Lockdown Week 9 - 19th - 25th May

Well, this was the most up-and-down week so far!


I started the week in a positive mood but Wednesday was gloriously sunny - so much so that I sat outside for lunch, then inside but by the window in the afternoon, and got too much sun. As a result, I spent Thursday feeling 'off' and dizzy, and then that night my sleep was disrupted by rain (very welcome), foxes arguing in the street, and then husband's snoring. Argh. I'd just about got back to my normal self when Dominic Cummings' antics took over the media. Seeing people talking online about how they'd stayed home instead of dashing to the sides of their loved ones who were lonely, ill, even dying, while a government adviser did whatever he liked was heartbreaking. I wasn't ever a government supporter but if they could have dropped further in my opinion they just did. I don't suppose they care much though.

Fortunately there were good things this week too.

On Wednesday, I caught a re-working of Ibsen's A Doll's House, from The Lyric  Theatre, Hammersmith with the setting moved to late 1870s Calcutta. Torvald (now Tom) and Dr Rank being British officials, Nora (Niru) and the other characters being Indians. First performed last year, the film had been made solely for the archives, its production values weren't as good as those of specially recorded plays but maybe it was nearer to the actual experience I'd get in a slightly cheaper seat in a real-life theatre.
And Friday night I saw this week's National Theatre Live's offering A Streetcar Named Desire performed at the Young Vic, and starring Gillian Anderson as Blanche. I thought it was brilliant; my husband complained about the rotating set.

This week also saw the start of HayDigital - a way to bring some of the events scheduled for this year's Hay Festival to us all at home. So far I've dropped in to hear Maggie O'Farrell talk about Shakespeare, plague and grief, the inspirations for her latest novel Hamnet, and I've signed up for more later this week.

Monday brought a good ending to the week (despite political goings-on) with a second Folk on Foot Frontroom Festival. I turned in to see Frank Turner and his wife perform but found a lot of new music to delight me - The Unthanks, Kate Rusby,  Johnny Flynn, Richard Thompson, and Eliza Carthy. An excellent way to spend a Bank Holiday (better than crowding a beach somewhere) and round off the week.

Lockdown - Week 8: 12th - 18th May

This week started badly. I didn't thing I'd put much hope in Boris's much talked about announcement at the end of last week, but the let-down I felt afterwards showed that I obviously had been expecting something more. The restrictions on visiting family are particularly mean - we could drive as far as we like, so theoretically to Manchester to see our younger daughter, but then we would have to see her separately, and despite the fact that we've all been staying home we couldn't go into her house. Frustrating and disappointing doesn't cover it.

This mood doesn't seem to have cleared all week. I've got stuck in a rut of idling away the days, achieving little apart from the necessary bits of life, from housework to gardening, and I couldn't settle to my normal 'evenings out' of streamed drama and music; everything just seemed too irrelevant and cheery.

Unlike seemingly the rest of the country, I didn't dash off out on Wednesday, or over the weekend.
Lots of places have reported crowds visiting and I'd rather stay clear of them for now. I did have a sort of outing on Tuesday - to pick up my supermarket click and collect order. The hedgerows were white with mayblossom and horse chestnut flowers, and it was nice to see somewhere other than my garden.

 By weekend though I was realising that I needed to do more than sit around all day. On Saturday I went for a brief walk up to the park and found buttercups and frothy cows parsley (I think). There were definitely less people around than on my previous sorties there, so maybe I'll risk walking there more regularly.

In the garden I've now set up another wigwam for Kentucky Wonder Wax beans. They're yellow-podded, so, all being well, will look stunning next to the purple mangetout peas on the left.

There doesn't seem to be a safe way of the current situation, so I'm trying to regain my former calmness and positive mood, from making time to relax in the garden (rather than just slump in apathy) to focusing on what I'm eating.

Late in the afternoon on Sunday I sat quietly for a while listening to a blackbird sing in the apple tree, and watching as a robin flew to a nesting box on the wall behind me. That evening I made my straight-from-the freezer dinner more interesting with a multi-coloured salad, followed by home-made raspberry sauce (fruit again from the freezer) over ice cream and Greek yogurt.















On Monday I cooked coq au vin with pork chops instead of chicken, so 'cotelettes de porc au vin'. Red wine with pork is unusual but it worked well. These are little things but they've improved my mood, and I'm starting week 9 feeling more upbeat.


I'm taking advantage of events having to move online, so signed up for  Hay Digital Festival which is streaming this week, and I intend to catch part of the folk on Foot festival also taking place this coming weekend. I've been a few times to Hay, and my favourite memory is off sitting in a Tiffany Murray/David Mitchell event while Frank Turner's music drifted over from another tent. Maybe I'll combine the two festivals, and try to recreate that feeling.

Lockdown - Week 7: May 5th - 11th

It feels like this week has just been one long exercise in waiting - for cold nights to finish threatening frost so I can start the next seasonal phase of gardening, and for Boris's big announcement on Sunday.

Meanwhile I've been re-discovering my interest in cooking and baking. For a while I haven't been making much effort. When she lived at home, my younger daughter had become the main cook. When she left, first to university, then to live in Manchester, I drifted about making little effort (at first I even forgot dinner-time), then my parents fell ill, and microwaving a frozen meal became the norm. My husband seems to show the same enthusiasm for a dinner that's taken straight from the freezer as he does for one that takes an hour or so's effort. It's taken over a year, and this enforced quiet time, for me to have any real interest in what I cook, but now I'm finding my inner domestic goddess, and cooking to please myself.

A lot of what I'm baking is essentially comfort food - muffins and cakes - but following on from my home-made tapas of the other week, I'm experimenting with new recipes, generally centred on allotment produce, or last year's frozen version of it. So this week's menu has included blackberry and white choc chip muffins, cake and jam with rhubarb from the allotment and garden, and tray-bake and risotto to use up the last of last year's leeks.



It's been another busy 'out and about' week - Sophie Okonedo and Ralph Fiennes in the National Theatre Live's brilliant production of Antony and Cleopatra, another Frank Turner gig, and a So Many Sundays gig from Isolate Live, featuring Morning Crush, Tom Dulieu, then a gap for Boris's speech, and back to see Joe Tilston.
Another regular feature of Sunday is our family quiz. This week was a music quiz and we mostly proved we didn't know anything, but it was great fun, and the most I've laughed all week.

Otherwise, I'm losing myself with online jigsaws. I said they'd prove to be addictive, and they are. In part they may be a form of mindfulness, and they certainly calm me and stop me overthinking things, and the [pieces make a delightful 'click' as they fall correctly in to place.



The warm weather came back again briefly, the roses, laburnum, fuchsias and peonies all began to flower, and I spent a contented afternoon or two mainly just sitting in the garden

But despite getting my hopes up, the promise of summer didn't stay around, the frosts are still with us (so my newly planted peas and sweetpeas are swaddled in bubblewrap), and Boris didn't really have much to say apart from 'Go back to work, you lazy lot' which was of no relevance to me, so it's back to another week or more of waiting around.

Lockdown - week 6: 28th April - 4th May

Rain! Argh. After so many dry weeks, this week started wet. The garden was getting dry, I was having to water the huge garden pots every day (as well as the seedlings in the greenhouse), and the water butts were empty, so we needed rain.








But it's dull - and of course, after a morning of it, I was looking for things to do, so I made rhubarb muffins and, yes, tackled the ironing pile (it's my default go to when I have too much energy)






It's been another week of exceptional streamed theatre and music ...

Wednesday - Gecko Theatre's dance/mime production Institute. I saw this at Nottingham Playhouse a couple of months ago, back in the days when we could go out to theatres, and think it had more impact on stage.

Thursday -  KT Tunstall performing live from Los Angeles as part of the Albert Hall Home series of shows which should have being taking place right now but cannot.

Over Thursday and Friday, I caught two performances of Frankenstein from National Theatre Live. In the first, Benedict Cumberbatch played the monster, and Jonny Lee Miller played Frankenstein; for Friday night's performance they swapped roles. Both versions were absolutely brilliant. Cumberbatch's portrayal of a 'new born' trying to find out how to work hands and feet, and move about was stunning - and more so, I think, because I wouldn't have imagined him as a very physical actor. Overall though, I preferred Miller's monster - more sympathetic and humane - and Cumberbatch's scientist - arrogant and proud.


Saturday - A Midsummer Night's Dream from The Globe Theatre. I'm not sure if this was part of the current 'lockdown' screening of shows or just something that was already on Youtube. A fun, riotous romp.



As hope is growing that the end of lockdown is in sight, I've heard people talking about their plans for when the virus has passed. I'm not entering down that route. Over the past years, unable to take holidays due to my parents' health, I learned patience, and found it didn't help to plan ahead - in part because the only way out of the situation was their death which obviously I didn't want to hurry - but thinking of where I would like to go made me fidgety, wanting to take the holiday right then, not in however many years time. Hunkering down, finding small pleasures at and around home, made things more bearable. And that's how I'm dealing with the situation now.

I have the garden to potter in, a wide variety of entertainment streamed to my TV (in between the special performances listed I'm catching up on several seasons' worth of Elementary and New Girl), social media where I can chat to anyone and everyone, and, although it's not the same as seeing them, I video chat with my family several times a week. My husband is spending most days trying to get the allotment back into order after the past few years of neglect, so I have a lot of time free from interruptions when I can pick up habits and hobbies I've dropped. Yes, a lot of time is spent in the garden, sometimes doing as little as watching the breeze blow through my bonsai trees, but I have several unfinished sewing projects lying around, and in these peaceful afternoons I've started working on them again. I feel I might even find the headspace to settle to something more artistically creative.

I can survive as I am for a while yet, but thinking about what I might do 'after' is likely to unsettle me. I'll keep my focus on the small everyday things, and not think too far ahead.

Resolutions so far ... four months in

Usually at strategic points throughout the year I have a look at how my resolutions are going, and either reassess them or give up hope entirely. So, after four months, how are things going?

With corona virus forcing me to stay indoors, I thought this year's resolutions would have been completely written off, but looking at my post from January I see things aren't totally adrift.

Get Outside More - well, I'm definitely doing this. I started with expanding slightly on my normal walking activities, but oddly since lockdown I've spent more time outside than ever. For one thing the weather's been good, in fact glorious for April, and also pottering around, sowing seeds, planting out small plants makes me feel I'm doing something productive, especially if there are really problems with fresh vegetables in a few months time. having veggies to pick from garden and allotment will take away an enormous worry. And when there aren't things that need doing in the
garden, I spend a lot of time sitting and relaxing there.

De-clutter - this is something that appears every year in my resolutions list but this time I'm actually moving on it. Early in the year, I made a start on sorting through the huge pile of photographs accumulated by my parents, removing many from their cardboard mounts which reduced the amount of space they took up. Since lockdown though I seem too busy for this (but, no, I couldn't really say what I've been doing)

Pursuing my intention of getting creative is helping with de-cluttering. Actual 'art' seems to require some mindset that I don't have at the moment but it's possible to be both useful and creative (and clear some of the clutter). I made a cardigan from some wool bought in January '19 (!), and knitted a scarf and hat with some gorgeous yarn given to me by my youngest daughter at Christmas. In the last couple of weeks I've picked up a couple of unfinished sewing projects that have been lying around for a long while. This helps with de-cluttering, my added intention to buy no new clothes, and being creative, so it's a win, win, win situation - and when actually finished I'll have some brighter clothes to wear, which was another intention of mine.


I'm not making a total success of things though ...

I've broken my resolve to buy no new clothes, but I feel a little bit of cheering up is necessary through lockdown, and, importantly, these new trousers fitted my intention to wear brighter clothes instead of old reliable navy and black.

Lose Weight - ha! this is always the difficult resolution, and so far it seems to be going in reverse; lockdown definitely takes away self-control over food.

Taking holidays anywhere is off the timetable at the moment, so I'm glad I went away at the end of February to North Norfolk's coast and ticked 'stay somewhere odd' off the list by spending the weekend in a converted chapel. We'd got tickets for a folk festival in Somerset but that's been postponed till autumn, and I'm not even sure if we'll go then.

Moving house is another 'on hold' project, with no idea when that can even be thought about.

For most of us plans are going to abandoned this year, but I'm hoping I can at least carry on with some of my resolutions. Who knows? Maybe I'll even eventually lose some weight!