Waiting for the weather to cool so I can plant out some food crops at the resurrected allotment later this week.
I work for a freight and logistics firm a few hours a week. Their journey through the coronavirus outbreak has been pretty interesting. It's an industry of small margins across a multitude of jobs and so the sudden hold on the economy is as difficult for them as anyone. But they are also essential key workers, responsible for keeping supplies moving. Most recently they have been part of the NHS supply chain for medical supplies.
As lockdown starts to lift I was interested in what kind of cargo was moving through their yard now. Apparently one of the biggest movers is sunscreen. Stacks of the stuff. Daily. Because people are exercising more and because:
May 2020 has been the sunniest calendar month on record with 266 hours of sunshine, beating the previous record of 265 hours in June 1957.
Today the public have been asked to go easy on water consumption amid a surge in demand (BBC News). That's been coming, I suppose, with the recent heatwave and lack of big rain over the lockdown.
Anyway, I was just going to note that sunscreen consumption was up. But then it put me in mind of that song from 1999: Baz Luhrman's 'Everybody's Free To Wear Sunscreen'. The one with all the advice?
Quite pertinent advice even now, like:
Get to know your parents; you never know when they’ll be gone for good
Be nice to your siblings; they are your best link to your past and the People most likely to stick with you in the future
Understand that friends come and go, but for the precious few you Should hold on
Wear Sunscreen
And always wear sunscreen (hear that, Pete?)
Anyway, anyway, I looked up the source of the lyric monologue and it turned out to have been written by journalist Mary Schmich for the Chicago Tribune, after a sunny walk around Lake Michigan in 1997. Short of ideas for a column, she saw a sunbather and hoped she was wearing sunscreen. She then cobbled together a column out of all the advice she, as a 40-something, had for 18-24-year-olds. She wrote it in four hours. (More on how it came to go viral here.)
Be careful whose advice you buy, but be patient with those who supply it. Advice is a form of nostalgia. Dispensing it is a way of fishing the past from the disposal, wiping it off, painting over the ugly parts and recycling it for more than it's worth.
In the song it was read out by a man but it was written by a woman, which maybe alters the reading of it? Either way, it's good to know that she got credit in the end.
Anyway, anyway, ANYWAY! What was incredible on tonight's sunscreen journey was the discovery that Schmich, now 66, still writes her column up to three times a week for the paper.
Anyway, anyway, anyway, ANYWAY! I just wanted to point that out. I'm feeling the universe connecting tonight.
Thanks
Today I am not exactly thankful but bemused to see British Vogue putting three London key workers on its cover. A train driver, midwife and a supermarket worker will all feature on July's front page. If mags did this a bit more often, I might even start buying them again instead of tearing them up for collage.
Also glad the weather is breaking a bit tomorrow. The plants and potato crops need a drink.
Even so, don't forget to wear sunscreen. It's still good advice.
Back to school, it's all fine, says the government! Clem is not impressed.
Primary schools are reopening today for children in reception, year 1 and year 6. Nurseries are also able to reopen. Apparently 28 primary schools opened in Birmingham today.
Even if the risk is low to to children, the risk that they might bring Covid-19 back into households with vulnerable adults seems to have been underplayed. And, tbh, I'm not even sure the risk is low to the kids as long as they play or have classes indoors. Viral load is much higher in contained spaces and the risk of transmission much higher as a result.
Plus, so many people don't trust the government's advice anymore.
I don't know. If I had kids, I don't think I'd be sending them back yet.
Meanwhile at the opening of our local IKEA… massive queues.
Today I am thankful for not having to make tough decisions about children, schools and risk management. Decisions are coming soon to my world, though. There is a wedding happening in August – it's outdoors but still. It is low-level stressing me out that it might go ahead even with risk mitigation. Anxious wedding guests will be the norm for quite a while to come.
For all that I might moan or complain about things, or write about lockdown life while being able to work from home/garden, I know I'm coming from a massively white privileged world.
I may have grown up the daughter of Irish immigrant parents in the era of 'No blacks, no dogs, no Irish' but the advantage of having a white face has ultimately meant our family has thrived in the multicultural city of Birmingham. Discrimination has generally not victimised us through our fair, freckly skin, though childhood bullying was a feature.
This is why I have to make serious mention of the murder of George Floyd as part of this diary. It is the one news story that has cut through Covid-19, causing riots in the US, protests in the UK, a global petition of 10 million and counting. It has broken my heart to read about what happened to him at the hands of brutal racist police, as they knelt on his neck, ignored his pleas and let him die. I accidentally saw a few seconds of the video (autoplay should be banned) and have felt sick to the stomach.
I have little faith that much will change in the US. After all, if they can't change gun laws to stop mass shootings of white children in schools, then what hope is there for an innocent black man murdered in a divided country where systemic racism is rife from the president down?
My friend, Steve Lawson, a local musician who has toured in the US, posted something today that goes beyond the outrage and disgust over this crime. He likens white privilege to being tall in a society that stacks the best stuff on the top shelves. And he suggest some positive action we can take from our position of power in our white-biased societal structure.
Where to start? Well, today is our wedding anniversary. 12 years with my amazing, brilliant partner in… well, not crime, at least not often. And certainly not crime that would mean our life was threatened by the police. Because, of course, we're white. So we have far fewer reasons to be scared of police in the regular run of things. Sure, the police do occasionally tear gas white people (my mum got tear gassed protesting in Genoa), or tase people (a white friend of mine with mental health issues was tased to death by US police in a gas station a few years back), but if I get pulled over by the Police in a car, or I walk past a cop in the street I'm not routinely fearing for my life.
But that's the reality for so, so many black people. Every black person I've ever spoken to about this, in fact. And if your instinctive reaction is to try and explain it away, to go looking for stats to make it seem less of a problem, to conjure up some version of 'if you've nothing to hide you've nothing to fear', then hurrah! You're using your white privilege to do the work of white supremacy.
Wait, what? That's a bit harsh, Steve! Nope. White supremacy is the outworking of the belief that white people are inherently superior to other races. So if you are more inclined to question the testimony of a black person in describing their lived reality, and will run to try and corroborate it with information from a 'trusted' (read: white) source, that's white supremacy in all its masked wonder. Because there are decades of scholarly work from within black institutions and communities documenting their systemic oppression at the hands of law enforcement. There are absolutely white scholars – allies, truth-tellers – working on this too, but the vast majority of the work here is from within black communities. And we – collectively, white-led western society – haven't listened. We haven't changed – at least not enough. We've failed to shut down a bunch of racist bullshit about the 'good side' to the British Empire, about how the increasingly stressful situation of being poor and white in the US means that racism isn't real, that the US having had a black president means it's 'post-racial'. We've allowed fear of foreigners to land us with Brexit – some on the left placed their own economic concerns so far above the threat to non-white people in the UK that they happily partnered with out and out racists to push for 'Lexit'. If you're willing to endorse the opinions of racists to get your economic vision pushed through, your pragmatism is indistinguishable from racism.
But the voices are there, loud and clear, to tell us the real legacy of colonialism, the brutal impact of the UK's stop and search laws, the endless parade of black people being brutalised and murdered in police custody on both sides of the Atlantic, the ongoing legacies of slavery and the total lack of any serious response to multiple instances of far-right white-terrorism in the US while the media still goes on and on about 'islamic extremism', as though actual Nazis murdering people are just 'lone wolves' or misguided kids, but muslim youths watching their grandparents homeland collapse under US mortar fire wondering what the hell to do about it are evil extremists who need deporting to countries they've never even visited… It's documented what goes on in 'immigration centres' – we have first hand accounts of the atrocious treatment of people being held at Yarlswood, first hand accounts of the rape culture infesting the immigration patrols along the US/Mexican border. But we're still more vocal about a Target being set on fire than we are about the rape of undocumented migrants who have literally zero power to do anything about it.
So what do we do? The first and most important step for my white friends and family is to acknowledge that white privilege is real. It doesn't make you 'guilty' but it does absolutely mean you need to acknowledge being a beneficiary of its privilege and start doing the work of how to exercise that privilege in the service of dismantling it.
An analogy: a tall person who can reach a high shelf isn't guilty of being tall, but if they go round shops moving all the stuff to a higher shelf, then they're sure as shit guilty of making life worse for anyone not like them. A decent tall person would do a number of things – instantly, get things from the shelves for anyone needing it there and then, secondly, move the stuff back down to lower shelves for whoever's next, thirdly talk to the dickhead moving the stuff, and if needed stop them from doing it, and fourthly, work with everyone willing to help to take down the higher shelves and restructure the shop so everyone who needs to can get to the stuff they need.
We've been perfectly happy for successive governments to stack all the stuff on the high shelves for us, and we just pick it up saying 'well, I didn't make the shelves, I don't run the shop'. Not good enough. Time to remake the shelves. And if the shelves are immovable, build a new shop. In the short term, we can put in ramps, to elevate those who need access.
Right now, there are a lot of people in the US protesting. The arrest of Oscar Jiminez, reporting for CNN live as he was arrested shows just how ridiculous the situation is. The numerous corroborated reports of undercover cops and far right agitators infiltrating the demonstrations and weaponising the deep, righteous anger to start riots show us just how hard it is to both acknowledge that righteous anger at deep injustices CAN lead to the destruction of property, but that same destruction of property can be weaponised as a pretext to an armed clash between protesters and police.
So if you want to do something right now, donate to the Minnesota Freedom Fund https://minnesotafreedomfund.org/donate to help those who are being arrested right now for protesting. Not all will have the chairman of CNN calling the city mayor on their behalf.
For longer term solutions, you can support the African American Policy Forum – aapf.org – "an innovative think tank that connects acadmics, activists and policy makers to promote efforts to dismantle structural inequality".
We don't get to stand by, we don't get to look away, we don't get to stay quiet. #BlackLivesMatter
(And yes, I'll write more about our wedding anniversary later, but right now this is what's important).
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Today I am thankful for the many opportunities that are available to me and that my biggest problems right now are just a blip in the whole scheme of things.
We spent a lot of today putting up various shades around the garden – Clem likes the orange one.
After revealing my lockdown pot belly the other day, today started with a walk BEFORE breakfast. I read recently that if you do some activity before eating then you really, really look forward to breakfast. And since I really, really look forward to breakfast already, I wondered how many 'reallys' I could add.
The other thing is, we're currently in a glorious heatwave – hence the news stories of crowded beaches (FFS!) – so walking early or late is the only cool time of the day to exercise.
So I filled up a water bottle, put on some tunes and did a fast walk around Kings Heath Park.
Not too many people but plenty of activity: dog walkers, joggers, families on bikes, a guy writing in a book on the grass, an elderly person sitting alone on a bench, kids hiding inside giant rhododendron bushes, a smoker pondering life at the pond, a sunbather, walkers, three young women working out in a 2m triangulation, three more playing rounders and a tonne of basketball players. Oh and a celebrity spot – midwife Rumah from Birmingham soap Doctors jogging with a friend. It was all I could do not to shout something about her unfair suspension storyline for kissing a hospital consultant.
Lockdown desire line a few metres away from the tree-lined concrete path.
I followed a desire line into one corner of the park with blackbirds flitting about and dense foliage all around. I was extra excited to discover a den area – until I turned around and saw toilet paper.
People! Argh! Foul! Getting caught short, fine, but take it with you and bin it. When we did a litter pick in Hazelwell Park just before lockdown, the worst culprit was actually nappy wipes. They get stuck in trees and form the equivalent of an above-ground fatberg. BIN IT! </rant>
What was ace were all new ducklings at the pond, protective parents prowling, and doling out the evil eye. Also, the giant purple ornamental onions (alliums) and oriental poppies growing close to the horticultural school.
Gosh this park walk was an emotional ride of highs and lows.
Back home, I can report that my much-anticipated breakfast indeed was better than a normal breakfast. Really, really, really, really good.
Toast, orange marmalade, salted boiled egg, coffee, Pulitzer-prize-winning surf biography and summery Brazilian tunes playing on the phone.
The second high of the day was the cold shower after doing a 50-minute online Shbam class (that's the one where you basically dance around your living room to good tunes). It was like going from a sauna into a plunge pool. Damn that was good. Cold skin on a hot day. The best. The opposite of being snug on a winter day.
Shbam teacher Kyle in his kitchen dancing to James Brown – free with my on-hold gym membership.
Anyway, I'm getting back on the fitness case. Which is good because this summer dress is now lockdown-tight and, yes, uncomfortable.
The third high of the day was a visit to York Road Supplies, everyone's favourite local ironmongers and plant seller, and the place where I get my allotment plant plugs. It's only just opened last week and I filled my boots with herbs and various crops. This summer may see my first ever homegrown cucumber.
Thanks
Thanks to Daz for the reminder that we're aren't out of the woods yet. He posted this earlier and it was like a slap-around-the-cheek wakeup call since just about everyone I know has started making meeting arrangements of some kind. Brought me up short it did.
I can see loads of people on here, understandably, enthusiastically arranging meetups in parks and gardens.
Please note that our rate of infection, and death, is still considerably greater than it was when we imposed our version of a lockdown.
If you are going to see people please try and limit the number of people you see over a short period of time. If this proves, as many suspect, much too soon to try something like this then you don't want to have been a catalyst for infection moving between groups of friends.
Seeing many small groups of people in quick succession could end up as being as bad as hanging out in a big group.
nb// primarily aimed at Birmingham people because we are still one of the most dangerous places in the country.
Aka a sort of triumph of technology over lockdown isolation. Here's what went down in our beloved Artefact café's end-of-the-month quiz with "eternal Quizmaster and all round bodacious babe, Sebastiaan Ros". There were 29 teams – which is about 23 more than usual, tuning in from around Birmingham and beyond.
Here's the play:
Facebook event notification that The Artefact Quiz 'Stay-at-home pandemic edition" was on (see top photo). Excited!
WhatsApp group of Stirchley people organises quiz group made up of five households. Sets up separate WhatsApp group.
Email to get instructions.
Discuss and agree on best video conferencing software to confer on answers – Zoom, Skype or Jitsi. Set up tech in living room.
Open up Jitsi for the team play. Ruth and Neil share their screen and audio to Fran who has a dodgy wifi connection tonight.
Open up Twitch.tv to hear the grand quizmaster Seb and join live chat.
Mirror Twitch over Airplay to television and turn up to 100 as volume is so low. Plug earphones into telly, one in my ear, one in Pete's to hear questions.
Quiz begins: we listen, confer on Jitsu, mark ourselves (honestly of course) and type scores into the Twitch live chat. There are book/TV/song, dead or alive celebrities, music on a theme, video observation, 'where's Dominic' castle pictures, TV theme tunes and a cat round.
Half way through, our dinner was ready so we just watched the amazing observation round (video to follow on YouTube – here it is!) with tuna and baked spuds. Can you do it? Watch twice then see how many weapons and players you can name. I think we got 5.
The cat round involved taking a photo of a cat within two minutes (or drawing one if you don't have a cat) and uploading it to Instagram with the hashtag #theartefactquiz. I drew two cats and Pete ran to take a photo of the rabbit, who may or may not identify as a cat. No idea how that one was scored.
Finally had a quick video catchup chat with fellow team members on Jitsu.
Quite everything then noticed a different household unit in Kings Heath was messaging me on Facebook Messenger to compare score notes.
Rose season in full swing, reminding me of my mother and our old rose garden.
The lockdown continues to ease. From Monday, in England, groups of up to six people from different households will be able to meet outside. So that's pretty much all my local family. I'm sure a picnic will soon be arranged.
Tonight I jumped the gun and met with my elderly friend – who came out of hospital on Tuesday – and his son in their garden, distanced of course, with my spray disinfectant in my bag and BYO drinks. It almost felt like normal life had resumed. We clapped at 8pm for the carers. My friend gave me a tour of his roses which were in full bloom. On Monday we enter the meteorological summer season.
Full many a flower is born to blush unseen, And waste its sweetness on the desert air.
Thomas Gray
The downside of exiting lockdown – apart from the increased risks – is that the roads are already busier, the air that bit more polluted, people a bit more gung-ho, schools set to open for some next week, the shops opening in a couple of weeks after that.
Soon, capitalism will be back in full swing and this strange isolation will fade as if it were but a dream.
But I, being poor, have only my dreams; I have spread my dreams under your feet; Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.
WB Yeats
Speaking of waking up from a dream. I felt my first depressive thought in a while about climate change. All other news has been on hold except for this virus. And what was it that set me off? A car speeding up the road in a 20mph zone.
I wish we could ban cars or find a way for them all to run on green energy. No phasing out in 2030, 40 or 50. Now.
The car has become an article of dress without which we feel uncertain, unclad, and incomplete in the urban compound.
Marshall McLuhan
There's no going back from automotive technology. But if the lockdown has shown us anything it's that the world is a better place without vehicles choking our air, and emitting noxious fumes and planet-warming carbon emissions.
Yes, I have a car so I'm a hypocrite. But still I'd be happy to give it up and do without cars if society moved that way.
Thanks
The sun setting so late in the evening (9.15pm) means it's light until nearly 10. The lead up to the summer solstice is a special time of the year and gives the feeling of so much extra time. I love seeing the sunset every evening from the front window.
The weather forecast is sunny for days and tonight I had to water the garden to give the plants a drink after a week with no rain. I hope you are enjoying this lovely weather too.
New pot (not new exactly but definitely 'enhanced' by lockdown life).
Trigger warning: this is partly about body size and shape. This isn’t about weight gain/loss so much as how lockdown has changed my eating habits and fitness routine, and up-ended efforts to improve my health. The Zoe Covid reporting app has documented lockdown weight gain as a trend here.
The last time I went to the gym was about 10 days before lockdown, nearly three months ago.
Fitness has been a priority in the past three years because I feel good when I feel fit. After a year of walking back to basic fitness, I then joined the pool and swam for the next year – getting up to around 1km each time. Then I upped my membership to inclusive and I've pretty much gone to the University of B'ham Sport & Fitness centre two to three times a week since 2018, trying various things:
swimming
tai chi
walking netball
barre
over-50s circuits
aqua fitness
pilates
various yogas
arms and abs
gym/weights
On top of this, I took up older adult ballet last year. And I walk. And I have an allotment. It was all going so well for someone in their early 50s trying to reverse years of sedentary computer work.
And then lockdown hit.
Theoretically there's unlimited opportunity to exercise at home or in the garden. But I don't. I've had weights and other kit at home for several years but not formed a habit with them. Home seems to be NOT for fitness. With the habit of going to the gym broken, all I had left was walking. And even one-hour walking a day is now not enough to keep me fit.
Which brings me to my weight.
I don't watch it too much but I did notice that I dropped quite a bit in the past three years after reducing my desk-based work, and also developed a lot more muscle and tone at the gym. That has all been reversed in just 10 weeks.
For a couple of weeks now every time I eat it's been uncomfortable after. Today I felt uncomfortable most of the day. My body shape has filled out in the midriff. Trousers have become uncomfortable. I recently ripped a nice summer skirt at the seam. I feel out of shape and a bit lethargic and also dense and uncomfortable. (Uncomfortable seems to be word.)
This has happened before. The tipping point where I feel it's time to act. Tomorrow I will have a think about how I eat and what. There have been a lot of boredom-related snacks and lots of dunked biscuits.
But in many ways my diet is not so different from before. I don't drink much and I don't eat meat. The two things that have changed are eating too late in the evening thanks to the late walks, and the disappearance of an exercise routine. I feel less fit. I am less fit.
Exercise is a big part of feeling good for me. Both psychologically and physically. I'm going to have to find a new habit that I can do daily and fit around work. One that doesn't cause arthritis or cause RSI flare-ups and doesn't bore me to tears. One that, as my sister always says, I can find my happy thought about.
Wish me luck.
Thanks
Thanks to my body for giving me a heads up to act. Yeah, I know. But this one comes from Alexander Technique years ago when I couldn't work for a year due to work station RSI. My Alexander Technique teacher, Anthony Kingsley used to make me say thank you to the pain. Literally, out loud.
Obviously I thought he was off his rocker. But it's the pain that reminds you to be kind to your body, to listen to what it is saying and to do the things you need to do to help it. And so it is with my lockdown pot.
PS. have just discovered Anthony has a YouTube channel and has put some AT videos online.
Once again, after a long work day and a modern affliction of scriveners' palsy of the mouse hand, I am thankful for a guest post submission. I have poured myself a painkilling restorative of gifted prosecco – more on which below – as is the scribe's way, and now sit down to enjoy the second part of Sheena of London's diary series… (part one is here).
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I am a three-year-in Fulham FC season ticket holder. Which is weird cos, essentially, I don’t particularly like football. I do like watching Fulham though, partly because of the walk from the station to the stadium which is either along the river or through a park. Either way there’s always a heron or a parakeet. (Note parakeet theme running through my blog posts.)
I was going to say ‘enjoy’ watching Fulham but that’s not true – they are terrifically inconsistent so it’s like being on a rollercoaster. Which is surely one of the things we should not be doing at the moment. Like having a party or, yes, being closer to other people at the beach than during normal times! (What is that about?)
SO, with increasing fuckwittery about, here are some coping mechanisms…
In head only and just for imaginary fun:
Push cyclist off bike or, passive-aggressively, wait till very close, turn quickly and make surprising noise or gesture so naturally fall off
As jogger passes, accidentally turn foot (or elbow) out into their path
As beach hogger comes near you, shake out towel to cover them in sand.
Alternatively:
All together now, arms to the side, palms angled sideways and slightly towards the sky, eyebrows raised, head tilted and …. “REALLY? (I do this one regularly, without risk assessment, which may one day be a mistake.)
Stay in and write blogs about fuckwits.
Things I am still struggling with:
The idea that we should ever triage based not on life chances but economic usefulness (see recent DNR stories such as this and this). Public domain examples included care home residents, people with learning disabilities or the disabled (more on this from the British Institute of Human Rights).
Being an emotional wuss. I have been left far more susceptible to tears in the eyes by an incident two years ago. Kindness in particular sends me over the edge.
Things I am thankful for:
NHS and carers, posties etc.
Not having to also deal with bodies in the streets (Ecuador) or ebola (DRC)
Kindness (even though am blubbering mess with red eyes)
Things I am loving:
Facebook, Twitter and Whatsapp – very entertaining these days
Rainbow trout in the river
Writing letters (actual letters, not just complaints)
Chunky Kitkats – oh yes.
Thanks!
Fiona back again – today I am very thankful for a friend dropping off an unexpected gift – prosecco and chocolate – on the doorstep. Now that's the kind of friend you need in lockdown, not a courier of rhubarb. Cheers!
Late news bulletin for yesterday (beep beep be-bee-beep): on our daily walk exercise we went in search of access to a patch of green less than 10 minutes walk away that Google had not labelled. It turned out to be a cricket pitch with club (Lyndworth Cricket Club) that was established in 1881.
1881! Possibly with land gifted by Cadbury's – to be confirmed.
Check it out – they have a clubhouse, bar, score board, nice pitch and are looking for new players. Matches take place on weekends in a normal season (suspended currently).
LYNDWORTH CRICKET CLUB Lyndworth Road Birmingham B30 2UG
Who knew! Please support them – if they stop playing cricket, it'll turn into a developer's dream.
Lyndworth Cricket Club pitch in Stirchley and players warming upThe stylish scoreboard hut bowled this maiden over.
A somnambulent surreal orange Clem under a coloured sail shade
GDPR when it came this day in May two years offered a fantastic declutter. I slowly unclogged my email and moved everything over to take-or-leave RSS feeds on Feedly. I kept only about five excellent email subscriptions. One is Roden from Craig Mod who lives and walks in Japan and writes beautifully and does lots of interesting creative stuff.
This month he wrote about the repetitious detail of our days at the moment. A snippet:
But it’s the singularity of the repeated details that has been a jolt — the way the knife feels coming out of its block each and every morning or the sound of the coffee hitting the grinder gears or the pot of hot water rising up to boil. Of the folding back of my sheets in a fixed way, even the detail of the weight of now — this surreal sense of our shared somnambulant living — as being precise, singular, and a detail that I thought would go away but hasn’t, is still here. There’s a tick-tock synchronicity between the days. And it’s the texture of these repeated hyper-specific particulars that has only heightened the sense of unreality. It’s amazing how so much of what we tend to assume to be recondite or miraculous is there, in minute detail, day after day after day..
I really felt this. Without the whirlwind of the outside world, focus has switched to the small components on which our days are built, like a set of David Lynch normal-made-abnormal details running in slow motion in a dystopian world.
As people die in their tens of thousands (actually now over 101,000 worldwide as of today) in a global pandemic beyond the front door, inside there is the daily closing of the bedroom window when local kids start playing/screaming, a watering of seed crops for the allotment, a coffee and three biscuits from the jar mid-morning, a sliding off of the tarp to get the beanbag out in the garden, a sunset walk, an evening TV show over dinner, a book in the bath.
These details are now the fabric of our restricted world. Something we are all sharing. A weight. On dozy repeat.
What are the details of your routine that is keeping reality from entering your front door?
Thanks
Today I enjoying having at least the sense of a bank holiday – not setting the alarm, time out from the deadlines of work and guilt-free lounging in the sunshine. Today feels like a holiday.
I'm also thankful for the karmic delivery of a variety of squash plants from someone who was on my Rhubarb run yesterday. Thank you Anne.
Pete built this window on the world, meets sun-shade (tarp hanger), meets garden folly – it's bloody brilliant
Today I delivered food to four local households. I say food. It was rhubarb. Enjoy your sour and stringy crumbles, friends. Smother it with custard then kill it with fire.
Thanks
It was nice to say doorstop hellos to various rhubarb-lovers.
It was also quite special to meet up with my brother for the first time since February today. We visited a park I'd never been to before: Malvern and Brueton Park in Solihull, which is half way between our two houses and has a lake and a river.
Wikipedia tells me it is 130 acres of U-shaped parkland joining two parcels of land in 1963. It was very busy and the car park was full but the crowds pretty much stayed in the park area so we had the woodland, wildlife area – the most interesting bit –mostly to ourselves.
Of course, at the first bit of desire line path that disappeared into a hole in the hedge, we veered off and ended up completely outside the designated park on some kind of open ground near a road called Lovelace Avenue! You can't get too lost in a city though and so we did a perimeter walk and ended up (eventually) back in the park.
Lots of catching up on family news and only a small political clash on whether Dominic Cummings should resign or not for breaching lockdown. Obviously I'm right and he should go but he won't as he's the PM's right arm and there is a different set of easier lockdown rules for those in power.
I didn't take a single photo today so here's one left over from Friday when I took a nap in the garden. There have been a lot of naps during lockdown – possibly from all the walking and sunshine, possibly from the brain-frying nature of trying to process what is happening, possibly from the antihistamines for hay fever season. That isn't a blanket by the way – it's a ginormous scarf.
