlike. The ground is drying out now, so it was lovely to be able to walk without doing battle with any mud. 

I was delighted to get an email from H today to say that she now has wi-fi at home. That will make their lives very much easier, and means she can now go back to working from home. Her dining chairs also turned up after Yodel took them on various unscheduled journeys. As a new build house built on what was previously a field her postcode isn't yet recognised by sat navs, so getting things delivered is an issue. On their first attempt to deliver Yodel failed to find the address (despite H adding a note on their tracking app with specific instructions); at the second attempt she got a notification that the chairs had been delivered, but no chairs; clearly they had not actually been delivered as they turned up on the third attempt!

I have had a very lazy day today. I spent some time reading and knitting, and some playing around with some genealogy research. We went out for a local walk this afternoon, so at least I got a bit of exercise in. From next week life will start to get busier and more "normal" (though it is now hard to remember what normal is!) so having a calm, restful week now to rebuild my energy is just what I need.

Before the pandemic started R gave us a hotel break voucher for a night away with breakfast and dinner, which we ended up not being able to use last year. The voucher has been extended, so today we booked to go to a hotel in the Cotswolds near Banbury for the end of June. TG will go and stay with R, which always makes her happy as she gets lots of doggy play time. 

In Memoriam

I had a productive morning today. I read for a while, then sorted out my tax return for last year. As the tax year ends on the 5th April, getting the return submitted on the 7th was impressively good going, I thought. For once I even got mine done before super-efficient M. To be fair, it is straightforward enough - I keep a running total of freelance income for the year and the employed income figure was on my last pay slip - but it still somehow seems to take more mental energy than it deserves. Being able to complete and submit the return online makes it much easier in my opinion, though M disagrees and is much happier filling in the paper form. Each to their own! HMRC now owe me a refund for overpaid tax on account, so it was a particularly satisfactory exercise. To celebrate TG and I watched the first part of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows; we then watched the second part this evening, completing our Harry Potter movie binge. 

This afternoon M and I went to Stowe Gardens for the first time since before the lockdown and did a 5 mile walk around the grounds. The Friends of Stowe House had a little takeaway cafe open just behind these steps, and we tried to resist but failed. We ended up sitting on the steps sharing a scone with jam and cream and warming up with a cup of tea. The snow had gone but it was still definitely on the chilly side. I'll post more photos later in the week. For now I want to talk about this one ... 

M decided to participate in a yellow candle project to remember individual victims of the Holocaust on Yom HaShoah (Holocaust Remembrance Day) which falls on April 7th. Everyone taking part was sent the name of someone who perished along with a candle to light in remembrance of that individual. The name he received was a little girl who died in the Minsk Ghetto, Lyuba Konatopski. I put my research skills to work and was able to discover that she died along with her older sister Vera and her mother Sonya. Her brother, and possibly her father, survived. There are multiple records for her on the Yad Vashem list of Holocaust victims, and it seems more likely that she was born in 1938 and died in 1941, so was actually only three years old when she died, not six as it says on the card. After the Germans captured Minsk, the capital of what was then the Belorussian Soviet Socialist Republic, in the summer of 1941, a total of over 80,000 people were confined to the Ghetto, where they were subjected to repeated killing raids. It seems likely that Lyuba and her family died in one of the earlier massacres. Minsk now has a memorial to its lost Jewish citizens on the site where 5000 people (including many children) were shot in March 1942. 

May her soul, and the souls of her mother and sister, rest in peace. 

Confused Weather!

I have this week off work, which has worked out nicely as I have been able to have a very lazy and restful day, reading, knitting and watching Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince with TG. We should have been in Cornwall this week on a trip postponed from last April, but it has now been put back again until April 2022. Given the change in the weather this may not be a bad thing! M and I went out for a short walk this afternoon  and as we headed home it started to snow a little. Later this afternoon we had this ... 

It is hard to believe that two days ago we were sitting out in the garden enjoying the sun, and that last week we had one of the warmest March days we have ever had. 

I signed up for occasional packages from a craft gin club back in January when the lockdown and pandemic were getting to me and M decided I needed some treats to cheer me up. The second package arrived today, so I sampled the new gin this evening. It was made in Provence with local botanicals, so a good choice for spring. It's just a shame spring had gone missing in action! I drank the gin with posh tonic, garnished with dried orange and rosebuds, which all came in the box. And very nice it was too! 

TG had an extra Zoom dance class tonight, as she is preparing for a modern dance exam next month. A new thing since the older girls were at this stage is that she has a unique learner number issued through her school, and by adding this number to her exam entry the result gets added to her learning record. She will be doing Grade 5 this time, which doesn't give any formal credit, but once she gets to Grade 6 it will earn her extra UCAS (university admission assessment) points. 

Thinking about Routines

Bleugh! I think I may have spent too long sitting out in the cold on Saturday with my friends, with not quite enough layers on, and I am now paying for it with a sore throat, tight chest and general under-the-weatherness. I also tend to get this sort of thing when I relax after being busy or stressed - annoying as it means it is not unusual for it to happen when I go on holiday - so it could also be down to "breathing out" after H's house move. It intrigues me that people's bodies react so differently to stresses. M's weak points are always his back and his stomach; mine my throat and chest. My mother always said that it was only after having measles when I was six that I became prone to chest infections and tonsillitis (until I later had my tonsils removed). A couple of years ago research was published showing that measles does severe damage to the immune system, so it seems her observations actually fit with the scientific evidence. 

After yesterday's beautiful spring day there were gales overnight and snow flurries this morning. This is why the British always talk about the weather. We get very little extreme weather, it is just so changeable and unpredictable. Plus - according to the book I am reading - it is a handy topic which allows us to get over the awkwardness of not knowing how to open conversations! On the subject of national characteristics - is it a peculiarly English thing to routinely find oneself saying please and thank you to Alexa or Siri? 

For years I have used an app called Trello to organise various aspects of my life. It works with "cards" arranged in columns on "boards", which can be moved around easily to adjust priorities, set target dates, show what is done and what is outstanding, and so on. I use it consistently for my archive work, as it helps me to keep track of what I am doing and what I need to do next - essential when I only work two days a week, as otherwise I would just forget everything during the following five days! I also use it for various personal things, though less consistently. I have a board called Life Stuff which I use rather erratically, but which is a useful catch-all for things I want to do and general thoughts about habits and priorities. 

Looking at my Life Stuff board this weekend I found a four year old snapshot of a spreadsheet where I had planned out an ideal morning routine. I realised that the things I had put into this routine were still things I want to be priorities, so I did a revised version. It is rather more complicated than the original plan as I will be going in to the office on Monday and Tuesday of alternate weeks, and TG needs dropping at school early on Tuesday's and Thursdays for French classes. With small variations to fit round the school runs, the plan is to set aside 90 minutes in the morning to start my day with some quiet reading time, followed by yoga, a shower and a more leisurely breakfast. It will mean getting up a bit earlier - always a challenge for me as I am definitely not a morning person - but if I can make it work I know it would feel as though I have made a really positive start to the day. I may experiment a bit over the next few days, but won't start trying to put it into practice properly until TG goes back to school next week. 

Despite the cold and feeling a bit fragile, M and I did manage to make it out for a short walk this afternoon. The photos are from our walk round the village near H's house yesterday.  

Easter Blessings

I had a strange, interrupted night yesterday. I spent an hour awake feeling irrationally stressed (I could rationalise this, but when my mind tried to communicate it to my body, it failed!) and then slept uneasily with odd and unsettling dreams. During this unsettled half-sleep I heard two odd bangs, like muffled explosions. I was quite reassured this morning when they were mentioned on a local social network site - some people thought fireworks, but I think the correct explanation was railway detonators (small explosive discs placed on the rails as a warning signal when trains run over them), which I had never heard of before. We are close enough to the railway for this to be plausible, and track works are often carried out over holiday weekends.  

Despite the odd night I woke this morning feeling much brighter and more myself, and this evening I am in a mood to count my blessings ...

• A sunny spring day 
• A morning walk with all three daughters and their partners
• Family dogs that I get to enjoy without having to do any work!
• Mini egg cookies baked by H
• Sitting in the sun listening to Handel's Messiah 

And so many more ... 

• Hammocks
• Beautiful places to walk
• Yarn and time to make things
• Books and time to read
• Friends and family
• Flowers
• Vaccinations

M probably deserves an entire list to himself, but I'll settle for saying he is pretty special (he has to be to have survived 30 years with me!) and definitely very much a blessing (most of the time!)

Running on Empty

Today has been one of those days where I have been battling low energy levels, despite sleeping very well for the last two nights. I think I still haven't really caught up from a run of short nights before that, probably because I was subconsciously anxious about H's house move. Since I was ill last year, lack of sleep very quickly translates into lack of energy and feeling generally under the weather, and I often find it hard to know whether it is better to push myself to keep moving, or to slump in a heap on the sofa. Today I had booked an online yoga class for 9.30, so I started my day with that, occasionally opting out for a bit to lie on the mat or the sofa in a tired and grumpy heap. It felt as though my personal battery had run flat. 

After yoga I cut M's hair. I bought hair clippers just before the first lockdown started last year, which proved to be a very good call. H took on the task of hairdresser to start with, but once she got busy with work I took over clipping M's hair, though she has still been trimming mine for me. I read for a while, then made myself vegan cauliflower "cheese" for lunch - I am trying to get plenty of veggies in, and also to go back to eating mostly plant-based as I suspect that for me eating animal products contributes to stiff joints and muscles. After lunch H came round to use our internet as she still doesn't have any - she had various calls to make and things she needed to do online. M and I went out for a shortish walk, which I felt I should make the effort for even though I was still tired from the yoga class. I started off tired and grumpy, but (fortunately for M) the fresh air perked me up. When we got back I went out again, this time to the supermarket to pick up a few bits, including bread as passover is coming to an end. TG and I then watched the next Harry Potter movie, with a break to cook dinner - burgers (vegan for me, meat for M and TG), sweet potato wedges and sweetcorn. 

The photos are from a walk we went on a few days ago, which was a route we hadn't taken before. The archaeology report I am reading had some useful maps showing the historic boundary of our parish, which was described in detail in a 10th century charter. I wanted to walk a section of this ancient route which formed the southern boundary. The path in the top photo now runs alongside the road running round the outside of our housing estate, though separated from it by a hedge, and the lane in the bottom picture is the driveway for a farm. We won't repeat the walk as it involved crossing three very busy roads, but it satisfied my urge to walk in the footsteps of people who lived over 1000 years ago. 

New Year 2021: Mk 2

I am used to September having a new beginnings feel to it because it is the start of a new school year, but this year 1st April feels more like New Year to me than 1st January did. The combination of H moving out, Easter, vaccinations and the lifting of Covid restrictions mean I am truly in a new year / new start mood.  It is also the beginning of our family financial year, so that also feels new year-ish. We are big on budgeting and keeping tabs on our expenditure, because it allows us to make realistic plans for future travel and retirement. For various reasons we have ended up setting our budget for the year from 1st April, and that is when we do a financial stocktake to see whether it is a belt-loosening or belt-tightening sort of year. We joke that I am the "finance director" producing an end of year report - really I just like to play with spreadsheets!

I see from looking back at my first blog post of the year that I was in hibernation mode, wanting to hide away from everything until I got my vaccine. I did not do any of my usual New Year pondering about how I wanted to approach the year and what I would like to change - I won't say make resolutions, as that is just setting myself up for failure! I did conclude a few days later that my word for the year should be "Slow", though looking back at that post I have not ever really engaged with it. I will try to think "Slow" more often as I start my New Year Mark 2. I am also planning to go back to daily blogging for a while to try to get my thoughts in order as life moves on to a new stage. I know one thing that needs to change is my eating habits, which have not been as healthy as they should be over the winter. 

As for today ... M was working this morning, with a very early start as he had been asked to move his shift start time back an hour. TG has decided she would like to watch the Harry Potter movies again, so we watched the second half of Chamber of Secrets (we watched the first half yesterday). We also moved a chest of drawers that H didn't need into TG's room so she no longer has to try to use broken drawers at the bottom of a wardrobe. She then did some sorting out of her room this afternoon, and I went out to meet three friends. The plan was to go for a walk but one of them has had a nasty cold and didn't feel like much walking, so we just had a short stroll then parked ourselves on folding chairs to drink coffee and eat scones we had brought with us. It was cold sitting outdoors, with a very chilly wind, so we didn't stay out too long. I regretted not wearing my warmest coat. Bad call! It was so lovely to see them after over a year, though.

And Then There Were Three

H and M2 are now officially moved in to their new home. We tried not to break too many Covid rules in the process, but between us helping to transport and unpack, and M2's parents also helping to transport and lending their DIY skills, there was some inevitable mingling of households. All four of us "oldies" are at least partially vaccinated and nobody has been in any high risk environments, so we just exercised common sense. 

(All the male members of our immediate family inconsiderately have the same initial. Even more inconsiderately both R and H's partners not only have the same name, but their surnames start with the same letter. I have decided H's BF may as well be M2 and R's can be M3. That may make them sound like motorways, but tough!)

It is a really nice little house, and they have made great choices with all the optional bits - flooring, carpet, kitchen units, bathroom tiles and so on. They love it. There are a few teething troubles to sort out, such as lack of internet - the cable was only connected a day or so ago and they could not sort out a contract until that had been done, and the mobile signal is terrible so that they can't even use their phones as hotspots - but it won't be long before they have everything as they want it. Their house is part of the initial phase of a new estate, and one of six houses which have been completed this week. There is still a lot of building work going on around them, and the road hasn't been properly surfaced yet, but it shouldn't take too long before their section of the estate is finished. They made a good call buying when they did, even if it does mean living with builders around for a while - in the six months since they agreed their purchase house prices have risen and an identical house round the corner is now being sold for £15,000 more, which would have put it out of their price range.

So now we are down to just three of us left at home. We can see floor space in the garage and H's room looks very empty. A new phase of life is beginning.