Isolation Journal 77

I didn't sleep very well at all, I kept waking up just as I was drifting off and I think it was only about 6 hours or so in the end.  I had cornflakes and 2 coffees for breakfast and I picked up the milk, orange juice and eggs and brought them in.

I logged on and had a catch up call with both Rachel and Katie and then had a morning of sorting out emails and then I signed on for Pilates and at the end had a chat with David about the weird nerve thing that is happening to my left leg - basically when I was shaving my legs the other day I noticed the nerves all over my foot tingling like mad.  He didn't think that it was anything to be too worried about, but recommended roll downs and prayer stretches.

I had reheated pasta bake for lunch and then also lots of water!   I arranged a team meeting for our team and the colleagues who look after the more junior end of the market.  We then had a client meeting and then I interview prepped a candidate.  I finished the day by placing a candidate into a job, I was especially pleased as we've been tryinig to help her since I found her a role about a year ago and she couldn't start as she'd had a stroke.  I was really pleased to hep her.  I even managed to send out a LinkedIn search for Rachel.

I finished off at 6.45pm and went for an easy run of 6.5K and then cooked Hello Fresh for dinner which was potato wedges with steak strips and mushroom and red wine sauce with green beans.  I took all the recycling out and the flowers were past their best and put them in the green bins.  I listened to Wind Up Bird Chronicles by Haruki Murakami whilst out on my run and cooking - I'd listened to a good few hours whilst commuting, but not for about 6 months, so I'd started from the beginning again.  We watched Peep Show and ate dinner and 

I then had a shower in the bath and I called my Mum back and suggested I could try and visit them although she sounded uncomfortable.  We ended up down the odd conversation topic that she was saying she is 94% English DNA, and no African DNA, I pointed out all of us are likely to be from the same, very likely African DNA, but then she started saying we are all descended from Adam and Eve, very odd.  My brother texted to say that he'd ended up getting the job he'd applied for as the external candidate had turned it down.  We then chatted for about 45 minutes and.  He was suggesting I might be better to stay at his and I think that should be fairly safe as he's very careful and has definitely already had Covid even though he tested negative for the antibodies 4 months later.

I followed up on twitter as I was due to have a flash fiction prompt from Tania Hershman but it hadn't arrived via stupid hotmail, so I had to follow up and she kindly resent it for me.  

Isolation Journal 74

Alan had taken some of the strong anti histamines that he'd been prescribed yesterday for the reactions he'd had and so seemed to sleep ok, I got up and logged on and used Alan's Macbook as it displays a lot of work software much better than my Dell.  I'd gone to bed quite late as I was again writing away like mad and got to another 1900 words last night on the novel.

I had cornflakes and coffee for breakfast and we kicked off with a call at 9am with a couple of us and the morning was busy, but a bit of a blur.  I think it was reasonably productive, but I can't be 100% sure.  

I then went downstairs at lunch to heat up my lunch, the pasta bake from yesterday.  Whilst I was heating it up in the microwave I noticed a small grey dog outside the house, there was a convertable Mazda reversing that I didn't recognise and the dog was jumping up at it.  The Mazda drove off and I made a note of the numberplate as we weren't sure if it had just dumped the poor dog.  Alan ran out to see if the dog was ok, and it was limping a little and someone pulled up in another car and said the dog lived at number 10 so we took her back and found that she was called Bea.  They'd not noticed she'd escaped, I'm glad we found her!

I then ate some lunch and heard Qubit come in making the meow noise that he makes when he's caught something.  Alan got to him first and it was a live sparrow, fortunately it flew into the kitchen and I was able to shut the door, grab the keys and helped it fly away unharmed.

The afternoon was definitely more productive.  I still have loads I'm not on top of, candidate conversations are taking a lot longer at the moment and they all want to give me a life history before I then find out that they only want work in London and they've reeled off 20 years of experience and I have to disappoint them to explain I can't find them anything relevant.  I picked up more jobs for other people which was good, but frustrating as I'd really like a job to work on for myself soon!

I finished work at 7pm and then went for a run, I am apparently "overreaching" according to Garmin so I made sure to run more steadily and did 8K and was "productive" at the end of it.  I saw a cool bird of prey and ran a few segments.  I got back in and went and had a shower as I was pretty sweaty!

I cooked tea, Hello Fresh had accidentally sent us the wrong recipe card for a recipe last week which confused me so I used the chicken from another recipe and some spare chicken to make tea.  We had chicken in panko breadcrumbs and wedges and a cool ginger and carrot salad.  I listened to more of "I heart Vegas" whilst I was cocoking and I finished up some mints that I'd been bought for my birthday and split a bottle of prosecco with Alan.  

We watched Spooks and then I bought a book for my Uni Alumni bookclub.  I choose to buy it from the most local independent bookshop - Fox Lane Books and it's definitely a lot more expensive, but it's important to support more bookshops when they have faced so much competition from Amazon.

Alan grabbed me an ice lolly and went for a bath and I watched some more Catfish

Isolation Journal 72

After my writing spree last night my brain was super active and alert and it took me ages to go to sleep, but Alan's alarm went off at 7.30am as he went to the dentists for 9am to get some fillings.

I got up and had the same breakfast as yesterday - yoghurt, granola, apple and lemon curd and got logged on for my team call and caught up with everyone.  Today definitely felt more productive, we have interviews arranged for roles that I've referred to people, I used the LinkedIn Recruiter licence to message some people.  

Alan got back form the Dentist around 10am and seemed ok, the novocaine had worn off and he didn't seem to be faring too badly despite 3 fillings.  He said that the dentist was in hardcore, full on PPE. 

At 12pm we decided to go for a walk and were out for about 45 mins and covered the same distance as I usually do in 20 minutes on a run, a circuit of both a lane near us, along a road and back through a field of wheat around the back of our house.  As we walked we talked about stocks and shares and the trading platform and I sold the shares I had in Pets at home and bought some in Howden Joinery - I don't know what I'm doing and I have lost money on Coca Cola, Mothercare, Hays, Tilray so far....so I'm waiting for them to improve.

I had a slice of bread, butter, ham and lettuce for lunch and today was again a 3 coffee day.

I started using a LinkedIn search for a colleague and it was all fine, she checked the search, I sent her mail and assumed she would not choose in inmail people that weren't right and I should have checked as I received a rather disgruntled reply from someone who was probably on 4 times as much as this role was paying and worked for a rather major Football Club - I apologised profusely and explained it was my first experience of the recruiter licence.

I ended up finishing work around 7pm as I started to look at the 1800 words I'd written on my novel idea last night and had sent them through to Lauren to look over.  I'd also googled the average length of a novel and they start around 40000 words upwards so on this maths I could be done and dusted in 22 days...as easy as that!

I made tea as Alan wasn't really very well and he wasn't all that hungry, it was a chicken and pasta bake and I listened to some more "I heart Vegas" we ate watching Peep Show and then I watched Catfish whilst Alan had a bath.

We also had a couple of lollies and I cleaned the kitchen.

I watched a few videos of the awful scenes in Beirut, I'm almost numb because genuinely so much shit has happened this year it is starting to seem completely unreal.

Isolation Journal 69

I woke up fairly early at the sound of one of the cat toy flapping fish on the landing, but I managed to fall back to sleep again and then woke up about 9.30am and messed around on my phone until Alan woke up.

I got up and the house was a mess!  It was on the to do list to tidy and so I started tidying whilst Alan made strawberry compot and eggy bread.  I made some coffee and we sat outside to eat.  I planted some of the strawberries that were too far gone to hopefully grow some more strawberry plants.  The kids from number 10 kept leaning over the wall to say hello and their parents kept telling them off, but I didn't mind.

I then worked out how to tie up some of the raspberries that are falling over using some twine and attached it to both a pipe and one of the artichoke stalks.  I did some weeding and pulled up some nettles.  I took all the recycling out and rearranged the bins so that the full ones were at the back next to the wall and the empty ones were easier to access.

I'd been a bit anxious about how to deliver my garmin to Curtis who won it in the auction and I decided to take off Thursday as annual leave and also visit Hayley, I hope that he doesn't mind too much waiting.  He topped up the bid to £50 and I put an extra £25 in to the food bank.

I then set about tidying up the lean to bit next to the porch where the coat rack had fallen down months ago.  I sorted the coats and then found a few things for Alan's work and moved his golf clubs into the garage.  I also found the box of gin bottles with lights that we'd never got around to using at the wedding.  I'd got them ready for the evening, but didn't have time to put them out onto the tables and I still feel a bit sad and guilty about it as one of my friends had gone to the trouble of finding them.  I recycled some of the gin bottles and put the rest in the garage and hopefully I'll be able to use them for a belated 40th party next year at some point.  I downloaded I Heart Vegas by Lindsey Kelk on audible to listen to as I tidied.  I've read 3 of her books previously when my friend Philippa mentioned them too me as Lindsey had stayed with her around 10 years ago in Hollywood as she was friends with our school friend Catherine.  It's easy to digest and fun so far, Lauren has been reading her latest book and tweeted her last week so it reminded me to look up some of her other books.

I made some lunch of salad and cheese and jamon and chutney and again we sat in the garden to eat it and I came back in to carry on tidying up.  Alan fixed the coat rack in the porch.  I got distracted eating the end of my lunch inside watching Catfish and some weird urban explorer stories such as in the Bondi Beach Club in Leeds.

My new keyboard and laptop stand arrived and it's noisy and clacky and shiny and the stand is great too.  I set up my laptop upstairs and worked a bit more on a short story I'd started last night.

I finished off hoovering and mopping the lounge and the kitchen and then at 6.30pm we decided to go out for a cycle with Alan and we went up to Bishopswood which was 9.75K away and then we walked around in the forest for about 40 minutes and then back home.  It was a warm evening and the traffic was nice and quiet.  The wood was  not too busy, we met a few dogs being walked and saw some interesting mushrooms and some lords and ladies. 

When we got back I finished tidying up whilst Alan cooked a Hello Fresh meal - Lamb, cinnamon and feta penne and prepped an apple crumble.   I helped by grating the butter into the flour and making the crumble bit.

I poured us a couple of beers and we watched 2 episodes of Spooks and I finished mopping the floors and I assembled the crumble and put it in the oven and made us a couple of drinks of port.

We finished off watching Peep Show.  It's nearly 10 weeks that I've been journalling, my mental health seems to be positively impacted, but I'm not sure Alan is doing as well and I'm not sure how I can help him.

Isolation Journal 26

Alan woke me up at around 9am today as he'd booked a Tesco delivery (amazingly we booked a slot for early this morning yesterday, we were surprised, we didn't even need to do click and collect)

I felt better getting up at a reasonable time, yesterday I felt like I really wasted the day.  We had peacan plaits and coffee for breakfast and watched a bit of Scrubs and Best of Big Brother.  I'd planned to take my friend's son Alex for a walk, but she'd not put two and two together that it was father's day and so they headed off to the coast, which I totally understood because as a chef her husband is usually working.  I'll hopefully head over on Wednesday instead.

I mopped the house and hoovered upstairs to tick off another post it note I'd put together.  

Alan made bread and burgers and cooked them on the barbecue outside along with some artichokes from the garden cooked with garlic and rosemary and also I dug out some corn on the cobs that we'd had for ages.  As he cooked I sorted out some compost from the compost heap as I'd put in some wool lining from the bags we get in Hello Fresh as they say compostable, but it does take a lot longer than everything else!  I also planted out two of the lavendar plants at the back next to the wall and one at the front.  I hope they grow well.  Alan also picked me some raspberries for me and I'll have them for breakfast tomorrow.

After lunch I spent some time sorting some emails and working out how I was tracking on my 20 things in 2020 goals.  I then ordered some more facemasks as I had an idea that I wanted some with bees on them and I found one supplier on Etsy who use fabric with puffins and bumblebees on and donates £2 per mask to a children's centre in West Yorkshire - perfect!  I also listened to a panel discussion on Hay Player from 2018 with Candice Brathwaite and a few others about motherhood.  I had one of the cookies that Alan got from Tescos.

I gave my Dad a call for fathers day and had a good chat, it's hard not knowing when I might see my parents again, I don't tend to visit and they don't tend to come up all that regularly, but not knowing and feeling restricted does make it seem a lot harder.

I then made some dinner an Aubergine Curry a Hello Fresh recipe - it was delicious! And we watched the IT Crowd and I did a bit of work for an urgent role that I need to shortlist for and my anxiety about not finding the right candidate/missing candidate was calmed a little bit as I went through 215 candidates and found very few that I had perhaps not already covered.  I wish I'd been able to do this all on Friday or even yesterday as it would have made my weekend less anxiety ridden.

I then went out for a run at about 9.30pm - I am sad that from now the nights will start drawing in earlier as I love having the scope to run in the light until past 10pm at this time in the year.  I was feeling a bit nervous as it was a bit dark and also a woman was attacked about 3 miles away in Fairburn earlier this week so I did hill reps and listened to What Alice Forgot by Liane Moriarty that I'd started listening to yesterday and also listened to during cooking - it's great!  I ran just over 4 miles in about 36 minutes and added it to my (not) parkrun times weirdly the same best time this week of 26.39 so I have something to work towards next week.

I had a shower in the bath and then came back to finish off my blogging updates and also cleaned the kitchen and enjoyed some Haagen Daas Praline and Cream and debated with Alan how to say Praline.  I also watched a bit more Big Brother and Alan went to bed after a bath with a bit of a cough and I made him a honey and lemon and he's going to sleep in the other room.  I hope he feels better by tomorrow morning.