Isolation Journal 2

After another late evening writing before bed so we were woken up with a start at 8am by Amazon delivering a parcel for Alan.  I got back into bed and fell back to sleep for a bit and it was probably around 10am before we got up.  

We had cornflakes for breakfast (which apparently provides you with 50% of your daily Vitamin D needs which I'd never focussed on as much until I knew it can help your body be more resilient to Covid, well apart from when I binged on it after I broke my shoulder in 2018)

I listened to another Hay Festival Lecture on vaccinations (well half before I had to cook lunch) and again I'll finish listening again.  We had gnocchi fried with chorizo, courgette and spring onion and Alan picked and prepped some of the artichoke that we've been growing in the garden.  He used garlic oil and roasted them in the oven.  We've been really enjoying the Artichokes as have the ants and the aphids, it's hard to clean them all off!  We ate outside and it was really hot!

I wrote 2 cards/letters one to my Dad's cousin Polly who I know is living by herself and I'm guessing might be finding lockdown more challenging and also one to my friend Gloria who is turning 40 - I found a weird inspo card from the 90s that I've had in my possession since it was being thrown out by the worst company I think I've ever worked for.   The card said "Desire breeds Power" and I think she'll enjoy the oddness of it.  

As a CIRF part sponsored by my running club Hyde Park Harriers I had set out a plan to deliver marathon coaching this year, but with all the marathons postponed and not being able to run in groups I've been preparing some session plans for people to do whilst they are running by themselves.  So far I've done a session on intervals, a progression session and today was a hill reps session.

I also listened to a parkrun podcast that has been continuing in lockdown - With Me Now as I tidied out the awkward cupboard in the kitchen to put in the new pans that arrived from Amazon at 8am this morning.  Alan also watered the garden with the hose and accidentially knocked off the water to the dishwasher and then subsequently fixed the dishwasher.

We decided to go for a run to post my 2 letters and took it steady as it was warm and Alan is regaining his fitness after some time out from running.  I also twinged my Piriformis and so was taking it a bit slower.  It took us a little longer than planned so I ended up dialling into a weekly call that I have with my friends Hayley and Sam via zoom at 5pm whilst we were still walking home across a field.  

I had a good chat and catch up with Hayley and Sam and then I debated whether to do the Wednesday evening online Zumba class with my friend Gui and I did and took it easy.  Qubit arrived in the middle and meowed loudly.

We then had Hello Fresh for tea - spicy meatball curry and rice and then rhubarb crumble and vinetta for dessert and caught up with Have I got News for You 

I'm now currently enraged by my Mum sharing a post defending Dominic Cummings, which I really don't understand when she is far more negatively affected by government policy than I am, I could say a lot more on this, but I'm currently engaged in a row with my mum on messenger.

Isolation Journal 1

I really should have started an isolation journal back in March, but I'm guessing that I'm not the only person feeling like this.  At the time when everything started to change, it changed fast and even though I had more "time" my mental energies were a bit frazzled.

For me as I've mentioned in my previous post it all felt (feels) a bit like a dream, we flew out to a tropical island and by the time we flew back my reality was very different, but rather than try and distill the past 10 weeks into a journal entry, I'm going to just think about today as part of the weekly challenge from Curtis Brown Creative.

Last night I went to bed fairly late as I have this week off as holiday, I'd decided to participate in a creative writing week with my friend Lauren and so I didn't end up getting into bed until around 1am as I'd been up doing a freewriting challenge.  Annoying my laptop decided to freeze and omitted half of what I'd written!

It meant that I woke up after around 7.5 hours of sleep and finally dragged myself out of bed after 9am knowing that I needed to get myself ready for a cycle ride.  I'd arranged to meet my cousin for a socially distanced catch up at Towton Battlefield and swap cakes.  My cousin is gluten free so I decided to make some chocolate cornflake cakes and used my favourite life hack ever of melting chocolate with a hairdrier.  I ate a banana for breakfast and had a black coffee from our lovely new coffee machine.

Alan came with me which was helpful as I'm still a bit nervous about cycling and despite googlemaps claiming it was 4.5 miles it ended up being 6 miles.  We met just after 11am and had a nice long chat whilst some farmers were laying out some cabling across the field.  We had the new awkward scenario of how to exchange cakes whilst keeping a social distance, it almost looks like a very small hostage exchange.  I felt bad on the way back as Alan pointed out that we'd not actually gone for a stroll around the Battlefield especially after reading my favourite 1 star review.

boring field

I like to come to the old battle fields. This battle field is the most boring one out of them all there is nothing to see but boring old fields. I payed a tone of money to get there and when i got there all it is, is fields after fields and the best moment was the trip there and back!!!!!!

I made some pasta for lunch with some roasted courgette and yellow pepper and chorizo and made some marmite sauce for mine after my friend Lauren had told me about it - basically cook the pasta and save some pasta water and mix it with butter and marmite.  It was very salty, but delicious.

Whilst I was cooking I listened to half of a talk from the The Hay Fesitval online by Devi Sridhar above the Covid-19 pandemic and I need to finish watching it because she was giving some really balanced critique of the UK handling including the observation that countries with less strong health systems were more rapid and robust with their responses and consequently experienced less deaths than those who on paper were better set up with strong health systems and so perhaps delayed their decisions to respond longer.  

We ate lunch and I watched another event from The Hay Festival live by Daniel Davis on immunity and Covid-19, Lauren was also watching and we both found that it was very science based in explanations and for me I need to re-watch it!

Lauren and I then had a video call to talk through the writing that we had done and to compare some notes about how we'd found the writing exercise.  It was really nice to actually do some writing and have someone else give some feedback.  I had written a piece of freewriting and thought about the concept of freedom in lockdown and Lauren had written a piece inspired by the writing prompt He knew she’d never come back.  Lauren had written with pen and paper and it made me think that I might like to try doing some writing that way as I think typing and writing use slightly different parts of your brain.  We're going to do some more writing and discussion over the week and have both booked onto a "flash fiction" course with Arvon on Thursday.

After I'd finished the call I watched the Daily Briefing from Downing Street which had two of the questions from the public that I would be asking if I'd been given the chance - Will people fined in similar situations in lockdown looking to access childcare now be able to appeal their fines in light of Dominic Cumming's behaviour being described as "legal" and also a question about if we can go shopping for non essentials why and when can we see our families?  Matt Hancock gave a more consistent briefing than we have seen over the past couple of days, but was extremely dismissive of the media and didn't allow follow-ups on their questions.  I'm worried about why we have the highest death rate and yet we still don't have a robust test, track and trace system set up and what is happening with the app?  It amazes me that people are still willing to defend our government without question as we are so far behind the world in being able to get back to some sense of normal life.  

After the briefing I decided to go for a run, I'm aiming to run around 1000 miles in 2020 which sounds like a lot, but is actually only 4.4K per day when you break it down.  I also wanted to take some pictures for the photo competition that one of the ladies from my running club has set.  I took pictures for the "bugs eye view" and "red, blue or yellow" categories.  I was going to go for a run up and down the hill on the road next to the house to keep an eye out for an amazon pantry delivery, but it had been left by the door when I went to set out for my run so I unpacked it and set off.  I ran 5K in 27 minutes.

Alan made dinner and we had a Hello Fresh recipe of Lamb Kofta and he even made a rhubarb crumble which we had with a bit of vinetta that was delivered with the Amazon Pantry order.  The biggest issue I have with lockdown is just how much sugar and puddings I'm eating, generally I've been healthier in terms of sleep and excercicse - I'm running, cycling, zumba and walking as well as Pilates classes, but I definitely need to try and cut down on the sweet things!

Whilst eating dinner, we watched a very odd film that promised more in the description than it delivered.  The Voices - A likable guy pursues his office crush with the help of his evil talking pets, but things turn sinister when she stands him up for a date.  It gets 6.4 / 10 on IMDB, but I would probably give it 3 - 4 as it really didn't have a very coherent plot and was just a bit gross, but not in a funny or contributing to the plot way.

We then put Friends on again in the background whilst I started to  write my isolation journal...