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.