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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 33 – Goodness, Gardening and Games

We all had a good sleep and a long lie, and then got busy for the rest of the day. Some of the morning was spent tidying and then we went into the garden, with a brief break for lunch.

Later in the afternoon I hosted an online Dungeons and Dragons session for Alexander and his friends while Lucy and Tracy made dinner and pampered themselves.

Caught Being Good

Lucy hit a treat level with her caught being good marks (she asked us to copy what they do at school). So she got a reward of some chalk pens, and we drew on the windows together.

Gardening

We were out the front today. Amongst other things I re-fitted the head to a hoe. It had snapped off, and I needed to taper the end of the handle to fit the old head back on. It went on well, although I almost stabbed myself in the palm of my hand with a screwdriver trying to fix it in place!

Tracy and Lucy built the second wicket planter. This is the twin of the one we did a couple of days ago. It’s on the other side of the steps. Like the other one I took a wheelbarrow full of clay soil for the bottom of it and then dug into the rich topsoil in front of the hut for the next layer. What I discovered a couple of inches down was more concrete path. So there’s probably more to move there before we try to repave it.

Alexander and I took turns with a pickaxe, and at one point a saw, to dig out some roots from the border at the back of the drive. It was hard work, and raised a sweat. We didn’t quite make it clear, but we made progress.

While we were out in the garden I spotted a bird swooping about a lot. There was also a lot of chirping coming from the eaves of the house. During a short break I realised that there is a nest in the edge of my roof. A fascia has come off the end of the roof and some birds (Starlings I think) have taken advantage of it.

Games

Ever since they watched Stranger Things Alexander and his friends have wanted to play DnD. So I’ve been running sessions every couple of months or so. You can read some of the write ups on https://www.cold-steel.org/.

Today’s session was shorter than usual. Mostly this was down to the scenario and the usual friction of getting a session going. Our online setup was Roll20 for character sheets and discord for voice and video. Not everyone was able to make these work all the time. So we had some pauses. We also only used video to share my tabletop with the map and figures on it.

I’m not entirely convinced that this is the best/easiest way to play. There’s a tactical element available in Roll20 that lets players interact with the map. However it takes a bit more preparation than I’ve managed. It also means that when the players want to divert from the plan you need to pause until the next session. Usually I just extemporise at that point and hand draw a map as we go along.

For the next session I’m going to try and adopt an approach we used for the Full Moon games. I’ll use the asynchronous chat to progress from where we’ve left off until the next conflict point and then prepare the map for a session on that.

Getting Ready for School

After dinner and a short walk for some exercise it was time to put away the Lego that has covered the living room floor. It all went back in the boxes and returned to the shelves. I did leave the bungalow as built, and I’m sure it will be back out tomorrow, but it’s sort of symbolic.

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Day 18 – 4th April 2020

Today is a Saturday, none of us are working. Despite this a young lady, who shall remain nameless, decided that we needed to get up early. So we’ve been at it just as long as the weekdays. I’m knackered and ready for bed, and it’s only nine o’clock.

Creative writing

I wrote a short story this morning, it’s not brilliant, and life writing rather than fiction. I’ve been meaning to write it for a few weeks, since the first Write Club meeting in the Merstham library at the beginning of March. I couldn’t make the meeting, Saturday mornings are when the kids do martial arts and we do our shopping. Or at least that used to be what we did. Lucy did her martial arts lesson over zoom, but we didn’t go shopping until later.

Anyway the challenge was to write 1,000 words on a place where you’d lost something. I struggled with that because I haven’t really lost anything. In the end I decided to write about a loss of innocence that I experienced, although it wasn’t my innocence that was lost. You can read Lost Luggage on my main blog.

Extreme Close Ups

We had a lot of fun taking photos of things this morning. It’s my turn to set a team quiz this week. We did a picture round of TV shows last week. So we had a chat and thought that extreme close ups of everyday items might be a really interesting idea.

This snowballed and we’ve taken pictures of about thirty things and challenged each other to identify them. So I’m definitely doing this with my team on Thursday. Here’s one for you to guess.

Food

Lots of cooking went on today. This morning Alexander made French toast for his breakfast. I had a little bit and it tasted fab, although I’m not a fan of the texture of French toast.

When he’d done Tracy moved in and made a large pot of chilli con carne. She also started the prep for dinner, which was an experiment. We had a mixed feast of quesadillas for dinner, there were at least four flavours, chicken, sausage, chorizo and peppers. It was a very good meal.

Exercise

We all went for a walk after lunch. It was supposed to be a rough circular walk round our house. I’d had a quick look at the map and decided that because there were public footpaths marked that we could walk round our house. The chosen route was to go up to Furzefield Wood, get onto the embankment and then follow it round until we got back onto Bletchingley Road. From there we’d go over the road and follow it back to our house.

It didn’t quite work though. When we got to the motorway junction the path became quite overgrown with brambles. Alexander was in the lead and he’d chosen to wear shorts. So we turned back and had an attempt to follow the embankment in the woods. However that brought us to a similar dead end. We turned round and went back to the other marked footpath and followed that instead. Total distance was 2km, and we were out of the house for an hour.

After that Tracy and I sat outside the house and enjoyed the sun. I read some of my current book, Polgara the Sorceress, and we just chilled for a bit.

Shopping

After dinner Lucy and I walked to the co-op. Lucy navigated us by her special route. We went up the hill towards her school, past the childminder and a couple of her friends houses before arriving at the co-op. She talked the whole way there about what way we were going next and whose houses we were going past. It was a good walk.

When we got there it was just over half an hour before closing time and it was quite busy. There were four people ahead of us waiting to go in. While we were waiting a couple of NHS staff appeared and we encouraged them to jump the queue.

We were there for milk, bread and ice cream. We got some sweeties too. The shelves were pretty sparse, I’ve never seen them so empty. We managed to get some skimmed milk and a nice loaf. There was plenty of bread and milk. There were almost no crisps and half the sweet aisle was empty. Fizzy drinks were likewise depleted, just coke and some Schweppes lemonade. Pretty much just the more expensive stuff was left.

When we came out, with twenty minutes before closing, there were about eight people waiting to go in. All standing their two metres apart.

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Day 12 – Sunday 29th March 2020

Today is the first day of British Summertime, so of course it snowed, hailed and rained for most of the day!

Hail and Snow

When it wasn’t doing one of those it was noticeably colder than yesterday with a biting wind. We did manage to paint the shed though before the first hailstones started coming down. I also cleared away the rest of the stuff we’d cut down, and was just spraying some weedkiller before covering it in black fabric when it started. There will be other days, and it’s not like we have anything else planned for the next couple of months.

We’ve started gardening most years, and what usually derails our attempts to keep it under control is an active social life and weekend trips away. That doesn’t look like it’s going to be an issue this year. Sadly.

Adjusting

I’m starting to get used to staying in, this is my third consecutive weekend out of what might be described as my normal routine. Usually Saturdays involve taking Alexander and Lucy to martial arts lessons in Redhill. They go consecutively, so Tracy and I take Alexander for breakfast in West Central while Lucy has her lesson. Alexander then has an hour and a half of jiu-jitsu and we do some shopping in the market with Lucy and then go for a drink and a snack before collecting Alexander. Sundays are more varied, but if the weather is good gardening happens, and if not sometimes we go to the cinema. Either way we usually go out for some reason.

On 10th March I came down with cellulitis and sepsis. So my routine was disturbed, mainly because I had a couple of days in hospital and then daily IV antibiotics and a couple of follow up trips to hospital as an out patient. That was just when we were all starting to worry about the Covid-19 virus, but before it was properly declared a pandemic.

Just as I was getting better Lucy developed a cough and a temperature. So we went into sled isolation, following the government advice at the time. It’s been a pretty odd couple of weeks. I doubt anyone hasn’t felt that way, and there’s been way more than the usual mental strain. I’ve certainly been fractious at times, and I know my family have been too, although thankfully not all of us all at the same time. What seems to be helpful is realising that we don’t need to do everything all the time.

Food

I think this is going to be a standard heading!

We used up the last of the sliced ham for sandwiches, and finished the fresh orange too. I also finished off the lettuce in the salad I made to go with the pulled pork at lunchtime. That said there’s loads of fruit and vegetables, and also rather a lot of sausages.

Tracy made shepherds pie and a pork stew. Both of them are for other days. The shepherds pie is going in the freezer for later in the week. I’m going to do some dumplings in the pork stew for tomorrow night. It seemed a bit pork heavy to have it this evening, after bacon sandwiches for breakfast, and pulled pork for lunch. The kids and I did have sausages and chips for dinner though. I also had more apple crumble for dessert, although I had it with ice cream this evening. Alexander and Lucy had cupcakes that Lucy made this morning.

The Mandalorian

The TV has yet to move channel from the Amazon Fire Cube that arrived yesterday. As well as a bunch of random TED talks and Jeff Goldblum, we started to watch The Mandalorian this evening. Disney have only released three episodes so far in the UK, which is slightly disappointing. However I really enjoyed both the episodes we watched this evening. It’s pretty awesome, and a great expansion to the Star Wars universe.

Map Making

Apart from the dozen blog posts, which are all easy reportage, I’ve not written any fiction for almost three weeks. It’s was too hard to concentrate on creating things when I was unwell, and since I’ve recovered there hasn’t been enough peace to get into the headspace I need to be properly creative.

When it was alternately hailing and snowing this afternoon I had an attempt to digitise some of my hand drawn maps into inkscape. It sort of worked, but I got bored before I finished. It would be really nice to be able to have digital copies of the sort of thing I can happily draw freehand. It just seems to take so much longer digitising them than it takes me to draw them. I suspect that the answer is to find a way to draw them on a computer.