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 76

We woke up late again at around 10.30am, Alan had been sleeping in the other room for most of the night as it was so warm and his ear had been giving him grief.

I came downstairs to a dead pigeon that Maya had brought in and mauled with feathers everywhere, I cleared it up with Alan's help, thankfully it was completely dead.

I made some tiger bread toast, sausages and scrambled eggs for breakfast with orange juice and we watched some Peep Show this morning.  I listened to more of "I heart Las Vegas"

I then watched some CSI original Vegas episodes as I've finally had a play around with the SkyQ box.  One of the only things I used to watch when I had Sky was CSI, NCIS and Criminal Minds, I used to watch them for hours whilst my ex would go to bed at 9pm about 20 minutes after I had got home.

I went upstairs to read, but ended up messing around on my phone and then eventually got up and hoovered and mopped all the floors and cleaned the bathroom whilst listening to "I heart Vegas" and then went for a run.  I didn't really need to go for a run, but it seemed like something I could chalk up to achievement for the weekend.

I ran 7.2K and just did a very even pace and it seemed to say it was a base effort and took 43 minutes.  It was a nice sunny evening and I did a few Strava segments to increase my Local Legend efforts.  

Alan made dinner which was a Hello Fresh pork and rice dish and also harvested the rhubarb in the garden and bought some more yesterday and made a crumble.  I made Lynchberg Lemonades for me and Alan and we watched even more Peep Show and I accidentally ordered another copy of Girl Woman Other from Hive, forgetting that I'd ordered it already from Fox Lane Books!

Isolation Journal 75

We woke up at a fairly decent time, shortly after 9am. Alan made us coffee and a hot cross bun each and we watched some more Peep Show.

I then tided up the kitchen and the dishwasher hadn't been cleaning well so I ran it on a rinse cycle and did a load of washing.

For lunch I made a salad with dressing of ginger, honey, sriracha, olive oil, mayo and salt and pepper and cooked some sausage rolls.  

I felt quite low energy and dizzy today, I stood up really quick  and nearly passed out first thing.

I listened to more of "I Heart Vegas" as I was doing chores and then watched a bit more TV.  Alan is still feeling poorly with sore ears and just feeling really weak.  I'm not sure how best to help him, but I fed him some of the vitamins I've been taking - vitamin D and a "megavit" from Holland and Barrett.

I went upstairs and messed around on my phone before getting my "Little Fires Everywhere" book out and had a good read.  Last night I'd also ordered Girl Woman Other from Fox Lane Books that is my most local independent bookshop, it was more expensive than Amazon etc, but I'm keen to support them. 

I've definitely been feeling premenstral with levels of rage bubbling away and today I had stomach cramps and finally my period arrived.

Alan made tea which was Hello Fresh and Haloumi with lentils.  And we started to watch Greyhound, but I was really struggling to concentrate that wasn't helped with Qubit came running in and panted like mad.  Moments later I spotted a facebook post from the neighbours about an injured rabbit and then the Amazon shopping arrived and Chris our neighbour explained that Qubit had brought in a rabbit and it was stuck under a bush.  Between us we managed to get the rabbit out and it hopped away into another field.  I took the recycling out, moved the bins down from being stored on top of each other and spotted Kirsty looking at the rabbit and trying to scare off one of Anna's cats from going for it!  We had some ice cream and Qubit licked te bowl out.

I tried to focus on the film, but couldn't so went for a run at 9pm.  Sunset was at around 8.50pm and it got dark quite quickly, but I got around my run quick enough to be able to do it in the light and I appreciated not having to do lots of intervals up and down the driveway.  I ran about 5.8K in 31 minutes and my VO2 Max went up to 51 and I'm still "productive" with my training.

I then watered the plants and I ran a bath and got stuck for ages playing Pokemon go.  I came down and watched a bit of Frasier with Alan and had a glass of Sauvignon Blanc and a lolly and I put on "Lose a stone in 21 days" as a lot of people are talking about it.

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 73

I had booked today off and I definitely needed to be able to switch off.  I didn't wake up as late as I'd hoped as it was quite late by the time I'd fallen asleep, it wasn't too late when I got into bed after writing another 1500 words on the novel, but Alan was struggling to sleep and eventually we managed to fall asleep and I think he went to the other room.

I had set an alarm for 9.30am and got up around the same time, but was messing around on my phone in bed for a bit.  Alan interrupted me as he'd been on the phone to the GP and had me take a picture of a lump behind his ear.  I went straight out for a run just grabbing some orange juice for some energy first. I ran 7K in total and mostly did steady to medium effort, but pushed myself up a segment and got a PB and 4th woman, I need to have another go and see what I can do on a day when it does stink of burning plastic, fuel and manure - it was next to what the people of the village call the pig farm.

I noticed that the artichokes that we have been growing out the back and we'd not picked had properly turned into deep purple flowers that the bees seemed to enjoy.

I got back and quickly showered and grabbed some cornflakes and coffee and signed onto Zoom for my Arvon at Home which was "How to write anything" by David Quantick and was very different, less structured exercises and much more basically how to commercialise your career as a writer and importantly reassurances that to be a writer you just have to write.  Writing is like exercise and the more you do it the easier it gets and that you should do it every day.  There was a Q&A that we got to ask questions at the end and he answered them swiftly and slightly flippantly, but basically the big takeaway was to just crack on and write.  There was an exercise that I wasn't overly sure I did very well and I found hard and this was it:

1.       Invent a character using two adjectives only - eg “Jon is cowardly and romantic.”

2.       What do they think they want? Eg “Jon wants to find a knight in shining armour.”

3.       What do they actually need? Eg “Jon needs to find his fight and win it.”

4.       Now put them in a story. Describe that story in two lines. “Jon is in love with his boss but his boss is a bully who sets him a morally wrong task. Will Jon do the right thing?”

5.       Now make that story a novel. Describe that novel in one line. “The story of a man who has to learn that love is never unconditional.”

6.       Now make that story a sitcom. Describe that sitcom in one line. “Jon loves his boss who makes him do terrible things and needs to grow some bravery.”

7.       Now make that story a movie. Describe that movie in one line. “When Jon falls in love with his new boss, he has to decide – spend his life dreaming of what will never be or stand up to an evil bully.”

Lauren was also in the class and seemed to enjoy it too and mentioned she'd listened to him speaking before.

Alan made lunch a pasta bake with some smoked mossarella cheese that he had bought and brought it up for me with the padron peppers as well.  I ate some upstairs whilst the class was finishing and then went downstairs and faffed around for a bit packing up my Garmin to deliver to Curtis who lived over in North Leeds and drove over to see Hayley for a chat first.

I had to fill up my car with petrol for the first time since the 29th March, it's a hybrid and I've not really done many longer journeys in it so most of the mileage since March has been on the electric charge.  As Alan suggested I chose to go to a pay at pump place at Asda on York road so that I didn't have to worry about social distancing.  I called and chatted to both my mum and dad on the way over and they seem to be doing ok.

I then headed over to Hayley and we sat in the garden chatting and watching goldfinches, sparrows and angry pigeons and she gave me a karma cola to drink.  We had a really good chat and then she was getting ready to have tea and teach a class.  I've been taking advantage of her proximity as she will soon be living more like an hour and a half away on the coast.

I drove over to deliver my Garmin to Curtis who had purchased it in an auction and I'd donated the money to Selby food bank.  He has recently taken up the hobby of beekeeping and so I kept my mask on and went to take a look at the hive with the bees, it was very exciting!

I drove home (really needing a wee at this point as I don't like trying to use other people's toilets at the moment if I can avoid it) and when I got back Alan had more or less finished making Carribean lamb and rice for dinner and so I quickly watered the plants and we sat in the garden and ate tea and I had a glass of Sauvignon Blanc from Naked Wines and Alan had a ginger beer as the diagnosis from the doc was that he needed some strong antihistamines so he'd been to pick them up from the pharmacy in the village and so was avoiding alcohol.

I tided the kitchen listening to some more of "I heart Las Vegas" hung the washing out and then sat with Alan to watch some Peep Show and eat some ice cream.  I also had another ice lolly.  

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 71

Alan went to bed much earlier last night and I decided to go to bed before midnight for a change and read a good bit of "Little Fires Everywhere" before falling asleep and I woke up extremely early before my alarm at around 6.30am and so messed around on my phone, read some more and got up not actually feeling that groggy for a change, but feeling full of anxiety.  I made breakfast (yoghurt, lemon curd, granola, granny smith) and coffee.

I was anxious about the pressure to go back into the office as well as a slight mistake I'd made with a candidate - our company requires a level of PI insurance for contractors, they didn't have the amount we'd required and they were unhappy yesterday, but they emailed at 10am to say that they'd been able to increase the level at no extra charge so that went away.  The second one I spoke to my boss about and explained I was concerned about my asthma so was going to wait until September.  She seemed "ok" about it, but I've still had to ask my team to go in a bit in August, although I don't think it's necessarily needed at this point.

At lunch me and Alan went for a quick walk into the village to stretch our legs and then I had a slice of bread, ham and lettuce for lunch with some orange juice.  Today was a 3 coffee day.

I didn't have a hugely productive day, in this way being in the office I love as if I'm a bit anxiety ridden the presence of others brings me away from the relentless cycle of thoughts.  I love being around people, I even went in a week after breaking my shoulder when I couldn't even wear a coat in April and had to walk 20 minutes each way to the train station wearing a bumbag as I couldn't carry my handbag on my shoulder.  I don't have time off sick and I'm really dedicated, so why do I feel so bloody guilty?!

I signed off at around 6.40pm having done a few more calls and get some things sorted.

I cooked dinner and listened to so more "I heart Vegas" and I made pork and feta naan bread pizzas with little gem lettuce salad and we watched a couple of episodes of Peep Show and then had some Haagen Daaz pralines and cream with cream and then after it had gone down...a bit I went for some hill running up and down the drive way after dropping off some fabric to a neighbour who is making masks.

I ran around 4 miles and did one rep up and down hard and one (or more) easier.  My garmin is now telling me that I'm no longer "productive" but I'm "overreaching".  

I forgot mention that I booked onto another Arvon course which looks good on Thursday A SHORT GUIDE TO WRITING EVERYTHING