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. 

Staying Home Part 2: Day 6

The day started with a pleasant surprise - I completely forgot I had set the climate control timer on the car for Tuesdays and Thursdays, when we have to set off for school early as TG has French classes. It took me a minute or two to work out why the steering wheel was warm and the car was cosy! It wasn't a particularly cold morning, so I hadn't thought about pre-heating. The second happy moment of the morning (though less of a surprise) was getting home to find that H had smashed exam number four with a very high pass mark. 

Lots of work again today. This morning I did archives work while M wrote questions; this afternoon I worked on the questions, and this evening he is doing a 111 shift. We fitted in a 40 minute pavement walk where I spotted these lovely autumn leaves and berries and these much less seasonal red roses still in bloom. H had training sessions for her exam on Friday, and TG was at school followed by a Zoom dance class. 

H is beginning to feel under less time pressure so volunteered to make rice bowls with a prawn teriyaki stir fry for dinner. I think I have only cooked once in the last five days, which has been a luxury - with H working so hard I have been responsible for almost all the catering for the past couple of months. After dinner we watched dessert week on Great British Bake Off, where they produced some extraordinary jelly / cake creations. 

This has felt such a cheering week with Biden winning the US election and the good news that the Pfizer coronavirus vaccine has performed so well in tests. There seems a real possibility that some people may get vaccines before Christmas, and that it will be rolled out widely in the new year. With other vaccines also in Stage 3 trials it may well be that there will soon be other options available too. I am really beginning to hope that we are reaching a turning point. 

Staying Home Part 2: Day 5

Not much to say about today as it has just been a busy work day for everyone. H had another exam this afternoon and thought it went OK. TG was at school, and both M and I had a lot to get through. I did some yoga before taking TG to school this morning but we didn't get a proper walk in - partly because I had too much to do and partly because the weather was miserable this afternoon. We did walk up to Tesco Express after I finished as we had run out of toothpaste. Always something! I cooked potatoes, mushroom and salmon from last week's fish box for dinner, roasted together in the oven, and then watched Elf (an old  favourite) on DVD with the girls. I'm afraid I long ago gave up any attempt to avoid Christmassy things until December -  with H and TG egging each other on it is a lost cause. Usually we start doing fun seasonal things in mid-November, with a trip to Birmingham for a gift fair at the National Exhibition Centre, the German Christmas market in the city centre, and ice skating. That can't happen this year, but I think there may be a lot of Christmas movies on the agenda during this second lockdown.

As I didn't take any photos today, here is a bit of local industrial heritage from our walk on Saturday. These little narrow gauge railway tracks were used by carts bringing sand from local quarries to the canal so that they could be loaded on to barges. Sand was a big industry here, and there are still working sand quarries though many are no longer in use. The lake in the photo below is actually manmade, and was originally a disused pit which has been turned into a waterside park. Another old quarry is often used as a movie and TV film set, and a three mile section of narrow gauge track is now run as a heritage railway.  

For some reason I keep forgetting to mention here what I am reading. I am mostly in a non-fiction mood at the moment. I asked for a  English Pastoral by James Rebanks for my birthday, which is about farming past, present and future on his Lake District family farm. Although their farm is in a very different part of the country, the farming methods his grandfather taught him were very similar to the way my father worked the farm where we lived until the mid-1970s, so that section was a trip down memory lane. The middle section, as he describes how industrial farming took over, stripping the land and plunging farmers into a debt as they borrowed to buy better machinery, fertilisers, weed killers and so on, was predictably depressing, but it was wonderful to hear how he - along with many other farmers - is now working to restore his land and to find ways to farm in harmony with it. 

I am also half way through a biography of 19th century Quaker prison reformer, Elizabeth Fry, along with Neil Oliver's History of Ancient Britain. I can only read the Elizabeth Fry book on my Kindle, and can't close it down until it is finished as I borrowed it on Kindle Unlimited but have now cancelled my subscription (I tend to subscribe for a month or two at a time when I find books available on it that I want to read). I often read on my laptop because the larger screen makes it easier to knit and read at the same time, so have the Neil Oliver book open on that. I recently finished listening to a book on Audible about British Prime Ministers from Ted Heath in the early 1970s through to Theresa May, and have just started listening to The Frayed Atlantic Edge, in which historian David Gange kayaks along the Atlantic coast from Shetland around Ireland to Cornwall. Books about walking, journeying and landscape are a bit of a reading theme for me at the moment. 

Staying Home Part 2: Day 4

It wasn't such a bright morning today, and both M and I were feeling tired so we went for a slightly shorter walk. Our walks have started to split into trainer (sneaker?) walks and boot walks - trainers for walks around the local area, sticking to pavements and surfaced paths, and boots for countryside walks which at the moment inevitably involve at least a certain amount of mud. Today was a trainer walk, down to the older part of our end of town. Until the mid-1960s the town where we live was actually two completely separate towns, with a county boundary between them and each with their own town council, police station, magistrates court and so on. However, they increasingly shared infrastructure and the road which bridged the canal and river started in one town and ended in the other, built up all the way along and with no gap in-between the two, so the two were merged into one unit and our end was transferred from Buckinghamshire to Bedfordshire. 

We live on a large estate built in the 1970s and the older part of our end of town is 19th century, built around the rail station. As we walked up one of the older roads I spotted this cheerfully coloured door. At the top of the road is the parish church. The original 13th century parish church still exists, but is a couple of miles away in an isolated position with only a handful of houses nearby. This newer one was built in the 19th century to serve the rapidly growing population and to save them having to walk across the fields to old St. Mary's. The buildings adjacent to the church were originally a school. 

The church overlooks a park, and as we walked along the road to the entrance this brick wall covered with  moss and ivy caught my eye. We then went through the park to the station and crossed the tracks by the station bridge. Until a year or so ago there was an old iron bridge, separate to the station, which crossed the railway to the park, but it was becoming unsafe and had to be demolished. We then walked back through the other end of our large estate, stopping off at Tesco Express for some bread and bananas on the way (why is there always something we run out of!). 

Thanks to Covid this was the first time for many years that I did not play at a Remembrance Day service with the brass band. During lockdown indoor public religious services have been cancelled. Scaled down outdoor services of remembrance are allowed, but bands are not - only a single trumpeter or bugler to play the Last Post.

After we got back from our walk I had a soak in the bath with some Lush bubble bar and a scented candle. Very decadent! After lunch M and I started watching yet another Michael Palin series; this time he is travelling through the Himalayas. After M went to work, I spent a couple of hours working myself. I try to avoid working at weekends, but often we have to enter the questions we write into an online application which is annoyingly slow but often seems better at weekends, presumably because less people are using it. It doesn't take much concentration, so I watched several more episodes of The Good Place while I cut and pasted and tagged. I then had a minor success. The dishwasher had developed a puddle in the bottom and was refusing to drain (the second time this has happened in a month, which doesn't bode well!), but I decided to try running it empty to see if that would clear the problem and it worked. It may only be temporary, but at least I managed to wash dishes in it this evening. H took a break from studying to cook us lamb curry for dinner and we watched the Strictly results show. I intended to read for a while but it didn't happen as my eyes were boggled from staring at the laptop screen for too long this afternoon. 

Staying Home Part 2: Day 3

I woke early this morning when H texted at 5am to say she had passed yesterday's exam (yes, that is the time they send out the email with the result!). To be fair, I was half awake anyway or I would not have noticed the text as my phone was on silent. I did eventually doze off for a bit longer - just as well as I am really not an early morning person at all and it would have left me feeling exhausted all day. If the two exams next week go well she will have nearly finished the first stage of the accountancy exams - she thinks there is one more exam next year at this level. 

M and I went out for a morning walk round the lake and along the canal. It was noticeable that there were more people than usual out walking and cycling, and enjoying the lovely bright morning. It wasn't even too cold today, and there was no frost on the car. I do love this time of year. I have this probably irrational theory that people tend to particularly like the season that they were born in, and I have an autumn birthday. 

I think I have not mentioned before that H and her boyfriend are in the process of buying a house. They want to live in Milton Keynes as that is where they both work, and want a house rather than a flat (apartment) as they want to have some outside space and ultimately to get a dog. There is a government help-to-buy shared equity scheme for new build houses which makes that a more affordable route for them, and they have put down a deposit on a little two bedroom house. It hasn't been built yet, but is planned for completion in February or March next year. They have had their mortgage application approved, and last week they went to choose flooring, kitchen finishes and bathroom tiles, so it is now starting to feel more real - in the current climate banks are being very cautious in lending to first time buyers, so having the mortgage confirmed feels a big step forward.  She also hit lucky last week and won an Instagram giveaway of some nice stoneware crockery and a beautiful hand made ash chopping board, which arrived today and has been added to her heap of household stuff in the garage (mostly things she brought back from uni). Perfect timing! She says she almost never enters giveaways, so was very surprised to win.

We got back from our walk to find that there had been a shopping list fail and we had run out of laundry detergent, which H had only discovered after she put her laundry in the machine. There was a conversation along the lines of:

H: Why did you put an empty detergent bottle back in the cupboard?

M: Maybe I was being stupid ... or maybe I just subconsciously wanted revenge for all the times you used to put empty food packaging back in the fridge. 

H: Harrumph!!!!!

I spent a while this afternoon binge watching The Good Place on Netflix and knitting. After a couple of full days of work which needed lots of thinking, I was in the mood for something light and easy to watch. I then had a craving for pizza and as M (who doesn't like pizza) was working this evening I decided to order some for myself and the two girls. It is very unusual for us to have takeaways two days running, but I am justifying it to myself on the grounds of supporting local businesses during the lockdown! After eating our pizza we all watched Strictly Come Dancing. I have never really got into Strictly, but this year they persuaded me to watch with them and I am quite enjoying it, although I don't think I will ever be an enthusiast. I would rather watch Bake Off (which I have just remembered I missed this week and need to catch up on!). I didn't have an entirely lazy day, as I spent some time doing financial stuff this afternoon, and after Strictly I put together a menu plan for next week and updated my online grocery order. 

And, of course, finally this afternoon the US election was called for Joe Biden. Along with the great majority of people here I breathed a huge sigh of relief that the Orange One will no longer be President. The world now feels a safer place. I am afraid he did enormous damage to America's reputation abroad. Unfortunately we have the same problem with Boris Johnson, who is now going to have to work hard to try to improve relations with the Biden team. 

Staying Home Part 2: Day 2

With TG at school and H going out to sit her exam this morning, this really doesn't feel very much of a lockdown. H says she isn't sure how it went, but she will get the result in the morning so doesn't have too long to worry about it - a lot quicker than the US election results! I keep checking on the progress of the count, and Biden is now ahead in enough states to win comfortably. I am very relieved that this looks like the end of the Trump presidency, and hoping it will be the beginning of a move back to calmer, less polarised politics - not just for America but also for other countries, including ours.  

I experimented today with switching on the climate control in the car remotely. It was a frosty morning, but all the windows were defrosted and the inside of the car cosy when we left for school. In fact, the windows defrosted incredibly quickly - M had to run out and move the car about 3 minutes after I turned it on so that H could get hers out and it was already done. I also discovered last week that we have a heated steering wheel as well as heated seats. This is all going to make early starts in the winter so much nicer! Pre-heating is definitely another big plus for electric cars. This morning I turned it on using an app on my phone, but there is also an option to set a timer in the car. We now love the electric car even more than we did already, and can't imagine ever going back to a car with a traditional engine. 

TG and I are enjoying our morning journeys to school. After driving through town for the first couple of weeks, battling traffic and worrying about erratic pedestrians (a lot of kids walk to school and don't always  watch as well as they might), we started driving a longer way round. Most of this route is through countryside and woods, which often look glorious in the early morning light. This morning we admired the effect of a light early morning mist, while listening to her Christmas playlist in our nice warm car. Yes, I know it is only early November, but Christmas is one of her big loves - up there with Disney, Glee, food and dance, she told me this morning. 

M and I were both busy working for most of the day. I took a break between jobs to make a large batch of vegetable soup for lunch, and we went out for a 40 minute walk before M went to collect TG from school. We avoided mud this time. After she got home, H went back to studying for the next exam on Monday. M went out to get fish and chips for dinner - takeaways are still allowed to open - and we watched a game show on TV for a while before she went back to study some more. I forgot to take my phone out with me today, so the photos are both from yesterday. The sun glowing through the fog was what made me stop and get out of the car to try to capture it, and this was one of the non-muddy stretches of path in the woods. 

 

Staying Home Part 2: Day 1

As our new sort-of-lockdown has started today, I'm going to try to do daily blogging again as I did for 100 days during the first lockdown. I enjoyed the routine of writing each day and although I am still blogging far more regularly than I have done for many years, it has got a bit erratic. 

This time the lockdown is a limited one, with M going to work and TG still at school. H is working from home, but will be going into college to take her next batch of exams. The first one is tomorrow, so hoping all her long hours of studying pay off. Non-essential shops, pubs and restaurants, gyms and museums are all closed. The archive is shut again, and it looks as though I will be working from home for the foreseeable future. When I came home in March I was expecting it to be for three months, and here I still am over 7 months later and will certainly not be back this year. 

I took yesterday as my morning off from archives work so that we could make the most of a lovely bright morning and go out for lunch while we still could. We are in a relatively low Covid area and the cafe we went to is very well organised and meets all the Covid-safe guidelines, so I don't think we were taking too much of a risk. Case numbers here are still climbing however (though at a slower rate than they were), so hopefully the semi-lockdown will put that into reverse. We went to Woburn and walked through the Duke of Bedford's deer park. If you look closely at the photograph above, you can see a beautiful stag near the tree. I couldn't get quite close enough to him to get a clear picture with my phone. 

My energy levels are low at the moment - possibly I haven't been sleeping enough this week, as I have been going to sleep too late then being woken by the alarm to take TG to school, possibly because my system is still dealing with the after effects of the flu vaccine. It seems to take very little to knock me back into the post-viral fatigue and brain fog loop I spend the first few months of the year stuck in. It isn't awful, but annoying. Yesterday I wilted and ran out of steam part way through our walk, and had to stop for a short while to get my breath back and my muscles co-operating again. I must remember to take a snack with me when we walk, in case I need an energy boost. I was very glad to reach the cafe and have something to eat and drink. We both had fish and chips, which were excellent. I occasionally meet a friend there, but it was M's first visit. We decided we would definitely be back once it reopens. 

In the evening we had our final live band rehearsal for the time being. I say rehearsal, but we actually spent most of the time recording Christmas music as we have had a couple of Christmas videos commissioned and will be doing a pre-recorded digital "concert" with a choir in December. I managed to get myself into a time squeeze, between trying to sort out some paperwork to do with the band's charity registration and cooking and eating dinner after TG's last dance class in the studio. Both her dance classes and band rehearsals will go back to Zoom for the next month. Due to being in a rush I managed to forget my mask - obviously we can't play in masks, but we have to wear them the rest of the time - so had to cover my face as best I could with a combination of my polo neck sweater and a woolly scarf. It was rather warm, despite being in a school hall on a cold night with the doors open for ventilation! 

Thursdays are an early-morning French day for TG, so we leave for school at 7.35am. It was a foggy morning and as I drove home the sun was glowing through the clouds. It was so atmospheric that I stopped the car just before I got home to take a couple of photographs. The fog soon cleared and it has been another cold but bright day. After a quiet spell we have some question writing work with a tight deadline, so I worked on archives this morning and checked M's questions this afternoon. I took a long lunch break though and we went for a walk in the woods. We knew it would be muddy after all the rain, but even so it was worse than we anticipated. Our walking boots are caked and will need a good clean before we use them again. I think we will avoid the woods for a while until they have dried out a bit from all the rain of the last few weeks. 

I just realised I forgot to mention the US presidential election. I have been following it closely, but it has been stuck in limbo for over 24 hours waiting for results. It looks as though Joe Biden has is going to win it - thankfully! - but also that Trump is going to try to game the results with tendentious lawsuits and it may be a while before there is a firm result. I hope for the sake of America and democracy that there will be a peaceful transfer of power, assuming that Biden is indeed the president-elect. 

[A note about photos ... Since Blogger updated itself recently the pre-set photo sizes have changed and the size I liked best has disappeared. I now seem to have a choice between a bit too small and a bit too big. I'm going to try the larger size - if the photos are overwhelming, please tell me in the comments.]