Another late rising today, but I did manage to read 1 short story before I got out of bed which was an achievement. I took Uncommon Type by Tom Hanks with me to Costa Rica in December 2018 and read and loved most of it, but inspired by the Flash Fiction earlier this week I've been inspired to read it again.
We had a ridiculously childlike breakfast of potato waffles and sausages and some Reggae Reggae Sauce and I had a couple of coffees to wake me up properly. I watched another Hay Festival online talk from A C Grayling about democracy which wasn't hugely positive about the democratic future for us post Covid, but did make some helpful suggestions about how it could be changed to be basically more democratic. The one quote I especially enjoyed was "There is no such thing as a majority, only a temporary coalition of minorities across different elements of society" (i'm likely misquoting, but this was the gist)
I refilled the coffee machine with the emergency coffee that I got from Amazon whilst we waited for our deliver to arrive from Modern Standard last week (of course they came on the same day10 and Qubit wanted to smell it - he wasn't keen.
I watched a talk from Hay Festival last year by Michael Rosen, I loved his poems as a kid and I love some of his newer work. It was lovely to see how much the kids in the audience loved his work as well. Really inspiring. I've just googled him to find out how old he was out of curiousity and he is 74, I also spotted that he was really poorly with suspected Covid-19 and I hope that he's doing ok.
Alan prepared the ingredients for a stew and put it in the slow cooker, and I tidied some of the potatoes up out of the kitchen that had started to sprout and planted them in planters in the garden after I had cleared off the weeds.
For lunch I made us another salad and the avocado was just about perfectly ripe thankfully! We ate outside on our very lovely garden chair with a blanket over the top to cover from the ridiculous sunshine.
I watched the Daily Briefing and it was heartening to see that many homeless people have been helped during this crisis, around 15000 people, but I'm sad that there were that many people who were homeless and needed support. I'm incredibly confused and concerned that they have all of a sudden decided that even though the death rate is the same as when we went into lockdown, they have deemed it ok for those who have been shielding to go outside again. The photos of crowded parks and beaches also massively worry me, I am incredibly fortunate to be able to work from home and not have to go into busier situations in the coming weeks unless I choose to, so I'm going to choose to remain not too different from my current situation to hopefully mitigate the easing of lockdown which (in my opinion) is just too early to be safe.
I decided to go for my run and needed to find the last photo for my photo challenge for the theme "chasing rainbows" and I ran into the village and said hello to some of our friends including our 6 year old dance teacher from yesterday.
I found a couple of rainbows in the village and then ran up to Lumby and found a couple more. I ran back through Lumby and debated whether to go left and a longer route or right for a shorter one. I was pleased that I went for the longer route back and enjoyed some beautiful evening light. I had a nice chat with our neighbours at number 2 on the way back in.
Alan's stew was nearly ready so I had a shower and then ate some tasty dumplings and enjoyed the last of the meat (stewing steak)) from our very delicious order from The Ethical Butcher. He put on Space Force, but I've been a bit distracted so I'm not sure what I make of it.
Lauren had finished work at 8 so we had a wrap up video chat on our creative week and we have a few really good ideas for collaboration of work for flash fiction. She also shared a great drabble with me in relation to our idea for our collaboration. I've started mine... let's see how it all turns out.
We had a ridiculously childlike breakfast of potato waffles and sausages and some Reggae Reggae Sauce and I had a couple of coffees to wake me up properly. I watched another Hay Festival online talk from A C Grayling about democracy which wasn't hugely positive about the democratic future for us post Covid, but did make some helpful suggestions about how it could be changed to be basically more democratic. The one quote I especially enjoyed was "There is no such thing as a majority, only a temporary coalition of minorities across different elements of society" (i'm likely misquoting, but this was the gist)
I refilled the coffee machine with the emergency coffee that I got from Amazon whilst we waited for our deliver to arrive from Modern Standard last week (of course they came on the same day10 and Qubit wanted to smell it - he wasn't keen.
I watched a talk from Hay Festival last year by Michael Rosen, I loved his poems as a kid and I love some of his newer work. It was lovely to see how much the kids in the audience loved his work as well. Really inspiring. I've just googled him to find out how old he was out of curiousity and he is 74, I also spotted that he was really poorly with suspected Covid-19 and I hope that he's doing ok.
Alan prepared the ingredients for a stew and put it in the slow cooker, and I tidied some of the potatoes up out of the kitchen that had started to sprout and planted them in planters in the garden after I had cleared off the weeds.
For lunch I made us another salad and the avocado was just about perfectly ripe thankfully! We ate outside on our very lovely garden chair with a blanket over the top to cover from the ridiculous sunshine.
I watched the Daily Briefing and it was heartening to see that many homeless people have been helped during this crisis, around 15000 people, but I'm sad that there were that many people who were homeless and needed support. I'm incredibly confused and concerned that they have all of a sudden decided that even though the death rate is the same as when we went into lockdown, they have deemed it ok for those who have been shielding to go outside again. The photos of crowded parks and beaches also massively worry me, I am incredibly fortunate to be able to work from home and not have to go into busier situations in the coming weeks unless I choose to, so I'm going to choose to remain not too different from my current situation to hopefully mitigate the easing of lockdown which (in my opinion) is just too early to be safe.
I decided to go for my run and needed to find the last photo for my photo challenge for the theme "chasing rainbows" and I ran into the village and said hello to some of our friends including our 6 year old dance teacher from yesterday.
I found a couple of rainbows in the village and then ran up to Lumby and found a couple more. I ran back through Lumby and debated whether to go left and a longer route or right for a shorter one. I was pleased that I went for the longer route back and enjoyed some beautiful evening light. I had a nice chat with our neighbours at number 2 on the way back in.
Alan's stew was nearly ready so I had a shower and then ate some tasty dumplings and enjoyed the last of the meat (stewing steak)) from our very delicious order from The Ethical Butcher. He put on Space Force, but I've been a bit distracted so I'm not sure what I make of it.
Lauren had finished work at 8 so we had a wrap up video chat on our creative week and we have a few really good ideas for collaboration of work for flash fiction. She also shared a great drabble with me in relation to our idea for our collaboration. I've started mine... let's see how it all turns out.
