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!
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