Another Year, Another Blogging Reboot

And just like that, it is 2022. Happy New Year! 

It seems I can only keep up with regular updates on one social media platform at a time. I got hopelessly distracted by my 100 day dress challenge, which led me to a lovely community of 'woollies' and what I suppose would be called microblogging on Instagram. If you would like to follow me there my account is wearingladygrey - it is set to private to weed out strange men / bots / scammers or whatever they are! I am now on day 87 of the challenge and have found it surprisingly easy. I now have lots of half-formed thoughts about style and capsule wardrobes which I am hoping will turn into something fully-formed before too long. 

What has been happening since I last wrote? December meant lots of carol playing with the brass band. Indoor concerts didn't seem wise, especially with the arrival of omicron, but we played at the airport (large, ventilated space!), outside supermarkets and as small groups of wandering carollers. Christmas this year was particularly good - last year we were heading into lockdown and saw nobody outside our immediate household, which made us extra appreciative of the opportunity to spend time with family and friends this time. There have been walks outside, games inside, lots of good food and general enjoying of each other's company. Sadly though we did have to cancel a planned visit from M's family. With assorted nieces, nephews, partners and family friends there would have been 17 of us from 9 different households, which simply wouldn't have been sensible. We also postponed a short break in Edinburgh before Christmas, because we decided 6 hours on a train with omicron running riot was also too risky. All being well we will go in February instead. 

We are all now fully vaccinated and boostered. We managed to get TG booked in for her second jab the first day she was eligible - the government here has been ultra cautious about vaccinating healthy children to be sure the benefits outweighed the risks. After retiring from his job with NHS 111 M wanted to do some voluntary work so has been doing shifts helping out our local pharmacy with their vaccination clinic. It is a tiny place, so it is just him checking people in and out, and someone giving the vaccines. He loves it as it gives him lots of opportunity to indulge in his favourite hobby of talking to people! 

TG has been working hard at school, with mock (practice) exams in the week and a half before she finished for Christmas. She is due to take GCSE exams (General Certificate of Secondary Education) in the summer, but her age group are being given lots of in school testing in case the GCSEs end up being cancelled for the third year running due to the pandemic and grades have to be awarded by teachers. She has also been thinking hard about what subjects to choose to study for her last two years of school. Most students take three subjects at A (Advanced) level. Her school recommend starting four, then dropping one after a month or so when they have had a chance to test them out. After some dithering she has picked biology, chemistry, psychology and maths, with maths being the subject she expects to drop. However, she has the option to do a lower level (AS) maths course as an extra, and thinks she will do that as it is likely to be helpful to her when she goes to university. Her current plan is to study biological science in some shape or form. She thinks neuroscience sounds interesting, but is also tempted by zoology. 

I have thoughts about the new year, changes I want to make and habits I want to improve, but I'll save them for later. I hope not too much later!

Day Trip 2: St. Albans

I''m behind with updating this blog again, but as I want to keep a record of what we have been doing I'm writing late and assuming I will eventually catch up. On Tuesday we drove to the city of St. Albans in Hertfordshire (about 40 minutes away) for a picnic lunch, a wander round the city park and the cathedral, and a bit of shopping (mainly for TG's benefit, though it turned out to be very useful). 

 

The cathedral is a gem. In the Middle Ages St. Albans Abbey was one of the largest and most important Benedictine monasteries in England. It held the shrine of the first English martyr, St Alban, and was home to 13th century chronicler Matthew Paris, whose writing is one of the most important sources for the history of his century. Unlike so many of the great medieval monasteries here, the church of St Alban survived the Reformation by becoming the cathedral of a new diocese - the monastic buildings have all now disappeared, but within the church itself even some of its 13th century medieval wall paintings can still be seen.  

St. Albans was once the Roman city of Verulamium, and it still has some impressive Roman remains and a  good museum. TG remembered visiting the museum when she was at lower school, but as TG and M can only manage a limited amount of history in one day, we only visited the cathedral and ignored the Romans. If you look closely at the picture below, you may be able to see that the tower and part of the walls are built with small red bricks - these were recycled by the 12th century builders from the ruins of the Roman town.  

We parked near the Roman museum and walked through the city park and round this lake on the way to the cathedral and the town. I love it when I manage to catch a good reflection in a photo. After the cathedral we ambled round the city centre. We stopped for a coffee and we did some birthday shopping for H, who turns 23 next week - I got some Le Creuset items for her kitchen (I know she loves their stuff, though most of it is prohibitively expensive!), and TG bought her a candle from Anthropologie. We left St. Albans at about 4 and drove home via Milton Keynes to get dinner at Nandos on the way. 

Wednesday was mostly a lazy day at home, though I went to an orchestra rehearsal in the evening. Gardeners came in the afternoon to cut the tall hedge round our back garden. We used to do it ourselves, or with my brother's help, but it is a heavy physical job and we have reached the point where paying someone else to do it is worth every penny! Thursday was another day-tripping day - more about that in the next post. 

Theatre is Back!

M and I both have this week off work, so we are turning it into a bit of a staycation (holiday at home) with some trips out. TG had been wanting to see Everybody's Talking About Jamie since she watched a recording at school, so I booked tickets as a birthday treat for her and H (though rather nearer H's birthday as we wanted to wait a while until Covid measures had been lifted).  We originally booked for next Sunday evening, but that show was cancelled and they exchanged the tickets for last Sunday afternoon. The first tickets they sent us were slightly better than the originals, but when we got there we discovered they had given us another set with much better seats. 

Being at the theatre again felt both strange and a little alarming - we are so unused to being somewhere with a lot of people - but also emotional. All the actors and musicians who had been unable to work for so long clearly relished being back and the energy of the show was fantastic. We all loved it, including M who was a bit unsure whether it was something he would enjoy, and the actors who played Jamie and his mother both got standing ovations. TG loves musical theatre and performers need all the support they can get just now, so I have two more shows booked for the two of us over the next couple of months - Six at Oxford at the end of August, and Hairspray in London at the end of September. 

After the show we went to Chinatown, which is just across the road from the theatre, for dinner. Strangely given that M and I have both lived in London and go there fairly often we had never eaten in Chinatown. It may have been the first time but it won't be the last. It was just warm enough to sit outside and watch the world go by while we ate. The meal was excellent and included some very pretty coloured dim sum. You can see in the photo above that it was pretty busy, and this was without foreign tourists in London. You can also see that TG (on the right with lighter hair) is now as tall as H. I'm beginning to think she may end up the tallest of our daughters, which would be a huge shock given how petite she was until the last year or two.  

As it was dry we walked from Euston Station and back, which took about 30 minutes each way. R and H have discovered an app called Too Good to Go on which cafes and food shops sell boxes left over food at the end of the day rather than let it go to waste. It is lucky dip; you pay a small amount for a box or bag without knowing what will be in it, and are given a collection time to pick it up. H found a coffee shop on Too Good to Go which was on our way back to the station and bought a box which turned out to be four large and very tasty vegan donuts. We had to wait at the station for a bit as the train we would have caught was cancelled due to lack of staff, so TG and I ate donuts while we waited. H was more restrained and took hers home!  

The combination of good company, the sheer joy of the theatre and the delicious Chinese food made for a wonderful and memorable day out. The long lockdowns and the limits imposed on daily life for so long by the pandemic have made us truly appreciate things that we used to take for granted. 

Life at Full Speed

Life has gone back to full speed now, and although I mean to keep writing here regularly I blink and another week has passed. For most of the week we had a heatwave. These photos were from a walk on Wednesday morning, and it was already hot by 9am. Although I am now back to working entirely in the office, I left early on Tuesday and finished off some work at home as M needed the electric car to go to work mid-afternoon, and I just couldn't face taking the little car and driving home without aircon in the heat.

On Monday the government moved to Stage 4 of its re-opening plan and officially abandoned all anti-Covid regulations in England. Masks in shops and on public transport are no longer compulsory, although still strongly recommended. Restrictions on numbers who can meet or attend events, both indoors and outdoors, have been lifted. All this despite being well into the third wave of the pandemic, with 50,000 cases a day last week. Encouragingly, this week case numbers have dropped significantly, probably because the Euros have ended (lots of people had been meeting up to watch the football), the weather has been good, and schools have finished for the summer. The big test is going to be whether case numbers start to shoot up again as the relaxation of anti-Covid measures takes effect. In practice, many organisations are keeping at least some anti-Covid restrictions in place, and we now have 70% of adults fully vaccinated and nearly 90% with at least one dose. Will it be enough? Maybe. It's a gamble, and we can only hope that it doesn't turn out to be a bad one. At work we had a big staff meeting on Monday, with everyone in together for the first time since March 2020, to discuss what changes if any we would be making. The answer was "not many", partly due to caution about Covid and partly due to being short-staffed as someone left the week before and it will take a while to replace her. 

TG finished school on Wednesday, having made it through the term without being sent home to self-isolate. I think by last week about a third of school children in England were in isolation, so the was lucky. I had a lazy day - too hot to do much! - but went to an orchestra rehearsal in the evening. I signed up to play at an outdoor vintage festival at the end of August. I played at the same event in 2019 and enjoyed it - great atmosphere and fun music to play - so decided to do it again even though it is a bit far to drive for rehearsals. It took me well over an hour to get there as I relied on my memory and didn't read the directions properly. Once I realised I was lost, I then relied on Google maps which imploded and sent me down a track to a dead end. Then I read the instructions, which included a warning not to rely on satnav. Duh! 

M was working on Thursday, so I took TG out for lunch to celebrate the beginning of the holidays. We went to Yo Sushi, which is her favourite place to eat. They now have a system where you order on your phone, then the food is sent to your table on the sushi belt with a traffic light system - red lights show at the side of the table which turn white when a dish is approaching and green when it arrives. 

It has been a very social week, starting with catching up with colleagues I hadn't seen since before the pandemic on Monday. On Friday I woke up to a text from an old school friend wondering if she could drop in for coffee as she was going to be in the area. In the end she came for lunch and stayed most of the afternoon. We used to meet up regularly when our children were young, but realised we hadn't seen each other for nearly five years so there was lots to catch up on. Then in the evening I drove over to Bedford to meet up with a group of close friends. Four of us had got together early in the spring, but only outdoors and it was too cold to sit and chat for long, so being able to go back to meeting indoors was lovely. The fifth member of our group has health issues and has not yet had her second dose of vaccine, so she joined us on Zoom. Yesterday we got together with all our neighbours - we had hoped to do a street BBQ but the weather forecast wasn't great, so in the end we just all took drinks and chairs out into the road and sat and chatted - we are at the end of a cul-de-sac so there isn't any traffic. We managed a couple of hours before it started to rain. We are incredibly fortunate to live somewhere that is a real community, where we all know each other and can rely on neighbours to help out if necessary. Today was a day for family socialising, as R and H and their partners all came for lunch, along with my brother. It was the first time they had all been here at the same time since before the pandemic, so that was another milestone passed. 

The Cotswolds: Day 1

Over the last month we have done a lot of playing catch up with things that had been postponed due to lock down. The last of them - I think! - was a night away, using a gift voucher that R gave for Christmas 2019. Yes, that long ago!  The arrangements turned into something of a saga. We decided we would like to go to the Cotswolds - not too far from home, so no long drive, but always lovely. The first hotel we booked cancelled as they had double booked. We rebooked into a Holiday Inn near Warwick, then on Thursday night decided to look at Trip Advisor reviews. It was a good thing we did, not because there were bad reviews, but because there was a review posted the previous day complaining that a booking had been cancelled because the hotel was being used as a quarantine hotel for people flying in from red list countries. M phoned and the hotel verified this. It also turned out they did not have any record of our booking. Oops! We had booked through the voucher company, and something clearly went very wrong. 

We decided that as we had already arranged for R to have TG to stay overnight on Friday we would make a last minute booking of our own and then try to unravel the voucher mess later, and booked in to a hotel in Banbury, about an hour's drive from home. We stopped off on the way for a wander around the town of Brackley, where we found a nice park with a lake and a group of geese pretending to be statues - we had to watch closely to spot any of them moving! After that we headed for Upton House, a National Trust property about 15 minutes the other side of Banbury. We had lunch in the cafe before exploring the house and grounds. 

It was bought in the 1920s by the owner of the Shell oil company, who decorated it in Arts and Crafts style, filled it with collections of art and china and bequeathed it to the National Trust in his will, with the provision that it should be left as it was so that the public could share his own enjoyment in the house and its contents. 

After puttering around the garden we went back to the cafe. Fortified with tea/coffee and cake we then went for a walk in the local countryside. Most National Trust properties have suggested local walks of various lengths - this time we picked the shortest as it was already mid-afternoon and the car park closed at 5.30. The highlight was this view from an escarpment looking over the site of the Battle of Edge Hill (the first major battle in the Civil War between Royalists and Parliamentarians, which took place in 1642). Apparently on a clear day it is possible to see 40 miles across to the Malvern Hills. 

 

After our walk we headed to Banbury and dinner at our hotel, which was originally an inn built in the 17th century, now much extended but still with the old inn at its centre. The hotel has quite a history. King James II stayed there in 1687, and Jonathan Swift stayed there while writing Gulliver's Travels - he took the name of Gulliver from a tombstone at the church on the opposite side of the road. Also one of the rooms was used as a secret meeting place for Catholic priests during penal times.  

We packed quite a lot into Saturday, so I'll put that into another post. In other news all our young folk have now had their first dose of Covid vaccines, except TG who is too young as the UK is currently only vaccinating over 18s. R and H and R's boyfriend all had Moderna, which hasn't been widely available in the UK until recently, and H's boyfriend had Pfizer. H came over this evening to watch the new Disney movie Luca with us. It is set on the Ligurian coast of Italy, where H spent her year abroad in 2018/19, so that was quite fun, although as it was an animated movie with a fictional location we didn't exactly recognise anywhere! It did mention H's university city of Genova though. She brought strawberries and chocolate with her, and we have concluded that strawberries with melted chocolate may be the ultimate movie snack!

Weather Extremes & Afternoon Tea

This week has been very much a game of two halves as far as the weather is concerned. Monday and Tuesday were hot, and the forecast temperature was so high on Wednesday that we decided to set off early for a walk while it was still relatively cool. We visited a stretch of the Grand Union canal we had never walked before, starting at Cosgrove in Northamptonshire, walking down to Wolverton at the northern extreme of Milton Keynes and back. We parked up at Cosgrove and were slightly startled to find that our route to the canal towpath went under the canal through this tunnel. It was built to be wide enough for horses, so not as narrow as it looks in the picture - we were glad we were not tall though!  

The canal is carried over the river by a short aqueduct. The "Iron Trunk Aqueduct" was built in 1811 after the previous brick aqueduct collapsed, and was a pioneering piece of engineering at the time. Lovely views, particularly on a sunny day. 

We got as far as the derelict buildings which were once a huge railway works before turning round and adding in a loop round by the River Ouse back to the aqueduct. This pool where the river widened looked as though it could be good for wild swimming - nice and clear, though I don't know what the depth would be like.  I have a friend who goes swimming in the river a bit further upstream, but I'm not sure I am brave enough! 

By Wednesday evening it was both very hot and very humid, with a sticky night making it difficult to sleep. We bought a fan for TG's room as we could only find one - an old one disintegrated last year and I thought we had replaced it, but apparently not. Thursday was cooler with some rain, then Friday was chilly with heavy rain all day. Hard to believe it had been so warm only two days earlier! 

R had given us a voucher last Christmas for afternoon tea at the Luton Hoo Hotel, which we had booked for Friday. Built as a country house by the Earl of Bute in the 18th century, it is now a 5 star luxury hotel. M had been once before, but this was my first visit. I had the vegan tea and M the standard one with slightly tweaked sandwiches (he doesn't eat ham or cheese). There were four sandwiches each, two scones with jam and cream, and four little cakes, and of course plenty of tea! We were too full to eat all the cakes, so brought the leftovers home for TG. When we finished it was raining fairly heavily. As the car park is a few minutes walk from the hotel, the doorman offered us a lift to our car in the hotel taxi, which was driven round and we were courteously ushered into it under the protection of a golf umbrella - definitely the luxury touch. We are not used to chauffeurs and uniformed doormen treating us like royalty! Getting back to the car dry was definitely a bonus. 

Today has been mostly dry, but it is still cold enough to have needed extra layers. We managed a short walk this morning without getting rained on, and this evening M is working. TG is studying hard as she has exams at school all next week. The school are calling them mock (practice) GCSEs, though I suppose in reality they are pre-mocks as she will have another set in the winter before sitting the actual exams next spring. I think she is mostly bogged down in science, as she is taking physics, chemistry and biology as separate subjects and each has lots to remember.  

A Warm and Mostly Lazy Weekend

After my long day out on Thursday I had a lazy weekend. On Saturday I had a rare few hours home alone, as M was working and H took TG out for a shopping exhibition to spend birthday money. It was another warm weekend, so I caught up on a few things then spent most of the afternoon hanging out in the hammock, listening to an audio book. There may have been a gin cocktail later on.     

On Sunday morning we went for a three mile walk round the canal and woods, before it got too hot. Everything is still beautifully green, early summer at its best. We saw a swan family on the canal for the first time this year - I think it may be the same parents as last year's swan family, as they same nest was occupied a month or so back. 

When we got back I helped TG to put up LED strip lights in her bedroom. She had asked for them for her birthday, and I had been procrastinating as I thought it might be complicated (there were some odd looking clips in the box I wasn't sure what to do with). Once we started it couldn't have been easier, as it was just a case of peeling off backing paper and sticking the strips to the wall. There were two strips of lights, which we ran up the corner by her bed and then round the room. We didn't have quite enough, with a 12 to 18 inch gap in the far corner - fortunately this was over the wardrobe, so she just put some bags on top of the wardrobe to hide the corner. The end result looks very impressive. The lights can be set to different colours and / or changing patterns. When combined with her galaxy light, she has quite a spectacular light show! 

A walk followed by standing on a step-ladder in a warm room reaching up to the ceiling for quite a while was tiring, so in the afternoon I went back to the hammock and watched most of England's opening match in the Euros against Croatia on my phone. Today I was back working in the archives again for the first time since mid-May. The office was warm, but I managed to escape upstairs occasionally to the temperature controlled storage area to cool down. This evening we went out for TG's birthday meal, which had been postponed from last week because R had to self-isolate. It was the first time all five of us had been out to eat together since just before the first lockdown last year - another lovely bit of normal. 

Out to Lunch and an Unexpected Purchase

I went shopping. Twice. Once planned and once unplanned. On Friday I went to collect my violin from its service. With its rehaired bow, new strings, bridge and tail piece, it looked as good as new. It sounds good too - at least, it does when allowances are made for the limitations of the player! 

As a teenager and young adult I used to play the viola, but eventually decided I preferred the violin and sold my viola in order to buy a better violin. Over the last few years I had started to miss playing the viola. For a while pre-pandemic I played in a small string group which desperately needed a viola player, so I played on a borrowed viola to fill the gap and realised I would really like one of my own again. However, I didn't have a budget for one, and it had stayed as an unrealised aspiration. When I collected my violin, I decided to ask about violas, thinking a reasonably playable one might be manageable in the not too far distant future. I asked. It turned out that he had one for sale that was both playable and so affordable I bought it on the spot! It is a Romanian factory made viola with slight cracking to the varnish, but it makes a surprisingly reasonable sound and came with a bow, a case and even a set of spare strings. The only thing I need to get for it is a shoulder rest - trying to play without one is painful, and my violin shoulder rest is only barely better than nothing! I think I will have a lot of fun with it, although it will take a while to build up stamina due to the size and weight of it. 

Saturday's shopping trip was pre-planned. It is TG's birthday on 8th June and she didn't have anything specific she wanted as a gift apart from some oddments, so we decided I would take her to an outlet mall in the town where M works so she could choose something. As it is a holiday weekend I thought it would be a good idea to get there reasonable early. I was right! We walked straight in at 10.30. By the time we left three hours later the entire ground floor of one of the car parks was full of people queueing! It probably wasn't quite as bad as it looked as the queue was spread out to allow for social distancing, but we were very glad indeed we weren't in it! 

After looking around various shops TG chose a small bag and a pair of earrings. We enjoyed Japanese style rice bowls from Itsu for lunch - Japanese food is her favourite - and iced coffees before we headed home. 

It seems as though life has suddenly taken off, with lots of things on the calendar. Pre-pandemic it would probably have been a fairly normal level of activity, but after doing so little for so long it is both enjoyable and exciting, but also strange and tiring. Yesterday we went out for lunch, to use a gift voucher R had given M for his birthday. The voucher was for the Marco Pierre White chain of restaurants, and the nearest is part of a hotel which is inside the football stadium at Milton Keynes. We are so used to everything be shut or cancelled that we were quite surprised to find that there was an event on in the stadium. As we left the restaurant we peered through some glass doors and it seemed to be some sort of strong man competition. The audience was obviously just.a limited number and they were seated in socially distanced groups, but they were loud and enthusiastic. I just googled and it seems it was the semi-finals of the UK's Strongest Man contest - the final was taking place in the same place today. 

The three of us all enjoyed our lunch. It was the first time we had been to a MPW restaurant and we would definitely go back. They do a Sunday lunch menu with two or three course meals including a roast - TG and I had roast chicken (I very rarely eat it when I am out as I don't want to eat intensively farmed chicken, but this was advertised as free range) and M had beef. M and I had smoked salmon as a starter and TG had calamari, then we all had different desserts - mine was sticky toffee pudding with butterscotch sauce. One consequence of the pandemic is that I have gone back to eating pretty much anything after leaning quite heavily towards a vegan diet. Being more of an omnivore made it so much easier for the four of us to eat together, and cooking and eating was something we all enjoyed as a family. I would like to switch back to eating mostly plant-based again, as I think it makes me feel fitter and more energetic as well as being more environmentally friendly. but eating differently to M an TG is an added complication to life that I'm not ready to tackle at the moment.  

This morning M got up early to go swimming - I opted out of an 8am start on a Bank Holiday - they later in the morning we went for a 3 mile walk. The boatyard where they rent out canal boats was almost empty, with just one solitary boat left moored. I'm not surprised they are getting lots of bookings, as a hiring a narrow boat must be about as Covid-safe a holiday as it is possible to get. Our friend B, who is a music teacher, came over for lunch, then she and I played duets for a while - violin / violin and violin / viola. It was good to give the viola a test drive, and I managed to play for quite a while without my arms giving up on me despite the size and weight of the instrument. Neither of us has played much (if at all!) since the pandemic started, so we were decidedly rusty, but it was good to get started again. 

Cold, Wet and Windy - Is It Really May?

It is hard to believe we are into May as the weather feels more like the beginning of March, far too chilly for this time of year. At least it was dry yesterday morning so we went for a walk on Dunstable Downs for the first time this year. We did a tiring four mile circuit along the top of the Downs - going down is OK, getting back up again is hard work! 

The first part of the walk was along the ancient Icknield Way. I am trying to learn more about ancient British history and have been reading Home by Francis Prior, a history of domestic life from the Mesolithic to the Iron Age. At one end of the Downs is a set of seven round barrows known (confusingly!) as Five Knolls. These date back to the Bronze Age, possibly as far back as 2500 BC. The picture below shows the path which crosses the three barrows at the southern end of the site. 

In the afternoon I watched Thor with TG, then cooked a large roast dinner for which H and M2 joined us.  They seem to be doing well and are very happy with their new house. Poor TG has had a nasty sniffly cold over the weekend and had to miss a dance class on Saturday, but she has now pretty much shaken it off. Although today was a bank holiday M had to work this morning, while TG and I stayed home and were lazy apart from a quick trip to the supermarket. 

This afternoon we had arranged to go over to R's for a BBQ, along with H and M2. Unfortunately the weather did not cooperate. We did manage to cook outside on the grill, despite a strong wind, but then it started to rain heavily and there was no choice but to eat inside. Under the current coronavirus restrictions mixing indoors isn't allowed, but it is clear that in two weeks time it will be. Given that M and I are vaccinated and local Covid rates are very low, it felt safe enough. While R was cooking I managed to distract R and M3's dog from the smell of sausages for long enough to get a photo of him sitting still and looking every inch the beautiful beagle. After we ate we played scattergories -there may have been a few disputes over the acceptability of answers! Despite the weather it has been a good weekend. One positive thing about the pandemic is that it has made us truly appreciate how good it is to be able to spend time with family, rather than taking it for granted. 

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. 

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. 

 

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. 

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? 

Pancake Day

The weather forecast was right and it is now very much warmer. Today I even went out for a walk with a jacket rather than a winter coat. There are noticeable signs of spring now, and the birds are definitely getting noisier. My back is still being a pain (literally!) although it is definitely feeling better than it did. Yesterday and today I managed slightly longer walks. Yesterday I grumbled a lot as walking hurt, but today it was easier. I am trying to be patient and to make sure that my back is well supported when I sit. Another improvement was that last night it was easier to find a comfortable position lying down, so I sleep much better than I had the previous couple of nights. 

It is TG's half term week, and usually we would go on at least one trip out somewhere. Mid-lockdown that is not an option, so today we used Uber Eats to order lunch from Subway - a favourite of hers - as a half-term treat. Last time we ordered through Uber Eats the delivery driver came by motorbike, today it was a large taxi van - slightly over the top for four sandwiches! Taxis must be struggling for custom with all the Covid restrictions, so I suppose delivering at least gives them some business. 

We have always given the girls small rewards when they have good school reports (usually either £5 or their choice of edible treats), but this time TG's report was so exceptionally good we decided it would be good to let her choose something a bit bigger. We were thinking clothes, but she had just done some online clothes shopping and said she would really like a galaxy light for her room. We ordered one for her which arrived this afternoon and she is thrilled with it. She has been doing quite a bit of primping of her room lately at her own expense but a light would have been beyond her limited budget.  

Today is Shrove Tuesday which is better known as Pancake Day in the UK, so dinner was pancakes (crepes) with various combinations of strawberries, chocolate hazelnut spread, Biscoff, golden syrup, ice cream, sugar and lemon, according to taste. The girls have a Biscoff obsession, I went for strawberries and chocolate spread, and M only ever has sugar and lemon with pancakes. The origin of eating pancakes on Shrove Tuesday is supposed to be it allowed people to use up eggs and milk before Lent, but it is a tradition which has stuck.