Blue Peter in the 80s and Marcus Rashford in the 20s

Never underestimate the power of Kids TV, as I attribute an awful lot of how I see the world today from being very bought into watching Blue Peter as often as I was able to.

I remember watching in utter disbelief as a child about the crisis in Kampuchea in 1988, I've had to rewatch a bit of it on YouTube to remember the details of the appeal as all that had stuck with me was that many people had died at the hands of Pol Pot's  cruel dictatorship and that the images of starving children had really upset me.  The amazing thing about Blue Peter back then (and from what I've seen from clips is still the case today) is that it communicated with children on a "grown up" level, explained the issues and importantly gave some empowerment that things could be changed for the better and showed them how they could help.  It was the 1988 Bring and Buy Sale Blue Peter Appeal.

In 1988 I was 8 and went to a small C of E Primary School in Kingston Upon Thames in cold Victorian buildings with separate outdoor toilet blocks that on at least one occasion froze in the winter.  The intake of children was quite mixed in pretty much every sense and reflecting back on the small school with only 6 classes to cover 7 years; I'm impressed at how the teachers managed to educate a wide range of abilities from the very precocious and bookish kids bumped up one or even two year groups to those struggling to keep on track with multiple challenges in their home lives. 

For a large portion of my life (probably until my early 30s) I struggled to make friends easily, but for at least 4 - 5 years at that school I had a firm group of friends (Sarah, Karen, James and Matthew).  We all watched Blue Peter and would talk about it the next day at school.  We were all affected by the news of the appeal and decided that we could do something about it and asked our teachers if we could do a cake sale to raise some money.  

I remember bits of the organising and the sale itself (the school secretary Mrs Browning in complete delight eating a rock cake) and from memory I think we raised around £40 which back then was more money than I think any of us could imagine having need to spend.  Later at secondary school we'd nominate a charity every term as a form and would raise money each term and again would always passionately have a sense of wanting to help others.  As lacking in self awareness I was as a child, I'm sure it wasn't just me who felt that way.

Blue Peter, along with other programmes such as Really Wild Show also started off my interest in nature, ecology and looking after the planet.  I even won a prize for a poem that I'd written about global warming when I was 11.  I had wonderful Grandparents on both sides who were also interested in nature and would take me on walks, tell me about birds and help me gain an interest in gardening.  My parents would also accommodate my geekiness when it came to birds and took me to various nature reserves and YOC events.  I won a pencil for knowing some bizarre fact about how much the average mute swan weighs.

I guess all these things helped me form my opinions as I grew up in the world.  As a child I was extremely fortunate, my parents always made sure that I was never hungry (well other than for my Nana's pickled onions or penny sweets and pic n mix!), I always had clothes that fitted me, I wasn't cold.  We lived for my first 14 years in an slightly extended Victorian two up two down end terrace house with a garden in Kingston.  To give an indiciation of how things have changed, I recently looked up on Zoopla and it's now estimated to be worth an eye watering c£750K whe it was sold by my parents for less than £100K in the mid 90s.  I was able to get a good education all the way up to studying English at the University of Leeds as well as attending a very good non fee paying state grammar school.  I check my privilege very regularly and recognise that the very comfortable and fulfilling life I have now is very much down to the good start that I was given in my childhood by my family and teachers.   

I am old enough to remember drinking a tiny bottle of full fat milk with a straw poked through the silver foil lid, although I also remember the disappointment when they were taken away.  I'm almost 100% sure I'd have never received a free school meal as a child, although I do have a vague recollection that we had some "family allowance" that we'd collect from the post office (I think this is going back over 30 years of memory now!)

I also remember when I went to secondary school the feeling of shame when I realised that in the state selected grammar school, in comparision to my previous primary schools I was at a from a much lower income point compared to many of my classmates.  I never wanted for anything as a child (except never getting the Al La Carte Kitchen I was desperate for!), but I was now head to head with girls (all girls school) who had very large houses with very well to do parents with better cars, holidays, clothes etc.  In general it was never an issue and the school was great at making us all feel empowered young women who could "achieve anything we chose should we choose to work hard enough", but I was bullied at times for living in a smaller house.  I remember when my parents were selling our house when I was 14 some of my "friends" found the listing in the paper and crossed out and added words such as "poky" and "rubbish" before putting it in front of me at registration to see how I'd react.  This isn't about trying to gain sympathy for the my previous self, but more a very tangible realisation that kids can be cruel and shame of income status is very hard for kids to overcome.  I don't think I'd have been strong enough to ask for help as a child if I was ever in a desperate situation and so I fear that the problem of kids living in poverty is probably far greater than we'll ever really know.

Rolling forward to the present day and I have seen so much debate and argument about the Free School Meals issue and I so firmly believe that whilst I absolutely expect and hope for every child to have parents who feed them, clothe them and bring them up to thrive.  I also know that not all of these children (or parents) have been afforded the privileges in life that I have and so sadly may be struggling.

School Uniform is encouraged to allow children to concentrate on learning and provide an even playing field for everyone attending school.  I appreciate it's not a perfect system, but it allows for a minimisation in shame and stigma of different incomes in the same year groups.  Why not have the same elimination of shame and stigma for free school meals?  I get that it might not be appropriate and indeed necessarly for many or indeed all children and in an ideal world most kids wouldn't need this, but it's 2020 and we are in the midst of a global pandemic.

We can demonise parents because either they read it in the newspaper or some friend of friend knows some parents with 5 kids who have a crack habit and a 50" telly, who gets fillers in their lips, their nails done weekly, fake tan, nice car, Sky TV, smokes etc etc and yet doesn't feed their kids properly.  I ask you, do you *actually* know this to be true?  Have you met this person, have you seen their bank statement?  Or is it just a convenient way to blame someone else because you've heard about it in the media?  And if any of those things *are* true, there is likely a (forgiveable) reason for them to be in that situation.   Typically people wouldn't choose this, but may have had a poor upbringing themselves, poor mental health, an abusive relationship there are so many reasons.  

Many people have massively struggled through difficult situations for years and still managed to "feed their kids", but I don't believe it's appropriate to see struggle as necessary a "rite of passage".  In the last 40 years we've made so many technological advances that it's easier than ever to access food, you can literally not move more than your hand and a smart phone and have food to your front door in a couple of hours, less if it's a takeaway.   I agree children deserve good parents, but those who haven't been blessed with them don't deserve to starve when we have so much more capability at our fingertips to solve poverty.  

I have read from an international food poverty charity website that there are 7 billion people in the world and we have enough food to feed 10 billion people so it's the most solvable problem in the world if we can just work together as humans.

Commenting about how "cheap" healthy food can be is incredibly patronising, we should focus on how to make healthy food accessible beyond price.  People on lower incomes are likely to be time poor as much as the are financially poor and may not have the resources to prepare a vegetable soup from scratch after a long shift at work.  Education on cooking and nutriton would be a good help, but like any problem it's about doing lots of different things regularly to eventually solve it, but right now families face the hardest few months as we go into winter with Covid restrictions and a recession.  At least free school meals help those hardest hit survive and those not hard hit live a little more comfortably.

If you have managed to get through this pandemic without losing a job, losing a family member or indeed losing control of your mental health you're doing well.  I know personally some people who have been unable to work since lockdown and because they maybe are self employed, but also had worked on zero hour PAYE contracts haven't been able to access any financial support.  I also know that not one friend has asked me to help them out with food etc (and I'd like to think I am approachable if anyone does need anything) I think that it is because as a society we are often too ashamed to ask for help and actually I know that to truly help some people you need to just do something without being asked.  

I see people copying and pasting messages on Facebook with lovely sentiments about "just privately message me if you need anything" but the reality is that they either haven't asked the direct question in private to those they are worried about, or indeed those who really do need help are far too proud to ever ask.  I don't like demonising this type of "social media awareness" as awareness and normalisation of things this way can be useful, but slactivism is one of my frustrations with the world.  The feeling that you're doing "something" by sharing a post so you don't need to donate money/time/care to the actual cause.  

I don't claim to be perfect, I'm sure I could be accused of woke virtue signalling if I share a donation link, or talk about things that I'm doing to help, but I do it in part selfishly because I enjoy helping and feeling like I am making a difference.  I also try and help because I'm grateful that I'm in a position to be helping and not needing help.  Is sharing and retweeting the Marcus Rashford campaign posts slactivism - I'm not sure as I think at least normalising the fact that people need help 7 months into a global pandemic is going to help proud parents make their lives easier to be able to feed their children.  I have really liked the interactive map produced where people can access free school meals during half term from hospitality venues, charities and local authorities - this is definitely social media for good and will have a  knock on (secondary) positive effect of publicity for those establishments.  It's just disappointing that they are having to step in.

"But what about Universal Credit" this one has me feeling a bit torn.  I like the idea of people having financial literacy and independence to be able to manage their finances and rather than the old system it seems like this should help them, however I know a few anecdotal stories of where it falls down for both the claimant when delays push them further into financial difficulties, but also for us all as housing associations estimated that it would cost an additional £10 per tenant per year to collect the arrears generated by this new "method".  Watching I, Daniel Blake will give you some insights of the complexities and flaws in this system if it is something you are not familiar with.

I have close friends who when they grew up had parents having to rely on food parcels because of miners strikes (an alien concept to me as a child growing up in Greater London, it was just something that I watched on Newsround, it didn't seem *real*), friends who had to use free school meals which just about kept them topped up during difficult times.  All who I know of these friends are now very successful and contribute to society, I'm sure there may be more who I meet in adult life that may not be comfortable talking about what they might have gone through.  None of them seem to desire for anyone to have to "suffer" because they had to.

Some (mostly baby boom) generation seem to think that kids need to pipe down as they've never had it so "easy".  I would counter that "easy" is relative and not necessarily the reality for all kids certainly.  Kids now have never know a world without technology, WIFI, Smartphones and Social Media and have far more access and instant gratification.  I was bullied at school, but I could come home and go to my room and read a book and be safe, Kids don't have the luxury now.  I felt fat and ugly as a young child and teenager and I was comparing myself against at most probably 150 girls my age; Instagram magnifies this to millions of constant comparisions, filtered images, I bet no girl finds it easy to feel confident in her own skin until she's much older - it took me to be in my 30s!  And now there is Covid, yes I'm sure rationing, war babies etc had it hard, but those that remember are few these days as to be around 10 years old when war ended you'd be in your mid 80s now and I think most of the "complainents" of the "kids have it easy" theory are in their 60s and 70s mostly.   Many have been retired on decent pensions since their 50s and may even live long enough to have fewer years of work than they do of non work through pension.  I'm not sure anyone of my generation or younger will have the luxury.

I've got lots more to say, but this is now at least a week in the making and it's now becoming out of context, so I'll leave on one consideration.

Children don't choose to be born, if you consider yourself in anyway pro life/pro children or just not an awful human being, make sure you support initiatives to feed children, they don't get to choose their parents, but we can choose to look after them.

Not so Isolation Journal 132

Annoyingly I woke up at 6.30am and my alarm was set for 7.10am and so I didn't fall back to sleep again and we'd been up until around 1am looking at our childhood vaccination records online.

I went into the office again today for the morning, Alan is still uncomfortable with me going into the office with Covid cases rising, I find I'm constantly torn because I do feel that the office is very much as Covid safe as it could be and I feel less cluttered and more focussed when I'm around colleagues, but I totally get that it feels very unsettling in terms of the fact Leeds it currently Tier 2.

I had a meeting with colleagues, did a handover and caught up with people and then headed back home shortly after 12.20pm and it took me around 30 mins to get back.  I wanted to be back to see how Alan had got on at the nurse appointment, but it wasn't hugely productive.  She just looked in his ear.  I had some carrot and coriander soup and a pannini for lunch and logged back on .  We did a BD session and I managed to clear around 250 emails, but had 400 to get through and I've got a load more stuff to get through, it's relentlessly busy again.  I also had a last minute client meeting with 3 clients at a company which was pretty useful.

I booked the first week in November off as leave and signed up and paid for an Arvon Course which I'm really looking forward to.  I have also ordered a book by each of the tutors Wild by Jay Griffiths and Addlands by Tom Bullough They are both more nature and landscape, which isn't directly relevant to my novel, but is something that I'm really interested in.

I ran a candidate search until around 8pm and Alan made dinner which was pulled chicken burgers and I then had 2 ice lollies.  

We watched Taskmaster and tried to go to bed a bit earlier.

Isolation Journal 131

I woke up later than I'd hoped today, messed around on my phone for too long, but did manage to read around 50 pages of Girl Woman Other and then got up and made some scrambled eggs on toast for a late breakfast.  

I had just enough time to go for a quick 30 minute run and noticed that my right knee is a bit sore, but at least my Garmin now has my training status now as "improving".  My friend Hannah rang me whilst I was out for a run, but I had to ring her back later!

I then very quickly showered and signed onto a crafternoon zoom call with my friends Alix, Sam and Hayley a few minutes past 1pm.  Jenny also joined us a bit later.  I started work on a babygrow for my friend who has had a baby called Willow and started to make a Willow embroidery on it.  We chatted away for hours and I suggested we could try and get a Goat to join us for our call, but unfortunately even though the booking went through for £5.99, they didn't spot our booking and the goat didn't make it.

I messaged Hannah after the crafting and had a catch up and then after that call I went to do some tidying of the kitchen and sorting out of my kombucha that has turned into vinegar, took out the recycling, got scared when a mouse Alan had put in the bin started rustling around (clearly not dead).  I made some carrot and coriander soup and also made as start on a Hello Fresh recipe for tea, but fast concluded that the pork that went off 2 days ago was definitely not edible and so I made orzo pasta instead and used up some onions, mossarella and courgettes.

We watched Taskmaster and then also ate lots of crumble.

Isolation Journal entry 130...but definitely missed at least 2 weeks!

Today I woke up really early as I needed to drop my car off to York Audi for a service at 8.15am so my alarm went off at 7.10am and I left about half an hour later having fed the cats, eaten a banana and drunk a coffee and made one to go.  I also cleared out my boot in the hope they might clean it (I later discovered they aren't valeting cars at the moment due to Covid)

I listened to "With me Now as I drove and I was about 3 or 4 minutes late, but the traffic wasn't too bad  at least and I'd taken "Girl Woman Other" to read as well as my phone to entertain me.  I dropped off the key and the chap was wearing a mask and sat behind a screen and pointed out a socially distanced area to myself to wait, but I suspect it wasn't all that well sanitised as there was spilt and dried up coffee all over the table.

I noticed after over an hour my car hadn't moved and the chap explained that it was because the workshop entrance was blocked, it did eventually go in about 10am and so I went for a walk around the Clifton Moor escape with an idea I might go to Costa for a coffee.  It was a 20 minute walk and I listened to an audible book that I'm using for research for my novel Don't you Know Who I Am? when I got closer I popped on my mask again and had a look and there was a queue out of the door for both Costa and Greggs and as York is Tier 2 alert level I decided not to risk it and walked back to the dealership, but dialled into the weekly parkrun "Virtual Opposite" call and caught up with people which was lovely.  I saw my car return and my battery was down to 10% so I left the call and after a few minutes I was able to get my car back.  I picked up some bad news that one of my close friend's husband has come down with Covid and is having to self isolate with the family, it's really not what they need after a stupidly challenging 18 months.  I hope they are doing ok.

The car passed it's first MOT with a small advisory on corrosion on brake discs which Alan had told me to expect as it's been sat on the driveway a lot and not moving.  I drove back and let Alan know I was on my way and called my Mum and Dad for a catch up.  I got back in time to eat a very odd lunch of an almond croissant, cinanmon swirl, left over kebab and curly fries from last night and also a rocket lolly - I definitely need to eat better food!

We watched the first episode of the new series of Taskmaster which genuinely had me crying with laughter during the "egg" challenge - watch it you will thank me!

I had to nip out for my Drive Through Flu Jab and time it so I arrived at exactly 2.07pm and it was literally a drive through where I showed my letter, was given a token, put on my mask, drove to a tent, wound down the window and without a moment to prepare jabbed in the arm!  It was certainly efficient!

I got home and watched the rest of Taskmaster and then fell asleep on the sofa and watched some Great British Bakeoff.

Alan cooked sausage and mash and cherry crumble for dinner which was really delicious.  and we watched more Taskmaster and then when he had a bath I watched some Extra Slice.

Not so Isolation Journal - Managing to use our wedding gift Yurt stay...

The past 2 weeks have been quite exhausting with work and so I've struggled to keep things up to date, but I wanted to properly document a lovely trip away that we had to Swaledale Yurts.

When we got married last September, Alan's lovely work colleagues had bought us a few lovely gifts including a voucher for a 2 night stay at Swaledale Yurts as well as a voucher for a meal at The Ivy and a voucher for Alfresco Adventures.  In February we got organised and booked in things like the meal and booked our yurt stay for June not thinking for a minute we would end up where we are now.  Swaledale very kindly moved our booking back in June to October and we were booked for a Friday and Saturday night and had confimed our included hot tub session for 9pm on the first night.

Being more organised than usual the weekend before I'd checked the website for Swaledale and seen that there was a shared kitchen and bathroom facilities, but that you could have hot evening meals and breakfast delivered to your Yurt and you could also order packed lunches if you wanted to.  We decided to order for the Friday evening two portions of steak stew with dumplings and then two shepherds pies for the Saturday night.  I ordered croissants for breakfast for Alan and a bacon baguette for me and a cafitiere of coffee and two orange juices for both mornings.  I emailed our orders over, but on Thursday I'd not had an email back which was unusual so I'd emailed again and had a phonecall straight away from Michelle (one of the owners) to confirm the food was all fine and booked us in for 7pm for our evening meal.

I packed the night before because I knew that my work was going to be full on for Friday and that we'd need to leave at 5pm as it was only 70 miles away, but through lots of cross country roads and estimated around 1 hour 40 to drive to Keld.

We ended up leaving slightly later than planned as I had so much to finish off at work and we didn't have a chance to stop at Wetherby Services for drive through coffee and the sat nav had our ETA at 7pm so it was tight!

Alan drove us up the A1 and then we ended up heading past Catterick Garrison and through loads of windy and hilly roads (I was pleased he was driving, especially as it started to get dark).  We had no mobile phone signal for around 40 minutes, so I couldn't even ring up to let Swaledale know that we might be a few minutes late.

It was just about on time when we arrived (about two minutes past 7pm, very grateful for an accurate sat nav and postcode) and Michelle met us and told us that she'd taken our dinner out of the oven in case it burned.  She pointed out where our Yurt was which was the furthest away from the main barn (and the best location in my opinion!) and it was the blue yurt.  Alan parked up the car and we unpacked and the yurt was lovely and warm with an electric heater plugged in to warm us up.

Moments later our dinner was delivered and it didn't necessarily look as we'd expected - two very substantially sized pyrex dishes with stew and 4 chunky cheesy dumplings on top and they were delicious!  Warming on a cold and rainy night and very flavourful.  I didn't know if I'd be able to finish all of it, but we both did!  We'd brought a bottle of fizz with us, but I'd not spotted we'd need a bottle opener so Alan had to use my nail scissors to dig out the cork and we enjoyed slightly corky sweet fizz out of white mugs.

We set up the bed for the night as there were two single beds with additional beds underneath that you could move next to the single bed to make a double.  There was also a sofa as well as a dining table, 5 chairs a coffee and tea making area ledge, a small fridge and a boot tray.

We then got ready for our hot tub and put our swimming costumes on and some clothes and head torches before heading to the hot tub near the barn.  It was very dark and remote and we got out of our clothes and into the hot tub and Alan turned on the jets.  It's worth mentioning that it felt very Covid secure as there were loads of hand sanitiser points everywhere and lots of space, so even though some of the facilities were shared, we didn't feel worried at all and everything was kept very clean.

Spending nearly the full 90 minutes in the hot tub we listened to the water jets in the hot tub and the waterfall next to the site and watched the stars in the very dark sky.  It was also fun to watch the cars driving along the windy road and their headlights bumping up and down.  

Getting out of the hot tub and was really cold!  We got dressed again quickly and headed back to the Yurt and got into our warm pjamas and tried to get the DVD player working on my laptop, but it wasn't working and so we watched a bit of The Terminal and put a log on the little log burner inside the cabin we were really warm so I turned off the heater and until the morning we were warm enough.

The alarm went off just before 8am the next morning so that I could be awake to take in our delicious breakfast delivery which came on a tray.  Alan enjoyed the croissants that smelled delicious and came with plenty of butter and jam and I ate a white baguette with bacon and lots of ketchup and HP sauce.  The coffee was good and the orange juice made it feel less unhealthy (i.e. at least we had a fruit involved).

It was pouring with rain and so running to the toilet was a mission and it was nice to be cosy back in the yurt listening to the rain thumping down on the roof.  We had a nice after breakfast nap and then woke up and it was stil raining so we opened up the new game I'd bought a few weeks ago and played Sagrada which took us a little while to work out the rules, but was suprisingly quick to pick up and became very addictive.  

As it was still raining hard, we planned our walking time for later that afternoon to avoid getting too wet and so had some cheese, bread and jam and crisps for lunch.  At 2pm the rain had finally calmed down.  We took a look at the maps provided in the guest book and took some photos and headed off up hill first crossing a bridge to admire the strong flowing water that was going behind our yurt.  

We were roughly following one of the routes in the guest book in the Yurt, but in case we got off course we used my Garmin watch to navigate with really good GPS which allows the "navigate to start option" as with no map, compass or working mobile phones we wanted a back up option.  

The first bit of the walk was really steeply up hill and some cyclists giggled as they spotted a rather aggressive 4x4 car ground out on the road.  We took the footpath and walked the ridge behind the yurt site and enjoyed some lovely sunshine as it broke through the clouds.  We didn't pass too many people in the first part although did pass a larger group of people walking all drinking lager and playing music as they walked and then got to a waterfall section with a bench where more people were drinking Red Stripe next to the river.  

It started to rain a little as we walked on and we passed an abandoned building that I had a look in and also an old tractor that was part of the landscape after many years.   After getting to a point where there was a totally stunning waterfall that almost looked manmade we decided to go back the way we'd come in case the rain got heavier.   

On the other side of a ridge we thought we'd spotted a railway track, but when we took a slightly different route back to Keld we discovered it was this strange path, maybe used by a quarry?  It was really steep!

We got back to the Yurt and decided to check out the private waterfall behind the bunk barn and it was really loud and powerful!

It was around 4 miles in total and I tracked it onto Strava

We settled back into the Yurt and got out of our damp clothes and warmed up and then at 7pm our next dinner arrived - delicious shepherds pie, it doesn't look like much, but was completely delicious!  

I had some red wine to go with it and also heated up apple juice in the communal kitchen for hot apple brandy and dialled into a zoom call for the launch party of a fellow parkrunner George Webster's short film S.A.M. (I had to watch it later as it was a bit hard with little WIFI or phone signal) and I also went back a bit later to heat up milk for hot chocolate although tragically discovered the hot chocolate tin I'd packed in actual fact contained loose tea!

We put a couple of logs onto the fire to keep us warm and went to bed and had a lovely night of sleep.

In the morning it was lovely blue skies and I got up to use the bathroom before coming back to have breakfast that again was delivered to our yurt door.  We had the same as the day before with croissants, a bacon baguette, coffee and orange juice.  

Realising that there was another way of looking at the waterfall, we went around the front of it and it was even more stunning with the sunny morning and hopefully if we ever go back in the summer, we'd be able to do some wild swimming if it's not too powerful!

We paid the bill including an extra log for the fire (you get one complimentary log per night and then it's £3 per extra log) and were really pleased that our voucher had included not only the evening meals, but also a few other bits and so there wasn't as much to pay as we'd anticipated.

I came to the conclusion over the weekend that sometimes in a very stressful and increasingly digital world a bit of time away from phone signal and constant information is really good for my stress levels and mental health.  I thought about Maslow's hierachy of needs and weirdly even though you'd think being further up and having all needs satified would be ideal, it was actually nice to have to focus on the more basic needs of keeping warm and dry for a bit  I also think that the smells of grass, bracken and the outdoors do something to my brain that really calms me.  It was a happy coincidence to be there on World Mental Health Day  

It would have been a different experience to visit in June, we could most certainly have gone swimming, but the Autumn has a special feel to it and it also reminds me of when Alan & I first got together and had our first glamping trip to a tree lodge at Swinton Bivouac.  

Swaledale Yurts has extremely good tripadvisor reviews and I can definitely see why, I really hope that we get a chance to visit again at some point.

Isolation Journals 123, 124, 125, 126, 127, 128

 So I've got a bit out sync, I'll try and summarise....

123 - Friday - Work was busy, Rachel was on holiday, I persuaded Alan to go out for a walk at lunch to pick up my prescription and it was windy, when we got back onto Whitecote Lane we found a tree that had fallen down and blocked the road and one of the trees in Andy and Becci's paddock was also losing a branch so I had to call North Yorkshire County Council to report and sort out the tree in the road.  I managed to finish work just in time to walk down to the Thack and pick up some Fish and Chips for dinner before they go on holiday.  It was windy, but I chatted to my Mum and Dad as I walked.

124 - Saturday - I woke up fairly late and then put my running stuff on and wrote a letter in reply to my Aunty Alison and Ron who had sent me and Alan an Anniversary card and I posted it on my run.  I took an epic photo of Maya looking like she'd written a disapproving letter.   Alan made orzo pasta for a very late lunch and then after I'd had a bath we went out for a walk and then he made a rice pudding which we had for "tea" and then we went to bed.

125 - Sunday - Another late rising and I mostly faffed around before deciding to go for a run and I wanted to do over 10K and so I did and managed a reasonable time.  We then had another late lunch, I made Korean Tacos and then had a bath and tidied up the house and mopped the floor whilst Alan went out for a run.  

126 - Monday - I'd negotiated with Alan to go into the office for the morning as he is uncomfortable with me being there the whole day and so I went in for the morning, only drank water that I'd brought with me and we have a one way system and lots more sanitiser.  It felt safe, but I went back at lunchtime and logged on from home and finished off another very busy day.  My extra beer 52 delivery arrived.

127 - Tuesday - worked from home all day, made waffles and scrambled eggs for lunch and in the evening some meatballs and spaghetti for tea and had a couple of beers and then we went for a walk in the dark along Whin Lane.

128....Will catch up tomorrow!

Isolation Journal 122

I woke up reasonably eearly, but was pretty groggy and it took me a while to get going, although I was logged on at 8.30am   I had crumpets with marmite and 2 coffees for breakfast.  We had a meeting at 9am to discuss working from home v. the office and then a seminar with housing finance professionals via MS Teams.

I managed to catch up with a bit of work, but I'm still not on top of things.  I updated the forecast which is looking a bit better and certainly brings us further forward than we have been.  

I didn't have time for lunch other than grabbing the packed lunch that I'd made from Tuesday evening and it was salad with a pepperarmi and a scotch egg and I had some kombucha that I'd forgotten about.  I then did a quick open demo on the new system on the reports function that was useful.

My flowers from Arena Flowers arrived after lunch so I had a 10 minute break to empty the old flowers and arrange the new ones which were chrysanthemums with some jazzy purple foliage.  They look cheerful.

I then powered through with work, picked up 2 new jobs and arranged a meeting, helped Rachel put a booking on and talked about referrals with Katie and booked a candidate meeting and confirmed people to come to the charity webinar next week.

I finished at about 6.30pm and Alan had made a Hello Fresh Pasta dish for tea and then I ate it and logged onto Zoom for the guide meeting which was fun as we had a guest speaker which was a lady called Rosemary and her Guide dog Una, it was really eye opening to hear about her experience and how actually she said it's good if people ask if a blind person needs help as especially at the moment people are keeping their distance. Una has her own facebook page!

I then went out for a run up and down the drive as I didn't do a great deal of moving around either yesterday or today and I ran just over 5K and my training status is now unproductive apparently.

I then had a tidy up of the kitchen and the dining room, ran a bath and chatted to Lauren who is on a writing holiday by herself in Margate and ended up bumping into someone she'd been on 2 dates which twice who was also on a holiday there to write!

Isolation Journal 121

I woke up at 7am with a plan to go to work, but Alan was really nervous about me going based on how poorly he was and how likely he thought that it would be that I'd pick up Covid and the annoucements from last night, so in the end I worked from home and had an extremely busy day.  I had cornflakes and coffee for breakfast and started work at 8am.

I started off with processing some emails and catching up with Rachel on my handover, I then had a meeting with the internal audit colleague to help him sell a retained process.  I then had a number of calls to catch up with Katie and then a number of candidates.  Alan made aubergine and miso tacos for lunch that were delicious.  We then had a meeting about some of the learns that we'd made from the new system and then I prepped for my meeting with my client about the shortlist and the videos that I'd made.  The meeting went well and we shortlisted 3 candidates for interview next week. One of the trustees was in his camper van in a field.

The map I ordered for Alan's Anniversary present arrived and also we had Hello Fresh arrive today.

I had a discussion with my boss about the debate on how, who, when people in the team should be in the office, I'm really nervous about it.

It was really rainy today and I debated going out for a run, but I've had a really heavy chest, sore throat and this evening I've felt really tired and a bit dizzy, I'm hoping that it passes quickly.

I worked unti 8.30pm and then had dinner with Alan who I was relieved cooked again and made a very tasty spicy soup and I came down to eat it and we watched Dave on TV and then I carried on doing more work mostly writing adverts and processing a few emails.

It's now past midnight, I'm exhausted and should probably go to bed...

Isolation and Not so Isolation Journals 116, 117, 118, 119 and 120

116 - Friday was a whirlwind, Rachel was back from holiday and I had a short period of time to quickly handover with her before another call at 9am to discuss additional Covid protocols in the office and then I had another interview with a candidate and then a very busy day prepping for not being around for 2 days next week.  I had a catch up with Katie and Rachel for my handover and then I finally finished up around 9pm having had to upload all the CVs for my retainer and send all the links for the Hinterviews.  I also had a dilemna about what to do with a particular role, but I came up with a workable solution in the end thankfully.  We then had a late dinner of takeaway Chinese which did take ages to arrive and then I was very tired and went to bed after I think watching some more Dave on TV.  I also eventually managed to finally order a present for him at last and ordered a personalised OS map (paper!) centred on where we got married at North Shire.

117 - Saturday - we woke up and Alan decided to tell me that we had to go and "collect" my anniversary present from somewhere in South Yorkshire, so we had some coffee and some quick cereal and set off and he drove down the A1 and eventually after a guessing game I managed to guess Worksop as where we were going.  We got there after around an hour and he'd sponsored an area of woodland for me at Hannah Park via the Woodland Trust which was a lovely present.  We wondered around and found the patch that was dedicated and it was a lovely place with lots of different types of trees and birds and lots of people walking their dogs.  Amusingly as we walked towards the entrance there was a friendly little dog that kept saying hello and I was almost convinced that Alan had adopted it for me!  We drove back home and then had a relax at home with an idea that I wanted us to head back to Eccup Resevoir where we ran our first "date" 5 years ago.  We got there fairly late on in the afternoon, but had estimated we'd have enough time to be able to get around before sunset and we just about managed it with a jog walk around the 4 miles.   We got home and then I made tea which was a Hello Fresh spicy veggie coconut curry soup and I also prepped some of the very many apples that our neighbour Anna had kindly given us for the Apple and Roasted Garlic chutney  I then tidied as much as I could and organised things for travelling to North Shire tomorrow after making 5 litres of the chutney and putting it all in jars - it was past 1am by the time that I came to bed.  I cleaned the fridge so that I could ask our neighbour who was feeding the cats to put the milk away for us.  

118 - Sunday - I woke up at a reasonable time and spent a good chunk of time tidying and cleaning the house after packing and we set off to drive to Bempton Cliffs and I drove in Alan's car.  It's not far, but lots of slow winding roads and took us over an hour and a half to get there.  The weather was calm, but not too sunny or windy and we strolled along the edges of the cliffs and saw a fisherman who had scaled down the cliffs to fish, lots of gannets and a potential seal (fortuantely we'd brought the binoculours this time!) we stopped off and I had a sandwich and Alan some millionaires shortbread (he was disappointed that it was vegan) and a couple of teas and then Alan drove us to North Shire and we arrived just after 4.30pm.  We walked straight to Hagrids and the key was in the lock for us and we settled in and ended up cooking some pizza for tea, drinking the champagne that my work colleagues all bought for us when we got engaged.  We watched Dave and started a very hard 1000 piece jigsaw puzzle which was extremely tricky!

119 - Monday - the weather was lovely when we woke up and we made breakfast which took a while in the convection oven - we baked sausage and black pudding for about an hour and ate it with tiger bread and BBQ sauce outside and enjoyed the lovely sunny day that wasn't quite as warm as our actual wedding was exactly a year ago.  I wanted to go for a run and suggested I could do that whilst Alan had a bath, but then I'd also suggested that we visited Runswick Bay as we'd never been in any of the times that we'd visited North Shire and so we drove out and it was only about 13 minutes drive.  We found a car park that unfortunately had a broken card machine and so we put all the coins I had into the machine and got an hour, but we weren't sure if that would be enough, luckily I spotted that you could use the Ringo app to pay and we took a picture in case we needed more time.  It's a really stunning beach although a good steep walk down, and quiet as no busy shops or food stalls and so we walked along paddling in the sea and looked at the rock pools and saw different seaweed, anemones, little fish, crabs and later on Oystercatchers.  We then moved inland so that Alan could sit and sort out the parking and spotted a load of rocks that had fossils in them, we tapped away and found some great ammonites and also found some fools gold.  We then started to head back up the beach and spotted a crack next to a water fountain and a chap told us that it was 300 steps up to the top, so we climbed up the cliff path and looked at the stunning view.  We then had to top up the parking again and headed back up to the car.  Once we got to the car I was craving fish and chips, but couldn't find any on the way although we did stop at a COOP and I grabbed salad leaves, lollies, drinks and raspberries and it was the first proper shop I'd been in ages and no one was doing the one way system right!  We got to the fish and chips place I'd found on the map, but it was closed, but Alan spotted it on Just Eat and so we decided to try and order later.  We got back and it was still lovely and warm and we bumped into the new manager and had a chat about how business had been for them in the past few months and the fact that they weren't doing a pick a pumpkin patch again this year as it was too stressful last year!  I went for a run and explored a few of the little public footpaths and found that the road wasn't too good to run along, but managed to clear 4 miles in a decent time and then got in the lovely copper bath for a relax and Alan ordered us fish and chips for delivery.  We did more work on the jigsaw and then ate fish and chips outside, the peacocks were after me and I managed to spill the gravy and peas on the floor and Alan had to keep chasing them away!  We had some nice pink Moet with our dinner and watched the sunset and then went inside to watch a DVD - Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey and then move Dave and struggled with the light on the jigsaw puzzle before I rested on the sofa and started to fall asleep.

120 - Tuesday - we had planned to walk up Roseberry Topping today, but Alan woke up with ear ache and feeling rubbish so we relaxed at Hagrid and I tidied up, packed and had breakfast and then at 11am we checked out and I drove us home as Alan wasn't feeling good and didn't even eat breakfast.  It took about an hour and 40 mins to get home and at one point an angry Network Rail van driver beeped and gestured at me as I stopped at a roundabout before driving on!  When we got back we unpacked and Alan went almost straight away up to bed for the rest of the day.  I tidied and unpacked and then dealt with a few work bits whilst watching The Social Dilemma which was really though provoking and made me turn off a lot of my notificatios.   I then went for a run - I had time and daylight so I decided to do 10k which I managed in 53 mins and 9 seconds which is probably the fastest all year and I then decided to run for a full hour and managed nearly 7 miles.  I managed to listen to a further 1 hour of the Wind Up Bird Chronicles and only have 2 hours to go!  I'm behind by about 7 miles from my 1000 mile target so I'm hoping I can catch up over the next few days/weeks.  I came back and had a bath and read some more of Fabulous and only have 1 story left to go.  I bottled some more Kombucha and watched the 8pm speech from the Prime Minister which is a bit odd as now he's saying if you can work from home to work from home, so I'm not sure what the means for me, although our company line is that we work better in offices so to try and continue to be in the office, so I'm going in tomorrow, much to Alan's frustration.  I made a jacket potato and salad for dinner and ate it watching Great British Bake Off and made some lunch for tomorrow and found bugs living in the tiger bread and so had to throw that out.  I'd managed to get Alan to eat some strawberries, raspberries and cream, but he's still feeling poorly.

Isolation Journal 115

I woke up before my alarn and so did a bit of reading of Fabulous and then got up and made breakfast of apple, granola and yoghurt and had a couple of coffees. 

We had a public sector call and then I had another call with the tenders team and then I had lots of calls with candidates and a couple of video interviews.  I also watched the recording of our CEO with a business update.

Alan and I then snuck out at lunch for 30 minutes for a walk and to pick some elderberries.  I then had another interview at 2pm and so then I moved onto more candidate calls and catch ups and quickly made pasta and grated cheese.

I finished work literally at 6.50pm with about 10 minutes to find all the stuff I needed to organise for Guides, Gemma had helpfully set up the zoom call with our guiding licence.  We did a meeting on lockdown bingo and then a skills builder on express myself about being deaf friendly.

I then made tea which was more complicated than I'd though a beefburger and chicken bulgogi Hello Fresh receipe.  I also bottled some more Kombucha and made one bottle with mint and one with elderberries and one plain and boiled more sweet tea to add to the batch.

I then did more work and watched more Dave on TV.

Isolation Journal 114

 Woke up ok, apple, yoghurt and granola for breakfast.  A busy morning of calls and emails and doing some more video screening.  I also had a few internal chats about the issue from yesterday as well and had 2 coffees, Alan didn't sleep very well.

I had a very late lunch and made a stir fry out of chicken and veg from the veg box and it was nice and I arranged for my car MOT whilst I was cooking inbetween listening to the Archers.

I finished work and a very long interview/client meeting at around 7pm and then went out for a run and went up to Sherburn, then down back via the BP garage and back round through the fields about 4 miles in total and reasonably fast in 34 minutes.

I had a bath and then Alan made haloumi chicken shwarma for tea and then we watched lots of cricket and I did more work and we watched some more comedy on Dave.

I meant to go to bed earlier, but it's not happened, I did eat 2 lollies though.

Isolation Journal 113

I haven't even left the house today!  I got up with a huge stress headache, made some breakfast and signed on for work and then decided to have some ibuprofen with all my vitamins.  I had apple, granola and yoghurt for breakfast and 2 coffees.

I had a busy morning of doing interviews and a bit more admin and realised it was past 2pm before thinking about lunch so then Alan made some waffles and a couple of fried eggs.  I cracked on with a load more work and am not close to being caught up and also had some internal patch politics to discuss.  I had a meeting with a client about an issue that I had to sort out which wasn't the best end to the day, but then I had an offer for another candidate so it sort of balanced itself out.

I finally finished work around 7pm and cooked dinner - a hello fresh pasta and butternut squash and serrano ham recipe and then I logged onto the chalk the sun reading group and shared a piece of writing that I'd done at the "How to write that novel" workshop, generally they weren't grabbed by the first page I'd written in the exercise, but they did like the blurb.  They shared some other pieces which was really nice to listen to and also mentioned that they'll be meeting again on the first Saturday for an exercise.

I then spent ages talking to Alan about my story and we came up with a few ideas of how to shape everything and a few devices.  I'm trying to work out the characters as it's hard to not write about yourself.

I then ate some cheese and chutney whilst Alan had a bath.

Isolation Journal 112

I got woken up pretty early as my phone buzzed as the delivery from Pets at Home was to be delivered at 7.30am, I managed to get them to update the delivery to just leave it at the door rather than ring the doorbell.

I got up and brought it all in and also the Hello Fresh and accidentally managed to split open the 10kg of food.  I opened the boxes and took out the trays of cat food, cat urine remover, litter tray and also the water fountain.  Breakfast was homemade kombucha and 2 coffees and yoghurt, apple and granola.

I got logged on in plenty of time to help Nic with a query and get ready for the morning meeting at 9am.  It's been a very busy day of relentless admin and organising and things breaking or not sending on the system.  I didn't get a chance to eat lunch until past 2pm and I made pasta, cheese and a corn on the cob and had a packet of skips afterwards.  

I had a very long day and finally signed off around 8pm after Alan had been for a run and cooked dinner as I'd had an extended conversation with a colleague in my team over a lot of things that perhaps haven't been communicated as they could have been.

I had dinner - paprika chicken Hello Fresh and then I did a bit more work and then finally at 9.30pm went out to run up and down the hill outside and didn't see anyone all day other than Alan and Andy from number 1 walking Bentley.  I ran 31 minutes and just over 3.3 miles.

I came back in and had an ice lolly and got hooked into watching Don't tell the Bride.  

Isolation Journal 111

We ended up going to bed late as I'd spent a lot of time ordering stuff for the kittens like a new water fountain, litter tray and food.

I woke up this morning at around 8.30am and then couldn't properly get back to sleep and so was quite tired, we got up just past 9.30am and had some apple pancakes for breakfast and I went to feed Fudge and Smudge as Alan was cooking.  

We decided to take a trip to Spurn Point - we'd discussed it last week and were too sore/tired/late, but this week felt like a better plan.  It is 72 miles away and so we went in Alan's car so he felt more comfortable and I packed up some apples and snack bars for the journey along with coffee and water and the covid supplies (hand santiser, masks and wipes)  Alan stopped on the way for fuel at a Sainsburys in Hessle and then when we arrived at Spurn Point realised he was missing his wallet.  We searched all over and he paused his cards, but we couldn't find it and I couldn't call the store to check so we decided to explore Spurn Point and call back on the way home and hope we'd find it, but it wasn't the anxiety that we needed for the calmer day we were trying to have.

We paid for parking (£5 for the day) and then walked to the visitors centre to go to the toilet and look for potential binoculours because that was the other thing we forgot which was a real shame as we definitely spotted seals off the coast and it would have been amazing to watch them.  We could have bought some there, but the cheapest on offer were £119 and they aren't renting them as I'm guessing they might usually for obvious reasons.

We wandered along the beach and it was nice to smell the sea air and listen to the waves.  Spurn Point is quite different to anywhere I've been before, as Alan pointed out it looked a bit Mediterrean and it could be the light or the plants that were around, but I definitely saw what he meant.  Alan described how there was a road to the Lighthouse at the end of the penisula which is about 4 miles long and could be driven along, but in recent years the road has been eroded and is quite broken and twisted at points.  You could get a quad bike along it, but much more would be hard!  We saw little sea birds and seals off the shore and some cool wind farms and it was just lovely and peaceful and we must have walked around 6K in total and I wished I'd remembered to put some sun lotion on as it was really sunny.  We saw at one point a place to shelter if you got cut off in high tide and a man asked us to take a picture of him, he'd been running along the road.  I asked a volunteer/employee who was pushing his bike along the shore if we were likely to have seen seals and he said it would be hard not to see them.  

We walked back to the visitor centre and we drinks (diet coke and coke) and I had a lemonade lolly and I bought Alan a vanilla ice cream.  Alan seems happier with the idea of trying to book a little break in the UK for us in November, self catered and only 2 different locations, but that should give us some ideas at least.  

We drove back home via the Sainsburys petrol station and I went in to ask if Alan's wallet had been handed in and fortunately it had, they asked for ID, but I pointed out that was his ID and they gave it to me.  

I then did the rest of the drive home which wasn't too bad and I asked Alan to see if the Fish and Chip shop would be open when we got home and it was!  I jumped into my car and drove to Sherbun and recycled my tetrapaks and then parked outside The Fish Bank and ordered 2 lots of fish and chips and I had mushy peas with mine and Alan had gravy and I ordered an extra battered sausage - today has been a naughty day for food!   We bumped into Chris and Kirsty who had enjoyed their holiday and gave us a bottle of gin to say thanks for feeding Fudge and Smudge.

We ate Fish and Chips and Alan made hot apple brandy and put Deadpool on to watch, but I couldn't get into it at all so we ended up watching some comedy instead.  The milkman (Who was a woman today, so clearly a milk person is a better name!) came this evening because the normal chap is away on holiday.

I then vacuumed, washed the floors, tidied and cleaned the kitchen and set off the dishwasher.

I came up and logged to sort some work emails and to do lists and I hope I'll have a productive day tomorrow.

Isolation Journal 110

We woke up late and had a lazy morning in bed before getting up and watching the Film "Big Daddy" whilst eating takeaway from last night - I had pizza and the curly fries and I make Alan's leftover kebab meat into a wrap.  I made sure to feed Fudge and Smudge and Maya and Qubit first. 

Alan watched some Formula 1 stuff upstairs and then did some study, I mostly played Clash of Clans on my phone and then tidied up the kitchen, did 2 loads of washing and put the dry washing away, changed the sheets on the bed and then went and harvested the potatoes in the garden before taking the recycling out.  I ordered 3 pairs of tights from Snag Tights as they do look like they'll be more comfortable and at some point I'll need to wear tights again.  My boss had a negative covid test which is good news.

I then went for a run and didn't majorly push myself, but my VO2 Max is now up to 53 so it wasn't so bad, I'm now only 2.4 miles behind my yearly 1000 mile target.  

Over the course of the day I listened to the High Low and With Me Now podcast as well as a bit of The Wind Up Bird Chronicles.  Maya came running in proud of herself meowing like Qubit does.

I fed Fudge and Smudge again and then had a shower and Alan cooked hallomi and bulgar wheat Hello Fresh for tea, he's feeling quite down at the moment and I'm not sure how to help him out.   We watched "Coming to America" and then I read lots of my Kombucha book and decanted some to add strawberries to (we also had strawberries for dessert) and also some turmeric.  I added more sweet tea to the batch - I think this is right, the book is very complicated.  

Isolation Journal 109

I woke up fairly well at 8am and then got up and went to feed Fudge and Smudge, and Maya and Qubit and then I grabbed some cornflakes and coffee and logged on for work.  The milkman came a bit after 9am and Qubit managed to bring both a nearly dead mouse that he killed quickly and then a poor dead rabbit that Alan checked was definitely dead.  

I had a very busy day and got through a reasonable amount of work in the morning, I've got jobs to match, admin to do and clients to keep in up to date.  I'm still behind on emails and general organisation, but  I'm hoping I might be able to catch up over the weekend.

For lunch I had the dinner to lunch from Hello Fresh the night before and had a muller corner yoghurt in front of the computer. Maya lay next to the keyboard for most of the day.

The Delifresh order arrived about 30 mins than they'd said at 2.20pm and they'd delivered plain flour when I'm sure I'd ordered self raising flour.

I finally signed off at 7pm at work and discussed with Alan what he wanted to do for dinner and he wanted takeaway so I went out for a run for 30 mins and did just over 6K slower than the past couple of days as my left big toe joint is still hurting.

We ordered from Tokies and I had a Zeus Pizza with some curly fries and milkshake called "Hi honey I'm home" I had a very long bath and read some Facebook drama as the place where we got married had had a family staying and had complained at the end of their stay that there was a problem with the mattress and were aggressive to the manager and were getting all their friends to leave false negative reviews.  It's so sad as tackling things like that is not good for anyone.

We watched some Dave TV after Alan had finished watching Middlesborough lose to Watford one nil.

I went to finally book my Arvon course for the week off that I'd booked, but it's sold out...I'd just read 3 of the stories in the Lucy Hallett Hughes Fabulous booked and loved them and was keen to book, but now I am on the waiting list and I'm sad as I don't know whether to try and book something else, cancel my week off or just take the week and try and crack on with my own writing.  So frustrating.

Isolation Journal 107 & 108

 So busy at work I've not had a chance to really write so a summary - 

- yesterday got up and fed all the cats, cleaned up a lot of cat sick, breakfast of cornflakes and coffee and lunch was late and reheated chick pea patties, did rachels' handover after a late lunch reading Fabulous by Lucy Hallett-Hughes in the sunshine which was mythical and interesting.  Finished work at nearly 7pm and went for run - Alan did too before me and I managed to do 23.24 which is the fastest 5K i've done in years.  Watered our plants and the neighbours.  Had prawn and rice stir fry for dinner, did more work, can't find candidates for a charity finance role, feel rubbish.

- today similar less cat sick and lunch was made from a salad and a jacket potato, cheese and marmite and I felt terrible and like I can't do my job, my head hurts.  Arena flowers arrived and I arranged them and put them next to my computer and in the dining room.  Finished work at 7.30pm and went for a run, slower that yesterday and then I fed all the cats and cooked tea a dinner for lunch hello fresh recipe with chicken and bacon and talked to my parents who had received my parcel from the Works.  Watched Frankie Boyle and then did some more work.  

Hopefully tomorrow will feel less hopeless...

Isolation Journal 106

I got up at 8am and fed all the cats including a quite quiet Fudge and Smudge and then had some cornflakes and coffee and had a few bits and pieces to sort out and send CVs for a job (that I later found didn't arrive and I had to resend).

I ran a brief training session for Luke and Katie S on candidate exclusivity and then I worked on finding more candidates for a few jobs.

The Kombucha book that I'd ordered arrived and then for lunch we had some more rice and chickpea patties.

The day in general was reasonable productive as I confirmed the details of my placement and did some admin as well as joined in on a BD afternoon on the temp side and had a meeting with PP to discuss shared clients. Alan went to the dentist for more fillings at 2.20pm and came back a bit groggy.

I finished work around 6.30pm and Alan needed to drive his car for a bit of a run out and he googled some interesting places and we went to Skipwith Common and aimed to be back at 8pm for the Amazon delivery...only we realised when we were walking that I'd not completed the order, so it will be now arriving tomorrow morning instead!

We got home and Alan fed Fudge and Smudge and I made tea - Caprese Pasta by Hello Fresh.  We then ate in front of the TV and watched Dave with Katherine Ryan featured on a number of different programmes.

They announced this evening that they are going to be banning gatherings of more than 6 as of Monday, it's a good thing that I visited my parents when I did and that we planned guide meetings online only.  We were due to be going to a celebration before we had our wedding anniversary at North Shire, but I'm not sure that it will be able to go ahead.

I swapped a few messages with my brother, both my neighbours, my Mum and Gem from guides!

Me and my brother are worried in particular about my Dad as he seems to be very bored at the moment, we're not sure what to do, but hopefully we'll help him find a few more ideas.  

Isolation Journal 104

We woke up quite late around 10.30am and then debated what to do and considered going to Spurn Point, but as the weather looked a bit dodgy and my toe was still sore and Alan's back was bad.  My Covid test result arrived and was negative and I was feeling less poorly today and didn't have a sore throat.  

Alan made delicious apple pancakes and we watched Friends and then I went and fed Fudge and Smudge and did the recyling and took the rubbish out and then hoovered the house and did a couple of loads of laundry and put away the washing.  I tidied and cleaned the kitchen.  I listened to more of the Wind Up Bird Chronicles and I'm now less than 8 hours away from the end - it's really felt like a marathon to get through this book!  Today was a 2 coffee day and Alan also made a pistachio tea from the Coffee at the Crescent order.  

Alan watched the Formula 1 and then I tidied out a drawer and cupboard in the Welsh Dresser and we now have a covid drawer with facemasks, wipes and hand sanitiser as well as binning a load of old diet coke with black lumps in that was 3 - 4 years out of date.

I ideally wanted to go for a run, but my feet were too sore and I could tell Alan would benefit from some fresh air so we decided to go for a walk around Pontefract racecourse and we've not been there since March when we did our last parkrun.  Both of us had high anxiety today.

There were lots of new wooden carvings "Peter and the Perrigrine" and we noticed lots of things we haven't before as we're usually running.  There were some beautiful sky scenes, we walked across a model aeroplane flying area and also saw a rainbow and then a double rainbow.  My feet got really wet.

We got home and Alan cooked a butternut Squash curry for Hello Fresh and I fed Fudge and Smudge and then mopped the floors.

We ate dinner and then Alan really wanted pudding so I finally had a go at making Sticky Lemon Pudding that I'd seen Jack Monroe tweet and it didn't take long to prep, but takes 30 mins in the oven and then 20 mins to let the lemon sauce all sink in.  

In the meantime I made chickpea, carrot and coriander patties and some rice.

Not so Isolation Journal 103

I'd not got to bed at a very good time and so I was quite tired when I woke up at 9am and needed to be out the house for around 9.30am to get to my writing class at 10.30am.  I didn't end up eating breakfast, but I made a couple of coffees and drank one before I left and took one for the journey.  I packed the last rice and beans and a couple of slices of pizza from the night before.

The traffic was good and so it only took me around 35 minutes to get there and I tried to park behind The Bowery, but it was a bit tricky and tight in the car park, so I drove down to where the art deco houses are and walked around 5 minutes to get to the class, I was just on time fortunately.

I wore my mask to enter the class and then the whole way through other than to drink my water bottle and then to eat lunch outside.  The course I was doing was How to Write that Novel and it was the first writing workshop that I'd booked this year for my 20 things in 2020 and was due to be the weekend after I'd got back from honeymoon in March, but it got delayed to June and then September so it feels like I've been waiting a while and have done a lot of online zoom in the meantime.  It was definitely worth the wait.  

The Bowery made me feel comfortable as there were only 10 of us in the room and we all wore masks apart from the tutor Mark Connors who work a visor so that we could hear and see him speaking properly.  There were masks available, but I'd brought my own and they had lovely lavendar hand santiser available around the tutor room.  

I really enjoyed the course, we started off by reading aloud the first page and the blurb of a selection of books including one by the tutor because he'd run out of books Tom Tit and the Maniacs.  We noticed various things about both especially the hook and intrigue and then we all had a go at writing our own as well as coming up with titles.  I've now got a lot more books on my "I want to read list".  We read aloud our blurbs and also our first pages and there were some really interesting outlines for novels and starting points within the class, some were fantasy, one was a romance, one about a lady's grandmothers journey from India to Africa to England and one about an aging rockstar getting together with someone who looked like his younger self, one about a Dunkirk Solider and one about dragons and another about a fantasy dream world.  I later felt sad for the fantasy dreamworld guy as he didn't get a chance to read out one of the exercises.  We also discussed how to always try and avoid cliches.

We had a break for lunch and I sat outside in the little garden area.  

After lunch we did work around scene setting and wrote and read aloud some descriptive scenes and then talked about character before having a question and answer session with Mark.  Finishing at 4.30pm I bought a copy of Tom Tit and the Maniacs and then some of the hand santiser spray, but they only had a peppermint flavour, but I bought a couple for £5.50 each.

After I'd walked back to the car I texted my friend Jenny as I've not seen her for months and she's been being very cautious.  I popped into the house briefly and she signed off a guide planning zoom call with my old guide group and I waved to Fran and some of the other leaders which was lovely.  She then showed me her homemade kombucha which was delicious!  I had some of the plain kombucha as well as some strawberry flavoured stuff with actual strawberries.  And told me about how to make it and asked me if I wanted some of her scoby to make my own and I said yes please! 

We then took Luna the King Charles Spaniel for a walk around the Meanwood woods and she was very excited and running around and it was really good to have a good chat.  When we got back to her house she boxed up the scoby and gave me some instructions and then I headed back to find Alan in the bath after a run and so I went out for a quick run too to get my (not) parkrun fix in.  I'd noticed a pain in my left big toe joint yesterday and I could run, but I could definitely still notice it today.  I listended to With Me Now podcast as I ran and they read out my Facebook comment about doing Temple Newsam parkrun with Alex last weekend.

I fed Fudge and Smudge and Fudge ran out as soon as I opened the door and they had been sick 3 times and I had to clean the litter trays, but they were more friendly than usual which was cute.

The coffee beans, chai tea and pistachio tea I'd ordered from Coffee on the Crescent had arrived as well as the Vitality free and discounted coffee from Cafe Nerro.  My mum had also texted me to tell me that the big tub of marmite I'd ordered months ago had finally arrived.

I had a soak in the bath for far too long when I got back and Alan wasn't sure what we should do for tea and eventually I made some wraps with the left over kebab meat from last night and reheated the curly fries and cut up some lettuce.  

We watched a variety of random comedy from Dave and I started to make Kombucha and ran a load of washing through.  

To make kombucha you make 2 litres of tea with 6 - 8 teabags and 160 - 200g of sugar, let it cool to a warm tepid temperature.  You then pour into a plastic jar and add the scoby to it and the scoby juices and cover with cotton and leave for 7 - 30 days - fingers crossed that it works well!