Not so Isolation Journal 102

It was a struggle to get up this morning, but I dragged myself out of bed around 7.15am and let the cats out and had cornflakes and milk and a coffee and made one to drink in the car.  I was so groggy I spilt milk everywhere.

Work was quiet as it was only Luke in in my team.  I had a busy morning meeting 2 candidates to practice MS Teams and prep them for interviews, I also chatted to a few people as well who were interested in my very short 4 week temp role, but I did manage to fill it in the afternoon thankfully.

I also learned some more functions of the system that made me pleased like it reminds you to brief and de brief candidates on interviews, you can copy and paste the job reference number rather than trying to remember an 8 digit number and you can search for which jobs are missing adverts.

I'd got to 2pm and suddenly realised that I'd eaten my rice at my desk, but I'd not been out at all so I went for a walk around the block and then I caught up with the PP team to chat about various things.  

I decided to book a Covid Test as I'd had a note through the app because I'd reported sore throat symptoms and so I booked for 6pm and made sure I'd finished up at 5.30pm and walked out with Susan and had a catch up chat.  

I'd worn my mask a bit today and I'm literally the only person in the office who does, I especially wear in the toilets and walking to and from my car and I'm nervous as Leeds is hovering around a local lockdown at the moment.  

I rang my mum on the way back as I'd figured she'd like a chat and could listen as I went through the drive through test.  I got there a bit early, so hovered around for about 5 mins and then drove in.  You drive around the park and ride car park and then stop at various points for instructions and to have your AR code scanned and they then drop a test kit in your passenger car window and you park up and do the test.  You blow your nose and sanitise your hands and then you have to swab your tonsils for 10 - 15 secs and the back of your nose for the same time and you then break the top of the plastic off the swab and put it in a vial of liquid and seal it in a bag with a pad and then you put it in the main bag and they check it before you drive to the drop off point.  They scan your code again and I was done in 9 minutes.

I got home and then went out for a run and ran in the lovely pre sunset light, I was more sluggish today and did 4.5 miles listening to a grime mix on Apple music as I've had the M to the B song stuck in my head off TikTok and I'm still "unproductive" training and I got a photo of a sign urging you to wash your car to protect against covid.  I spotted Qubit in the field and Alan went to call him in.

We then watched some Friends and ordered takeaway, the place we got from on Saturday wasn't delivering so we got from Tokies and I ordered a kebab, pizza and curly frieds but I knew I wouldn't eat it all.  I did some tidying and unpacked the veg box and got in the bath, but the takeaway arrived only 10 mins later.  Alan watched Happy Gilmore whilst i was in the bath and tidying and then we watched 8 out of 10 cats does countdown.

The food was good, but a bit cold.  After we'd eaten Alan suggested that I make hot apple brandy as he'd bought some apple butter.

Isolation Journal 13

I realised this evening when out for a run that it's only 2 weeks since the whole Dominic Cummings story broke and it feels like a lot of "news" has happened since that time which is strange as we're still all fairly locked down.  Today I felt fairly low energy, quite low and just wasn't sure what to do with myself really as I didn't feel very productive.  

Again it was a bit of a late rise for us both as I went to bed before Alan did and read some of my book - Uncommon Types by Tom Hanks - it's an attempt to get my brain back into reading and it's working slowly.  My concentration span is terrible these days.  We probably didn't get to sleep until around 3.30am again and so we didn't really get up until about 11am.

I made the same breakfast again and we had home baked bread toast (mine with marmite) and then avocado, scrambled egg and sriacha sauce and we watched some TV the IT Crowd and some more Catfish.  

I dug out my old creative writing from when I was about 20 and doing a module at Uni on my BA English Language and Literature.  It was run by the brother of Nigel Williams, but I can't remember his name!  Nigel Williams lived in Wimbledon and was a reasonably successful novelist and I went to several house parties that his son Jack had when I was about 16 - they were great parties.  I even read one of his books and told his Dad when he came into the kitchen during one of the parties to get a drink.  It's irritating me that I can't remember what his name was maybe John Williams?  As I read through it, particularly the bits from when I was mid 20s I realised just how odd the antidepressants I was on made me behave (especially cipralex and prozac).  I'd written down the highlights of some of my dreams and I know everyone's dreams are odd, but wow these were so strange.  Maybe they'll feed into some writing now that I have the distance and experience from that time in my life to process it all.  It's weird to consider that this is the month that I stopped taking antidepressants 7 years ago, but that I was on them for 12 years of my life.

I did a load of washing and hung it out and put away the dry washing that was on the rack.

I investigated some online writing retreats and listened to the intro of one.  I then went and read upstairs as Alan was playing around with the internet and it kept cutting out.  I set off some dough in the breadmaker.

I came downstairs and watched some more Catfish after Alan had showed me how to use the Apple TV that arrived this afternoon.

The dough finished in the breadmaker and so I made 3 pizzas with tomato puree topped with spring onion and red pepper that Alan prepped for me and then some mozzarella and serrano ham and I also used up some of the roasted veg left over from Friday night.

I let the pizza go down and both Alan and me gave each other neck rubs as we have both had consistent headaches for the last few days.  Maya came running in having caught another bird - again I feel awful about this.

I then got myself out for a run and did 6.1K in just over half an hour and it was cold and I wore the wrong shorts that are too small and short for me.

I had a bath and then we watched Hypothetical and I ate leftover rhubarb and apple crumble with cream.