Away in Bertie, we are always more active than we are at home – a combination of the confined internal space urging us outside and the interest of new places to explore. Last summer, for example (between mid-April and mid-September) I averaged just shy of 17000 steps per day, which equates to around 7.25 miles if they are all walked and further if there was some running involved. I tend far more to laziness when at home, such that there are many days when I have to make a conscious effort to hit 5000 steps (a number I have only missed two or three times in the last five years). In general, I do go for at least one walk per day when at home, even on a running day, and now that movement restrictions only permit us to go out once per day for exercise, I am already (on Day 2!) missing those turns around the block (using the term ‘block’ to mean any combination of streets nearby; I have many mud-season on-road routes that I walk locally).
Photo unrelated to text. After the arid surroundings of southern Spain, these are a happy sight, visible from our kitchen window at home.
What to do instead? We’ve set up as much of a gym as we have available to us in the dining room and the bits of kit that haven’t been used for a while (rowing machine and a cube* for ‘step-ups’) are now feeling appreciated again.
Makeshift gym. Possibly the worst rowing machine in the world, but better than nothing.
Needing other things to keep me from sitting in a chair for the next few weeks or months, I decided that this week’s task would be to empty and clean one or two kitchen cupboards per day. It’s a long overdue task and something that I could happily have ignored for another few years, so I think we can count that as a glimpse of a silver lining of the current movement restrictions.
Another photo that’s not remotely related to the text. Looks like we could have a decent crop of blackcurrants.
I started yesterday with a food cupboard and the adjacent crockery cupboard, predictably, discovering a few things lurking that had been long forgotten. I’m not one for wasting food, I know the difference between ‘Best Before’ and ‘Use by’ and am happy to eat things well beyond their (alleged!) best. Thus for my lunch yesterday I ate a can of Bombay Potatoes (bought in bulk in 2013 because they were 4p per can, stored in so many places that two of them got lost at the back of the crockery cupboard) that went out of date in November 2015, into that I mixed half a can of sweetcorn (not because I thought it was an appropriate combination!) that should have been used by February 2016. For tea last night I served up a Massaman curry that involved a curry paste (part of some food hamper/kit given to Mick as a Christmas present one year) that was best before October 2015 and some fish sauce that was a whopping 14 years beyond its best. It all tasted fine and we’re both still well.
Today, in a high corner well out of my reach, I turned up the dregs of a packet of rice that must have been out of date when it went into the cupboard when we moved here 8 years ago. I will soon find out whether rice adopts a stale taste or degrades in texture over the course of 10 years. I confess that the end result may be that one gets binned.
Perhaps, given how gloriously sunny the weather has been for the last week, my time would have been better spent digging the garden. Maybe I’ll slot that into tomorrow’s agenda.
In other news:
1) Our hills walks in Spain involved the wearing of shorts and a landscape of pokey scrubby bushes (lots of rosemary – lovely and aromatic as we pushed through it). The resultant scratches and cuts on my legs from the walk at La Azohia had just about healed when we went for a walk at La Vall d’Uixo. I inspected my legs this morning and concluded that bar a couple of light scars which will fade, all evidence of the latter walk has now left my body.
2) Even though I have no idea when we’ll next be able to go to Spain, for the moment I’m continuing to learn some Spanish via the Duolingo App. Having sailed through the first eight subjects with relative ease, I hit a stumbling block this last week. For anyone not familiar with the App, each subject is taught via various exercises across five progressively more difficult levels, with each level having three lessons, with a lesson taking just a few minutes to complete. If you make a mistake on any question (bar minor typos) you lose one of your five daily ‘hearts’. Lose all five hearts and you can’t do more until the hearts have been replenished. For over seven weeks, not once did I lose all of my hearts … then I got to the subject of ‘Greetings’ and losing my hearts became a daily occurrence. Today I finally made it through the final lesson on that subject. Let’s hope I never have cause to ask anyone what their name is, as that seems to have been the (seemingly simple!) question that has confounded me the most!
(*which isn’t a bit of exercise equipment at all. It’s usually used for property maintenance purposes, but I know from the amount that I’ve ached after a day of stepping up and down onto it, painting ceilings and the like, that it can provide an effective form of exercise.)
Photo unrelated to text. After the arid surroundings of southern Spain, these are a happy sight, visible from our kitchen window at home.
What to do instead? We’ve set up as much of a gym as we have available to us in the dining room and the bits of kit that haven’t been used for a while (rowing machine and a cube* for ‘step-ups’) are now feeling appreciated again.
Makeshift gym. Possibly the worst rowing machine in the world, but better than nothing.
Needing other things to keep me from sitting in a chair for the next few weeks or months, I decided that this week’s task would be to empty and clean one or two kitchen cupboards per day. It’s a long overdue task and something that I could happily have ignored for another few years, so I think we can count that as a glimpse of a silver lining of the current movement restrictions.
Another photo that’s not remotely related to the text. Looks like we could have a decent crop of blackcurrants.
I started yesterday with a food cupboard and the adjacent crockery cupboard, predictably, discovering a few things lurking that had been long forgotten. I’m not one for wasting food, I know the difference between ‘Best Before’ and ‘Use by’ and am happy to eat things well beyond their (alleged!) best. Thus for my lunch yesterday I ate a can of Bombay Potatoes (bought in bulk in 2013 because they were 4p per can, stored in so many places that two of them got lost at the back of the crockery cupboard) that went out of date in November 2015, into that I mixed half a can of sweetcorn (not because I thought it was an appropriate combination!) that should have been used by February 2016. For tea last night I served up a Massaman curry that involved a curry paste (part of some food hamper/kit given to Mick as a Christmas present one year) that was best before October 2015 and some fish sauce that was a whopping 14 years beyond its best. It all tasted fine and we’re both still well.
Today, in a high corner well out of my reach, I turned up the dregs of a packet of rice that must have been out of date when it went into the cupboard when we moved here 8 years ago. I will soon find out whether rice adopts a stale taste or degrades in texture over the course of 10 years. I confess that the end result may be that one gets binned.
Perhaps, given how gloriously sunny the weather has been for the last week, my time would have been better spent digging the garden. Maybe I’ll slot that into tomorrow’s agenda.
In other news:
1) Our hills walks in Spain involved the wearing of shorts and a landscape of pokey scrubby bushes (lots of rosemary – lovely and aromatic as we pushed through it). The resultant scratches and cuts on my legs from the walk at La Azohia had just about healed when we went for a walk at La Vall d’Uixo. I inspected my legs this morning and concluded that bar a couple of light scars which will fade, all evidence of the latter walk has now left my body.
2) Even though I have no idea when we’ll next be able to go to Spain, for the moment I’m continuing to learn some Spanish via the Duolingo App. Having sailed through the first eight subjects with relative ease, I hit a stumbling block this last week. For anyone not familiar with the App, each subject is taught via various exercises across five progressively more difficult levels, with each level having three lessons, with a lesson taking just a few minutes to complete. If you make a mistake on any question (bar minor typos) you lose one of your five daily ‘hearts’. Lose all five hearts and you can’t do more until the hearts have been replenished. For over seven weeks, not once did I lose all of my hearts … then I got to the subject of ‘Greetings’ and losing my hearts became a daily occurrence. Today I finally made it through the final lesson on that subject. Let’s hope I never have cause to ask anyone what their name is, as that seems to have been the (seemingly simple!) question that has confounded me the most!
(*which isn’t a bit of exercise equipment at all. It’s usually used for property maintenance purposes, but I know from the amount that I’ve ached after a day of stepping up and down onto it, painting ceilings and the like, that it can provide an effective form of exercise.)
I'm on it with the gardening. I don't think there is any danger of getting addicted. I am doing a daily up and down stairs repeat ten times - that may be incresed if I can keep the motivation going. After spending over a year going to the gym way back I decided the best exercise for walking is walking but I suppose your makeshift gym will have to do for the moment.
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