Category: pandemic

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Day 50 – Birthday Eve

It’s the day before, and after Lucy went to bed we got prepping to make tomorrow as special as we can. Three hours of blowing up balloons, hanging bunting, wrapping presents and tidying up afterwards and I’m hoping she’ll squeal when she sees it!

The day involved Alexander clearing all his homework before making dinner. I spent about two hours on the phone to Virgin Media and running broadband tests, and putting stuff back in the garage so that we had room for tomorrow.

Lucy has been doing VE Day themed school work, and she read the horrible histories book woeful second world war. We also did a WW2 theme for the alphabet game when we went on a walk this afternoon.

After the walk Lucy did a martial arts session via zoom. This worked really well, although I think she’d like a mat for the floor when she was lying on it trying to do sit-ups.

Broadband Bother

I’ve noticed that the zoom meetings I’ve been on have had unstable connections and are pretty wobbly. So I found the time to do a speed test. It registered my broadband speed as about 7Mbps down. This isn’t bad, but I’m paying Virgin Media for 200Mbps. So it’s a bit short.

I first did the test about a week ago. I was in WiFi then, and also thought it might be split several ways with other devices. I found a couple of Ethernet cables and got the powerline going. On Monday I joined a work call while wired in and it was noticeably better. So I ordered a few new cables.

This morning I tested the broadband speed again. It was still around 7Mbps, even when wired directly to the router. After poking around the Virgin Media website I gave in and called them. There was no way to contact them via web form or email. The woman was pretty patronising, clearly following a script and told me that I’d need to do a hard reset of the router every 10-15 days. When I did do the reset and got the same speed she said it would settle in an hour or so.

I called back an hour and a half later when the speed was still the same. The second lady was much more helpful and seemed to know what she was about. None of the tests showed anything wrong, but she decided that the router was a bit long in the tooth and ordered a new one to see if it will make a difference.

Decorations

Tracy pushed the boat out for Lucy’s birthday, given that we’ve cancelled the birthday party with her friends we want to make the day special. So Tracy bought a helium canister and a load of balloons. We’ve also got extra banners and bunting. All three of us spent the evening decorating the living room.

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Day 49 – Evening Gardening

It being Tuesday I spent most of the day at the desk in out bedroom while Tracy did things downstairs with Lucy. Alexander mostly just did his schoolwork without input.

Probably the most interesting thing that happened all day was that when Tracy got up there was a police officer speaking to two young women on the green outside. They wandered off down the side of the street about half eight. The police care stayed there for about another two hours or so. No idea what was going on.

Work

Work was lot of reading about international comparisons on coming out of lockdown and analysing the UK stats to work out how long it might last given the tests announced. It took almost all day, and a handful of meetings and a tidy up of my inbox before my five day weekend kept me busy until six.

Evening Gardening

Today’s exercise was working in the garden after dinner. Alexander came out with me and between us we planted half a dozen plants in the front garden. Alexander dug the holes and I put the plants in.

When we finished that we went round the back garden. Alexander used the loppers and a rather blunt handsaw to make some stakes from a tree we cut down a couple of months ago.

While he did that I moved some bricks and some very clay heavy soil. I also walked a couple of concrete slabs to the very back corner of the garden.

Once I got them up there I put the slabs against the fence to protect it from the composting vegetation. I used some of the lumps of clay to make a level line for the bricks. There was a noticeable slope over the couple of metres from the fence to the front of the area selected.

The old shed door was repurposed as the side wall for the new compost heap. I used the two slabs to determine the width, and the door for the depth. The door rested on a line of bricks just to make it a bit taller and relatively horizontal.

Once I got it all in place the stakes that Alexander made were driven in using a 3lb hammer. They’re all about a foot into the ground. I doubt they’ll last a long time, being green wood. But all I need is a couple of years.

Last step was to put the remaining clay on the floor of the compost heap and flatten it down.

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Day 48 – May the Fourth…

We live Star Wars in this house, and both the kids got very into it. Alexander wore his sith costume, and Lucy did her best. I had a star wars t-shirt on, but Tracy had to wear her uniform for work.

School was Star Wars themed for Lucy. She wrote a review of why Rey was her favourite Star Wars character, and when reading time came she read a page of a Star Wars roleplaying game sourcebook before swapping to a Lego Star Wars book, because she said the print was too small. Being fair it was about 9 point font on a page a bit bigger than A4.

After dinner the kids staged a lightsaber fight on the drive. Although Lucy had a stick rather than an actual lightsaber.


We also watched the Phineas and Ferb Star Wars special, which was really good and well worth watching. After dinner Disney+ served us up Episode III Revenge of the Sith, which unsurprisingly is Alexander’s favourite.

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Days 46 & 47 – Weekend

I didn’t write yesterday evening because I was trying to write a short story for the Merstham Write Club. The . challenge was to write a short story of up to 2,000 words based on a picture. I wrote 3,128 words last night and didn’t quite finish the story.

We’ve had a fairly relaxed weekend. Lots of TV and a movie and also a trip out for essential items, including posting some things.

A very empty Belfry shopping centre on Saturday 2/5/20 (Photo: James Kemp)

I also spent most of Saturday in the front garden, weeding the border, planting some plants and cutting the grass.

My front garden on one of my breaks from tidying it up on Saturday 2 May. (Photo: James Kemp)

On Saturday afternoon we had a zoom session with our friends, the Lows, and played a picture quiz of our joint family photos in Kahoots. It was a lot of fun and we’re planning to repeat it next week.

We also tidied up bedrooms, took down the blanket fort, washed all the sheets, and put clothes away. In short getting the laundry done and tidying up. It was all done in short bursts and between episodes of Doctor Who. We started with the Impossible Astronaut and we’re working through that season.

Lego House

Lucy built an awesome Lego house, which is her best one yet. So I took a series of photos.

It has a tall front door because it is supposed to be in a desert, and according to Lucy it needs to let the wind through to cool it down.

The kitchen was one of the most awesome parts. It had drawers with utensils in. The cupboard had a cup and teapot inside, and the oven a cupcake.

There was also a coffee machine on the counter, a smoothy maker and a box of food. Best of all was the large picture window above the sink, so you could see out when doing the dishes!

Downstairs also had a living room area with a TV, sofa and a hamster cage.

In between the kitchen and the living room was a waterfall, which doubled as the shower.

Upstairs was the bedroom, complete with bed, dressing table and storage for accessories.

Along the corridor was the toilet.

Experimental Food

On Sunday morning we encouraged Lucy to microwave some marshmallows so she could see what happened.

Two microwaved marshmallows on a pancake (Photo: James Kemp)

Repairing my bergen

Part of the tidying up included a repair to my Berghaus Roc. It was moved out of the way for the blanket fort into the hallway. During the night I stood on one of the quick release buckles and there was an ominous crunching sound. To be fair the bergen is over thirty years old, I bought it in 1989 when I joined the TA. It’s seen a lot of action over the years.

Given its age it was impossible to acquire replacement buckles of the same style. They haven’t made them for over a decade. However there were a couple of helpful suggestions on the web. It seems that the Berghaus Roc is a very durable bergen and many people are still using them 30 years on. A few have even had the same issue as me.

So there was a no sewing solution. I took a spare 25mm quick release buckle from a repair kit I had in the cupboard. I then used a hacksaw to cut a slot in the middle of the bar that went onto the lid. It needed two cuts to get a wide enough slot. The plastic was easy to cut. I then filed the edges to make sure they weren’t sharp.

I then prized off the old clip, which was already cracked. It took some brute force, but it came off clean. I then pushed the loop of webbing through the slot I’d cut and worked it all through. This was the trickiest bit of the repair. I ended up folding it by rolling it after it was through the slot. Once I’d got it in I just straightened it out.

The other end was much easier, although I needed to remove the stitching on the very end of the webbing that stopped it rolling off. It was triple folded, and I left it double folded, so there’s still some protection from the webbing sliding through accidentally.

The broken buckle (green) on my venerable Berghaus Roc that I stood on, and the replacement (black) buckle fitted without sewing. (photo: James Kemp)
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Day 45 – Pinch, Punch, First of the Month!

As has become the norm in our house, the first of the month is usually greeted with cries of ‘pinch! punch! first of the month, no returns!’ along with a good natured assault. This month Alexander woke before Lucy, so he got everyone. They both slept in the blanket fort (and they’ve gone back for another night).

Lucy inside the blanket fort built by Alexander (Photo: James Kemp)

This morning breakfast was made by the children, camping style. Alexander boiled water on the trangia in our camping kettle. They also toasted marshmallows to go with the hot chocolate that they forgot to make yesterday evening.

Alexander toasting marshmallows with a blowtorch. (Photo: James Kemp)

I don’t think either of them got dressed over the course of the day, although it’s possible that Alexander might have changed before joining in the Explorers zoom session this evening.

Lucy made her own breakfast, a toasted waffle with a mini-marshmallow in each square. (Photo: James Kemp)

Tracy and I were both working, neither of us had the most productive day. Tracy’s was way worse though, because she didn’t make it home from the hospital until after seven. I fed the children before she was in because I didn’t want them to wait any longer. Dinner was good, we had a chicken crown roasted, and fresh bread that was 50/50 white and wholemeal. We forgot about it and it spent longer in the oven than we’d planned. It was taken out with a very dark brown crust, and on eating it I think this was a huge improvement on our previous breads.

Alexander preparing to boil water to make hot chocolate on the trangia. (Photo: James Kemp)

I went for my evening walk on my own. Luckily it was in a gap in the rain, and so I didn’t get wet. My walk took me to the scout hut where I collected a couple of badge books. I took one round to the assistant leader candidate for the new troop we started a couple of weeks ago. We can’t meet fact to face until at least September, and maybe not even then. So we need to do some planning for teaching scout skills and doing badge requirements online. ALthough all the info is online, have a physical book is much easier to flick through and get inspiration from.

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Day 44 – Camping at Home

Another Thursday, which was similar to Monday. While Tracy did sterling work we stayed home and I endured back to back meetings for most of the day while Lucy largely avoided doing school work when I wasn’t watching and Alexander attempted to complete several hours of school work in less than the expected time.

Outside the rain fell, at times so hard we could heard it banging on the patio furniture and the windows. At other points it was so dark we needed the lights on at lunchtime. On days like this you can feel happier being inside all the time.

Camping at Home

Today there’s a world record attempt by Northumberland scouts to have the most people on an organised camp. We’ve signed up for it. The rules are that you can’t sleep in a bed. Ideally you’d camp in your garden, but building a den indoors is allowed. Given the weather that’s exactly what Alex and Lucy have done.

Lucy asleep in the blanket fort she helped Alexander to build. (Photo: James Kemp)

After I finished work Lucy and I went into the garage and got out sleeping bags, sleeping mats, and a cooking stove and kettle. In the morning they’re going to use the camp stove to make breakfast.

I also found the gas to test the trangia cooker that I picked up on an evening walk a few weeks ago (see Day 26).

It worked really well, with a strong flame that sounded like a jet engine. The only downside was that the pan has a couple of tiny holes in it. It looks like a staple gun has hit it at close range. So when filled it leaked significantly. I either need to figure out how to patch it or replace the pan.

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Day 43 – Poetry

Another rainy day, and the forecast is for a couple of weeks of rain, although we had some sunny spells over the course of the day.

I was off today, and Tracy was at work. We played a bit with zoom backgrounds, did school work and took a breadmaker apart.

Zoom backgrounds

We’ve seen many people with fancy backgrounds in the zoom meetings we’ve done. However I couldn’t work out how to enable it. What I realised recently was that you can’t do it on a phone, nor on the Linux client. Out of the 11 devices we have that could run zoom only two aren’t android or Linux.

So we got a Windows 10 machine and turned on a single person zoom meeting so we could try them out. I was wearing a green t-shirt, and it became the zoom background!

We then worked out how to spot the colour, and made it blue like a room divider we had. Both Alexander and Lucy were wearing blue and they also blended in.

Disembodied heads and hands were a strong draw and made us all laugh a bit. We also tried a number of other things, like Lego marvel models, Alexander’s shield and a mug.

Once we’d had enough fun I hung a blanket so we’d get a full background next time we’ve got a zoom meeting.

Poetry

For writing practice Lucy chose the option to write a poem with Hello as the first word. She did a plan, thought of all the rhyming words she could and wrote them in a circle. Then she decided that she’d pick a form. Once she’d done that she practiced it out loud and then wrote it on the computer because she didn’t want to keep copying it out when she changed it. You can read Hello on the earlier post today.

While she was doing that I also wrote a poem. Mine was a villanelle, a format I quite like, and which has a standardised rhyme scheme. Mine is titled Hello, Hullo, Hallo.

Breadmaker disassembly

On Monday the breadmaker stopped spinning the paddle about ten seconds after we switched it on. The motor was still going, so it wasn’t completely dead. However I couldn’t get into it because I couldn’t find the U shaped screwdriver head.

Today the replacement U shaped head arrived. So Lucy and I undid all the screws on the bottom of the breadmaker (a Morphy Richards fastbake breadmaker model 48280 for the record).

It was clear from our initial attempt that the manufacturer didn’t intend for people to fix this themself. It was particularly awkward to take apart. We took five screws off the base, and used a screwdriver to separate the base from the body, but it wouldn’t come off.

At that point we were able to dislodge the control panel from the front plate. I also took the lid off, which was super easy. I guess they expected that we might want to wash the lid!

With the front panel off we could see more screws inside. Five more screws later, which were unscrewed through the hole in the fascia, and the front part lifted. It wasn’t free yet, but we could see that the drive belt had disintegrated. We could also see two more screws at the back of the breadmaker. They were behind the oven compartment and completely inaccessible.

Lucy decided that she’d seen enough and went off to build Lego. I watched a couple of YouTube videos. This included one that said the easiest way was just to take a Stanley knife to the bottom cover! I think that’s true.

I found another site that said to remove the seal round the main compartment. Once that was off the top cover just lifted off. This gave access to the last two screws. With both covers off I removed the fragments of the old belt. Then came the job of finding a replacement. All the branded ones were very expensive, about five times the price of the generic ones. However I couldn’t really tell from the online pictures whether or not they were compatible. Usually I’d have gone to a shop and had a look. But I couldn’t, so I bit the bullet and ordered the cheapest that would arrive in the next week or two.

Scouts

We had another scout meeting on zoom. There were 14 scouts and 4 leaders online. Like last week I found the zoom connection unstable. Afterwards I realised that Alexander was playing an online game.

I ran a bit of it, questions on a segment of an OS map. I’d wanted to put the scouts into breakout rooms, but we didn’t set them up in advance. So instead we put them all on mute and let them find the answers individually. We then used the annotate function to identify the places on the map that answered the questions.

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Day 42 – Rainy Tuesday

For the first time in weeks it rained all day. It also felt noticeably colder, although that night just have been psychological because the sun wasn’t out.

A slighty soggy garden at about 7 this morning (Photo: James Kemp)

The first thing Lucy said to me his morning was the number of days it was to her birthday. I spent a big chunk of the day working while hiding away from everyone else. Tracy had the day off and went out shopping with Lucy after her schooling was done.

Lego

Lucy adding extensions onto Mia’s house (Photo: James Kemp)

Lucy has been ‘renovating’ Mia’s Lego house. It now has a two floor extension on the side and at the back of the the main part. If only real builders worked this fast!

Painting

Tracy took the opportunity of not being able to do things outside to do things inside. One of these was to paint (or rather stain) the spindles at the top of the stairs. Now the three that I replaced a couple of weeks ago don’t stand out against the rest.

She also made some scones and we had an excellent cream tea when she came back from shopping.

Sheds

Sketch plan for the back end of our garden where the vegetables get grown (sometimes). (Image: James Kemp)

After work I did a sketch of my plan for the back end of the garden. We’ve got most of the stuff already, although the one thing I need is a replacement for the hut we took down a couple of years ago. So we spent some time finding a new shed and a supplier that can deliver it. Not sure if we’ll actually get one before the lockdown ends.

I also need some timber and glass (or a substitute) to fix up the potting shed. A couple of the window supports have rotted and the glass fell out during the high winds.

The potting shed with a jury-rigged replacement for the lost windows. (Photo: James Kemp)
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Day 41 – Making Monday

We’re getting into routine now. Excluding Easter Monday this is our fifth Monday in lockdown. I’m working from home while persuading the children to do school work. Tracy was at the hospital saving people.

I didn’t take many photos today, I just sort of forgot. Alexander got on with his school work, which included some questions on Banquo for his English homework. Lucy made stuff though. Her writing homework was to invent a card game and write instructions. She decided to go a bit further and designed a board game and made her own cards to go with it.

After she’d done that I had an extended lunch break and we made bread together. Lucy did the mixing and the kneading and we chatted about what ingredients it needed and how it rose. We were going to take the breadmaker apart, because it stopped working. However we didn’t have a u shaped screwdriver (there was a gap in my set of screwdriver bits).

After dinner (Alexander made chilli), we went for a walk. This was a wee bit different from our usual walks in that we recorded our random conversation and then edited it into some short podcasts.

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Day 40 – Sunshine, Trampoline Fun, Party Prep, and Marshmallows

The original meaning of quarantine was forty days. So I’ve been not going to work for longer than an old fashioned quarantine period.We’ve had a great day today. Most of it spent outdoors enjoying the sunshine, apart from a bit after lunch when we stayed indoors because it was too warm to do more digging. We’ve also eaten well.

Clean Trampoline Fun

While I was digging the patch in front of the hut in a search for the old concrete path, Alexander and Lucy decided to clean the trampoline. Armed with a bottle of washing up liquid, a couple of brushes and the garden hose they bounced and scrubbed the trampoline. As always it quickly turned into a water fight. Tracy and I threw buckets of water at the kids and they sprayed us with the hose.Lots and lots of fun on a lovely warm day.

Food

We had croissants with raspberry jam for breakfast. These came from yesterday’s shopping trip and made a nice change from cereal.Lunch was a home made quesadilla. We also had nachos as a small starter. Tracy made it all while the kids were getting dried and changed from their time on the trampoline.Dinner was even more special. Tracy cooked steak with a blue cheese dressing. It was really good, melting in your mouth and pink in the middle. There was no real need for chewing.

Party Preparation

After lunch we stayed in for a bit to organise things for Lucy’s birthday party. Although it isn’t for a couple of weeks we need to lost things to people so they’ll have part bags, prizes for the games and also some other things.Lucy helped us both sort it out. She enjoyed loading the laminator with the bingo cards. She got pretty efficient with it after she’d done a couple. She also decorated the party bags and helped Tracy sort out the contents.

Garden

After dinner I went back out into the garden. I delivered another wheelbarrow load of topsoil to the furthest raised bed. Then, with the wheelbarrow empty I took a layer of clay soil off the first bed and carted it up to the back of the garden. This was step 1 of the plan to establish a new compost heap on the left side of the garden.I then daisy chained both the garden extension cables so that the hedge trimmer reached the back corner of the garden. Then I cut and raked up the brambles and all the other weeds until the light failed. It took two or three passes, raking up in between each one, to clear the area. I think I completely cleared about a dozen square metres. Here’s the after photo that matches the before photo above.I saved a half dozen nettle plants for an experiment I want to do with Lucy and Alexander later in the week. I’d like to use the leaves to make nettle tea, and the stems to make string.Once I’d cleared enough space I decided to start prep for the new compost heap. This started with a bringing an old rug to throw over the fence to stop things growing through it, and also to contain the compost on this side. I then dumped the wheelbarrow load of clay soil and used it to flatten out the slight slope at the very back.

Marshmallows

We’ve got several piles of woody garden rubbish, and of brambles, that I don’t want to compost. The larger one has been building on our burning circle since the end of last year. The other piles only exist because we’ve tried to avoid burning garden rubbish.Tonight we decided to give in and have a fire. Alexander started it by flicking a lit match at the pile. It caught really quickly.While I was keeping an eye on it Tracy and Lucy came out to watch, and they brought marshmallows with them. The fire was a bit too hot to start with, but it soon died down. We spent a happy half hour watching the flames and toasting marshmallows.Eventually it was time to go in, and I turned the garden hose on it.