Isolation Journal 22

It was a day when I wasn't fully signed on at work, so I didn't set an alarm and so naturally work up at 9.22am...only Alan also hadn't set an alarm and so had to leap out of bed and get logged on for work.

I sorted a few emails for work, arranged to pay my service charge for my flat and arranged a meeting with a client for 11am on MS Teams.

I had crumpets for breakfast and made some for Alan and used the coffee flavoured spread on two and meant to do a plain buttered one for Alan, but accidentally put marmite on it and so then made him an extra plain one and I had 3 crumpets for breakfast.  I took the compost out and picked some raspberries for a snack.

I then had my client meeting which was useful and got into my running kit.

I decided to go for a 19KM run as my run club has been doing a run challenge to run or walk 19KM in 19 days in June, but I knew that I'm not having trouble getting out and doing some running, but that I am having a bit of a challenge doing longer distances so it seemed like the perfect challenge as why else would you choose a random figure of 19KM.

I had been planning to go for a walk with my friends son afterwards, but the timings unfortunately didn't line up.

I ran to Fairburn Ings again and this time further along around the first lake that I got to and then towards Castleford following the river, I was going to take a peak at the Kingfisher hide, but it was just a bit too busy so I went back to a less popular route.  At 9.5K I looked around and took a little video and then ran back.  I didn't pause my watch to get an accurate time (although I did for 10 seconds when I got confused and saw a frog!) and it took me around 1 hour 57 to do the 19KM.  I took my camelbak with some shotbloks and had about 3 to keep me going.  I listened to the end of The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck as well as a bit of the High Low Podcast.

I then had a quick bath and had some lunch - jacket potato with marmite, butter and cheese.  

I then went upstairs for a nap and snoozed whilst the Daily Briefing was on.  Then my brother gave me a call because it was my second oldest Niece's birthday - she is 4.  She seemed to like the colouring and drawing books that I'd got for her and also showed me a few other things.  I got to see all 4 of my nieces and nephews, it was a busy video chat!  My brother is convinced he had Coronavirus back in March and said that he was less worried about the two oldest going back to school because of this, but he does work in the NHS so it must be a strange time for him.  Alan was on Zwift whilst I was chatting away.

Alan had a pop up green screen delivered that he'd put up and was struggling to put down back into the container, he didn't appreciate me laughing, but it wasn't what I had expected to see when I'd come downstairs.

I then made dinner - pork and chorizo stew with Ciabatta and logged on for a zoom call with my friends Hayley and Sam and we had a good catch up for 2 hours and then I came downstairs and prepped some strawberries and had strawberries and cream and Alan made banana bread which I had a couple of warm slices of with butter.

We watched a couple of episodes of Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency and then I watched some Catfish.

Isolation Journal 9

Today I was supposed to be on a day off at work, but I had to do a few bits and pieces and this evening managed to book a very important meeting and so have been prepping for that meeting that will be at 10am tomorrow morning.

I had coffee and cornflakes for breakfast again and I faffed around a bit on the internet doing a few bits for work, watched some Frasier with Alan and listened to the Archers on the BBC Sounds app whilst and then got into my run kit to persuade myself to go running.  It was much rainier today so actually it was much cooler to go running.  I am still tracking ok for my 1000 mile yearly target, but the walk on Monday meant I had a bit of catching up to do so I needed to run 8km.  I then got distracted watching PMQs and I had to get back before 2pm to give me time for a shower and food before going to meet my friend Tana for a socially distanced walk.  I managed to do a more or less out and back route through Lumby and kept a decent pace and picked up 3 Strava trophies and average pace of 8.16 per mile.

I had a shower and then had a granny smith, a yoghurt and some goats cheese and chutney on crispbreads for lunch.  

I was meeting Tana and her very cute 2.5 month old baby girl for the first time at Walton Colliery Park for a walk which was lovely and we saw some goslings and swans.  We walked for an hour and got a bit lost, but found our way back to the carpark.  It was so nice to catch up and I really feel for anyone who has had a baby around this time, hopefully we'll be in a better situation soon and at least she got to meet her grandparents just before lockdown.

Driving was weird as I was on the motorway and it was as busy as usual and more busy than I would have expected at 3pm and I drove back around the start of "rush hour" too.  

I watched the daily briefing which was fragmented and confusing and I'm still baffled why the MPs have voted to not use online voting.  I drank a bottle of kombucha and remembered I should buy more.

Alan went out for a run and I listened to some more Archers and cooked Hello Fresh for tea Hake with tomato, caper and olive sauce and tagliattelli.  I had to make my decision on work so I've opted for 80% for July to review as needed as this week we have had far more new roles come in.

I'd been debating whether to do Zumba at 7pm or attend an online talk by Tania Hershman and I decided on the talk.  She talked about her work which includes what she calls "hybrid" work and I loved this concept.  I had hoped to do a bit more writing today, but I felt quite cross and out of sorts and I'm not sure why (other than all the obvious horrific things going on)

I then subscribed to Hay Player  as I wanted to watch a few things including a few James O'brien talks. 

The news that Alok Sharma has contracted Coronavirus and is having to self isolate I found interesting and I wonder if that will make MPs rethink this cancelling of online voting as by voting for it in this way is like saying they want to conduct a survey of physically disabled people, but going to the top a 25 storey building with no lifts to do it.  I don't get the logic of voting against not only the interests of your constituents, but in this situation putting yourself at risk.

Isolation Journal 3

Once again the cat alarm woke us up earlier than I was hoping, I was so tired that I fed the cats, but managed to throw dry cat food everywhere.

I snoozed a bit longer and then got up around 9.30am and tidied and cleaned the kitchen from dinner yesterday evening and had some cornflakes and an Americano for breakfast made from our lovely coffee machine (our over indulgence to commiserate our abrupt end to our honeymoon and make lockdown more bearable when our cheaper machine broke down - I do recommend highly!) I also recommend the lovely Modern Standard coffee that we use and is far to easy to plough through a bag of!

I noticed my right knee was really quite sore this morning, I'd not done anything yesterday to be concerned about my knee, although I'd had some perifirmis issues.  When I rubbed around the knee cap it was really crunchy compared to the left knee.

I was excited this morning as I'd signed up for a 2 hour Flash Fiction course that my friend Lauren had told me about with Arvon.  At the start of the the year I'd thought about doing a residential there as they have a site in Hebden Bridge, but obviously Corona got in the way of these plans, so it was a great way to still do something in keeping with my 20 things 20 times in 2020 which included 20 hours learning something new and 20 creative writting sessions or blog entries.

The course started at 11am via Zoom and was hosted and facilitated by Dr Tania Hershman I had a quick chat with Lauren first about the writing challenges we'd been doing together this week.  We signed on and after Tania was introduced she said that she was going to "work us hard" and she really did!

We had a first exercise of word cricket where she gave us a starting phrase and we had to build a short story by just writing continously for 15 minutes and at certain points she threw in some extra words to include.  We then read a short story together called "The Yacht Man" and moved onto our next exercise which was taking 6 random excerpts from books grabbed off the shelf including a coffee machine manual and weaving as many as possible into a story - this was a really good fun one and I managed to write on that featured many current events.  We again read together a few more pieces of flash fiction and in very different and interesting styles and our next excerise was to take very serious trigger words and write as many descriptive words that related to that word.  Tania then announced that these were "banned" words and we had to write for 7 minutes about that word - it was both harder and easier than you would think.  Our final exercise was on Drabbles and Dribbles and this one I found much harder as I didn't have an obvious inspiration starting point.

2 hours totally flew by and I would highly recommend this as great value for money (£35) and great content, but most importantly a great faciliator who was encouraging, energetic and fun!  

I made some lunch for me and Alan - creamy garlic mushroom pasta and then Lauren and I read what we'd written back to each other which was fascinating as even with a very similar start and end to one of the pieces we were very different in content.  We decided to try and find a flash fiction competition to enter and talked about a few films and books that we recommended including Arrival which Alan and I decided to watch this evening.

I got bogged down watching the Daily Briefing again today and I'm yet to be convinced that we are ready to ease the lockdown based on the number of infections and where the R number is at.  What concerned me more was how Whitty and Vallance weren't allowed to respond to some of the journalist questions as Johnson stepped in.  I totally understand that they don't want to be "dragged into politics" but it was palpable to see what their opinions have beens towards some of the comments by politians that they visibly disagree with.  I was especially impressed with Sam Coates at Sky News for asking them if they had been gagged and forbidden to answer questions and how they felt about it.

Alan went out for a run and I decided not to today as my knee was sore, but when he'd got back I decided to go for a walk as it was such lovely weather and I strolled through the nearby fields and took the time to take some pictures and videos including one for my daily photo challenge with my friends Hayley and Sam which was "All the Small Things" today.  I walked for 45 minutes and about 3K.

I listened to the High Low Podcast as I was walking and then when I'd got home as I made tea.  Another Hello Fresh recipe of Cod with a cheesy crumb and mashed potato with spring greens - delicious!  We then had treacle tart and clotted cream for dessert and watched Arrival.  Arrival really reminded me of Interstellar and it had a really interesting plot and it is definitely one of those that I really want to rewatch and am slightly sad I didn't see in a cinema as I bet it's great on the big screen.

Since then I've been messing around on my phone and trying to film Qubit having a conversation about Dominic Cummings, but he's been noisy and then camera shy.  Some of the comments about this from members of my family have made me so angry that my heart has been racing.  I'm most worried that it's all part of his plan and a deliberate plot to distract us from our awful death rate.  I also feel frustrated that I can't do more to tangibly help.

I managed to totally forget the 8pm clap, I hadn't planned on clapping as I feel uncomfortable being press ganged by the neighbourhood whatsapp group (allthough I could be completely misinterpreting things) and the fact that I'm not sure we all have the same interpretation of social distancing, so this evening I made another donation to Selby District Foodbank.  I liked the initial idea of the clap, but no one near me is a carer and so it felt a bit like keeping up appearances for the neighbours so instead I've tried to do more tangible things each week like donations or helping to make hampers of hand santisers, hand cream and treats for the local GP surgery.

I never thought keeping an isolation lockdown blog would actually give me so much to write about each day as nothing really happens and the concept of time has changed - this from the High Low today made me smile in describing how time works now.

Night night!