Staying Home Part 2: Day 13

Quite a routine day today. After I finished my archive work M and I walked into town to buy sandwiches for lunch from Caffe Nero for a change - mainly because it was dull and drizzly and I needed an incentive to get me out of the house! H and I both had sourdough panini with vegan "turkey", stuffing and cranberry sauce from their festive menu; M was going to have tuna but they had run out and there wasn't anything else he fancied so he made himself eggs when we got home. 

The bit of question writing work I needed to do this afternoon didn't take long, so we watched a couple more episodes of the Crown and I caught up on the Mandalorian while M was collecting TG from school. More knitting happened. 

The photos are of a sculpture we pass on the way into town commemorating the production locally of Vimy aircraft during the First World War - the site where the factory stood is now occupied by a supermarket and its car park. 

I made a chicken and mushroom pie with suet crust pastry, mashed potatoes and veg for dinner, which took longer than I expected so we ate late. After dinner it was the semi-final of Great British Bake Off. It had been filmed during a heatwave in the summer and they kept having issues because of the high temperatures. Hard to remember during the miserable November damp that there was ever such a thing as summer! 

Staying Home Part 2: Day 12

I got up a bit earlier than normal this morning, then because I thought I had plenty of time I moved slower and distracted myself so that I was barely ready on time to take TG to school. This is a typical pattern for me - if time is tight, I focus and move fast and am just about ready on time; if I give myself lots of time, I slow down and end up ready no quicker than if I rush, and sometimes even end up later. When I got back, i just had time to make myself porridge for breakfast before our 9am weekly staff meeting. One colleague is having problems with band width, so we are now doing audio only (no video) to help her. That meant I could shamelessly eat my porridge during the meeting. 

I did a longer than necessary stint on my archive work, which means I can do a bit less tomorrow and finish off the current question writing job. I did part of that this afternoon and finished work just as M went to collect TG from school. By that time it was very dull and unappealing outside, so I decided to be lazy and opt out of going for a walk. Today's photos are pictures I took a couple of weeks ago on a much nicer afternoon when we walked into town for coffee, but didn't get round to posting at the time. Above is the 15th century market cross, and below is the old town hall, later used as a fire station, and now a Pizza Express restaurant. 

I decided that the fingerless mitt I almost finished yesterday had come out a bit small. I am using a pattern meant for aran / worsted yarn with sock yarn. I though knitting a large size might compensate enough but it didn't, so I unravelled almost the entire mitt back to a decrease round at the cuff and decreased less to give myself five extra stitches. I think that should be just right. I have now redone the wrist section and am about to start increasing stitches for the thumb. While knitting I watched the remaining episode of Michael Palin's Himalaya with M, then an episode of the Mandalorian. I have also been reading more of the Ancient History of Britain. I am finding the sections about the mesolithic and neolithic periods fascinating, as I knew so very little about them, even though I have always enjoyed visiting ancient sites like Stonehenge. 

Dinner was frozen potato wedges with whiting from the last fishbox, squeezed in between TG finishing her dance class and H starting an online quiz night with her work colleagues. M and I watched tonight's Only Connect quiz, and then I spent a while sorting out his phone for him. It had somehow stuck in dark mode, which he never uses and doesn't like, and I ended up having to reset all the phone settings, then reset things like Face ID and Apple Pay. Hopefully it is all working properly again now. 

Staying Home Part 2: Day 11

The day started with a torrential downpour and swirling winds - apparently quite a few fences locally came down. By late morning it had cleared so we were able to go out for walks in the early afternoon. H went out for a walk down the canal with her BF and came back with glowing red, sore little toes from wearing new(ish) trainers which rubbed. M and I went for a walk round the local streets, where even some of the pavements were squelchy and muddy; we went into Tesco Express on the way back for bread and soya milk, and I bought some sausage roll flavoured crisps to try. TG was only barely functional today after last night's virtual sleepover, which meant not enough sleep happened. 

I didn't take any photos today, but my phone chose this one for me. It was taken exactly a year ago in Milton Keynes shopping centre - we must have gone to do some Christmas shopping and to see the decorations. Since the latest iOS update the photos app has started selecting a few photos each day and showing them on a widget on my home screen. It is also making "Memories" videos from a selection of photos from a particular date or event, or a series of portraits of an individual - some of these have been lovely, like the Disneyland Paris firework display it put together for me yesterday. 

I caught up on a few jobs this morning, including phoning Disney to change the date of our trip to Disneyland Paris next year. We had booked for February, but that was looking less and less feasible thanks to Covid, and in any case clashes with H's busy season at work. We have now switched it to early September, just before TG goes back to school. I was on the phone for quite a while, not because it was complicated, but because I ended up having a nice conversation with the lady in Florida who dealt with the booking - we ended up drifting off into chatting about our families, our travel plans (cancelled and future), and how Covid was affecting our lives. Although the call switches through to the US it is directed via a local number so no nasty phone charges to worry about! 

H is enjoying having time to do some cooking again, so she cooked roast lamb for dinner. M and I watched the first episode of the new series of the Crown, then H gave him a haircut. She and I spent a bit of time going through paperwork for her house purchase which came through yesterday. After dinner I read for a while and we watched a bit more TV (Strictly results show and another episode of Michael Palin's journey through the Himalayas). I did quite a bit of knitting during the afternoon and evening and almost managed a whole fingerless glove - just a few rows of the hand and the thumb left to do. I'm a very unfocused crafter and currently have three knitting projects and three cross stitch projects on the go simultaneously. Four out of the six are Christmas presents, but it doesn't matter what order I do them in; so long as I keep making progress I can just pick up whichever suits the mood of the moment.

Staying Home Part 2: Day 10

It has been truly miserable weather all day, which put paid to H's plan to meet her BF for a walk today. The girls then decided that we should go to Frosts garden centre this afternoon - garden centres are allowed to open, which makes sense for the outdoor section, but seems a bit odd where they have large indoor shops selling non-garden items. Frosts turns a lot of its indoor space into a Christmas shop, which was what attracted the girls, and I wanted to try to get a couple of large houseplants to brighten up a corner of the sitting room. I have black thumbs and very few plants survive my poor attempts to keep them alive, but I have managed to keep a large palm type thing from dying for three years, so decided maybe I could try adding more. We were shocked at the price of houseplants, and ended up with just a large poinsettia and a nice pot to put it in. True to form when I have anything to do with a plant, the poinsettia slightly lost a battle with the wind on the way back to the car and is now a bit lopsided.

After Frosts we drove a short distance to the building site where H's house is going to be. Some houses looked almost finished, other parts of the site were just mud. We couldn't see from the road if the foundations have been dug for her house yet. If it was drier we would have had a walk round. We then went on to Starbucks for takeaway Christmas coffees - I had a gingerbread latte and H and TG had toffee nut lattes. Starbucks now do coffees with a soya whipped cream which was a nice treat for H and myself. To add to the Christmassy vibe I had my first mince pie of the season.

After we got back TG and I went to M & S Food so she could buy some treats as a reward for yesterday's excellent school report. Apparently she is having a virtual sleepover with some friends tonight, so she got some popcorn as a sleepover snack. She also wanted to get some sweets for a friend whose birthday is next week. We found a nice houseplant in a basket which was just what I wanted - who knew that I should really have gone to a food shop, not a garden centre to find the right plant! Here are the plant and the poinsettia sitting in their corner (along with the box for a half-done Harry Potter jigsaw). 

We planned a takeaway for tonight to celebrate H's exam success, and after an 11th hour change of plan the girls went back to Milton Keynes to collect a takeaway from Nandos. They have just started offering plant-based "Imitation Chicken", which I tried in a wrap and enjoyed. After that we watched Strictly - at least, three of us watched Strictly and M stayed in the same room not watching. Despite the weather, it has been a good day.

Staying Home Part 2: Day 9

A much less busy day today, with just some bits of work to finish up this morning. H had her last exam this afternoon with an immediate result - another strong pass making it 5/5. Well deserved pay off for two months of very hard work. TG came home from school with a glowing progress report (they can't do parent-teacher evenings this term because of the pandemic) so we are having a proud parents day. 

We did another three mile walk today, this time a short drive away. We did a circular walk through woods and fields to a nearby village, then back through the woodland again. Loved this birdhouse in a garden we passed - or maybe I should call it a bird mansion! 

The pub was closed today because of the lockdown. The village is on a hill and the ground drops away steeply behind the pub, where there is a beer garden with an impressive view across to Milton Keynes. I love autumn walks, despite the mud. At least there was less of it today than yesterday, though we walked across another very soggy, desolate, unhealthy looking large field 

This has been a good week for news. Following on the heels of Trump's defeat, Boris Johnson's svengali Dominic Cummings has left his job with immediate effect, hot on the heels of another Vote Leave crony. I don't know who will replace them, but hopefully there will be at least some improvement after what has been an atrocious year of poor decision making, U-turns, lies and half-truths under their regime. Their main policy has been to break things - supposedly to build up better, but as they didn't appear to be capable of managing their way out of a paper bag, it didn't go well, especially during a pandemic. They lied with impunity, and the government's attempt to justify Cummings' trip from London to Durham while he and his wife were suffering from Covid pretty much broke the last lockdown. Few people will be sorry to see him go. 

H went for a takeaway coffee after her exam and brought cakes back for us. I cooked halibut from the fish box for dinner, which was delicious. We (myself and the girls, not M!) are in Christmas movie mode, so we watched Arthur Christmas, which I had never seen before. Then M and I watched the first episode of Queen's Gambit on Netflix. I don't normally watch a lot of TV, but since the pandemic started have watched far more than usual. I think it is partly because I have more free time, partly because I got into the habit during our Disney binge in the first lockdown, and partly because I have been in crafting mood - I like to half-watch, half-listen while I knit or do cross stitch. I have a few things I want to make as Christmas gifts and started one today - a cross stitched coaster with a badger picture for a neighbour who has a family of badgers which regularly visit her garden. I am also knitting the first of a pair of socks for my brother. I had not used this pattern before and the heel section is either odd or wrong. I tried following the pattern but ended up unravelling my first attempt at the heel and re-doing it using my usual method. 

Staying Home Part 2: Day 8

It was early morning French day for TG which helped me to get started early on my work. I didn't do any yoga, but it meant I had time to go for a three mile walk with M after lunch. Early in the walk we heard some birds making a tremendous racket and realised it was a flock of starlings in this tree - you can just see some in the photo around the top. 

We chose a route round the fields that had been one of our regular walks during the summer, hoping it might be a bit less muddy than the woods. It wasn't. You can see the puddles of water in the tractor tracks, and there were some very squishy bits. This field and its neighbours had been used to grow maize (sweetcorn), I suspect for biofuel or cattle feed. I read that in the UK maize can damage the topsoil, and these certainly did not seem healthy fields, with so much water sitting on top and not draining - it isn't low lying or particularly heavy soil, and to my mind it really should not look like this. 

The next part of the walk was through much healthier looking grassed fields and down a track, also on the muddy side. 

This brought us out to what had once been a separate hamlet, but is now on the edge of the modern town. This building was once a watermill, and has been converted into houses - when she was at middle school H was friendly with a girl who lived in one of them. What must once have been the millstream runs along the side of the track running down to the mill. From here we walked back up through housing estates and just managed to get home in time for M to go and collect TG from school while I got on with some more work. More rain is forecast for the weekend, so it was good to get out and enjoy a bit of blue sky. 

TG had a late dance class, so we waited for her to finish and ate late. I made a beef pie with sweet potato wedges and sautéed cabbage. Good autumn comfort food. The news was a bit depressing. Covid deaths are growing and there was a spike in cases (probably infections from the last few days before lockdown just now coming through the testing system, so hopefully the numbers will now start to fall again). There is infighting among government advisers which has become so acrimonious that one senior adviser walked out and others are apparently threatening to go - not in itself a bad thing, but it is ridiculous that they are bickering like this in the middle of the Covid crisis and with the end of Brexit transition only weeks away, with no deal in place. 

More cheerfully, I made a fun discovery while I was doing my archive work this morning. I have been looking for pictures for an Instagram account, and someone mentioned a postcard showing a bull in a bedroom. That one was too good to pass up so I went hunting and found both a copy on our catalogue and a newspaper article about the incident, which took place in 1900. Apparently a bullock escaped while being taken down an alleyway to market and entered the kitchen door of a hotel. It then climbed the stairs, giving the lady of the house (who was busy putting a child to bed at the time) something of a shock, and went on the rampage in a bedroom. It was cornered and recaptured, but not before someone had taken a photo of the devastation it caused, with the back end of the bull just visible to one side of the picture. 

Staying Home Part 2: Day 7

Another busy day, with everyone up to their ears in work. I did yoga this morning before taking TG to school, but we didn't manage to fit in a walk. 

Worryingly M received an email this afternoon to say that a number of people at the call centre where he works have tested positive for Covid. In theory, the Covid Safe measures in the office should mean the risk of catching it is relatively low and he has been careful to keep his distance from people, but as he is over 60 and asthmatic he doesn't want to take any risks. He spoke to the welfare officer and has been signed off to stay home for the time being, so will not be working his shift tomorrow. We just have to hope he hasn't been unlucky and contracted the virus despite the precautions in place.

H has been in creative mode this evening and has started embroidering a picture for her BF. It is a simple outline traced from a drawing she did of them both on one of their travel adventures, using contrasting colours on a navy and white background (navy on white and white on navy). She has a good eye and I'm sure the end result will be very effective. While she was busy crafting TG had Zoom dance classes and I had a Zoom band session. 

I haven't taken any photos today, so here is a random picture of a knight I bought when M and I went to France for our 25th wedding anniversary three years ago. He came from the castle at Falaise in Normandy, where we stopped on the way home (Falaise was William the Conqueror's birthplace). I wrote a thesis on knights in the early 13th century and judging by his armour he is meant to be from around that time, so I couldn't resist him. He used to live in the dining room, but although he is a bit large - about 12 inches high - I have now taken him upstairs to share my desk with me.