Random Witterings from Home #12

Just before I left the house to go to the supermarket this morning, it occurred to me that the last time I had put my ‘normal'* shoes on was two weeks ago, when I last shopped. That led me further to realise that since we arrived home six weeks ago, I have worn my shoes just four times.

That is how many times I have left our property for a reason other than going for a run.

In a similar vein of all-time records (because I can’t believe there has been any other time in my life that has come close to this period of not needing street shoes), Mick has not been in a moving vehicle for six weeks.

Strange times indeed.

Photo tenuously related to text. Snap of my feet in Spain on the first outing of the new pair of trainers I bought whilst we were over there.

 

Random Witterings from Home #11

Doesn’t time fly when you’re having fun stuck in the house doing broadly the same things, day-in day-out? Another week has flown by.

My starting point in typing one of these posts is to look at the camera gallery on my phone to see what snaps I’ve taken in the last week. Once again, they don’t tell much of a story this week, being mainly countryside views snapped whilst out running.

It did occur to me this week, whilst trotting around one of my longer new routes (taking advantage of the reduced traffic, so I feel safe running on little lanes, and enjoying the undulations that can be had locally by using those roads), that the countryside is looking mighty fine at the moment. I love constantly running in new places when we’re away in Bertie and often have to restrain myself to not stop more than half a dozen times to snap photos, but I have to acknowledge that our local countryside is also lovely and worthy of dozens of photos, particularly in its current state of lush greenness under clear blue skies.

All taken on this week’s runs

My other observation from this week’s outings is that skip businesses must be booming. I’ve never seen so many on local driveways! I noted this just a day after giving passing thought to ordering one for ourselves, so as to dispose of the results of our efforts in the garden. Happily we had confirmation this week that the council’s garden waste bin collections will be going ahead next week (after a couple of missed collections) and our neighbours have been so kind as to donate to us the spare capacity in their bins.

I reckon that one wouldn’t have to stare at a pot of germinating runner beans for long to see them grow before one’s eyes. The second snap was taken 7 hours after the first, the third 12 hours later.

Of course, taking waste to the tip isn’t an option, as that service is suspended. Perhaps as a result of the closure (or perhaps not) someone thought that one of our quieter local lanes was a good location to dispose of the output from a household clear-out. I only know about this because I read about it on a local online discussion group, even though I ran along that lane twice between the time of the dumping and the time of its removal. Admittedly on the first occasion I was probably concentrating on breathing rather than looking around me (it was at the end of my fastest run since my triumph at parkrun des Dougnes back in January), but I’ve no idea how I didn't see it the following day.

News from the garden is that the cleaning of the patio is complete. Yay! It looks very clean and bright, but it’s not a job I ever want to tackle again without the use of a labour-saving device.

The borders are also looking tidier than they have in a long time, although there’s still a distance to go to call that job complete. The left hand border was a particular mess of some ground-covering weed, and as I finished the task of clearing it yesterday I had to acknowledge that, just from the point of view of that border, the current ‘stay at home’ mandate has been a benefit. I hate to think for how much longer I might have ignored it otherwise.

I didn’t specifically take a ‘before’ snap but you can see quite a bit of the border in question in the first pic here.

I’ll finish with a couple of snaps of the output of Friday’s “I really need to use up those slightly manky carrots” realisation:

I don't make pretty cakes, but they always taste much better than they look! 

Only shopping once a fortnight means that not everything will fit in the fridge – an issue that was compounded in the case of this bag of carrots by a failure of our stock-rotation. Carrot soup was my plan and I thought I’d Google for some inspiration rather than using one of the recipes that’s stored in my head. The cakes came about because as soon as I typed ‘Carrot’ into Google, it suggested I wanted a Carrot Cake recipe, which suddenly sounded like an excellent idea. The soup thus became carrot and butternut squash (recipe out of my head) as three of the carrots got re-purposed towards the cakes. Both were tasty, but the cakes were the winners.

Sunday 19 April – Random Witterings from Home #10

That was another week that looked very much like the one that came before it, including a continuation of the fine weather, at least until yesterday’s brief blip when I ran in the rain for only the second time this year (not bad, 2 out of 72 runs).

Snapped on a small detour whilst running ‘The Ford Route’ under a mighty fine sky on Thursday

The (unwelcome) novelty of the week was having to queue to get into the supermarket. I’ve been in an uncountable number of Lidl stores all over Europe and would rate our local store as one of the least appealing of all of them, which perhaps explains why it’s usually so quiet. Even so, this week they finally joined the other supermarkets and started restricting the number of people in store at any one time*, causing me to shuffle forward in the car park for 20 minutes before gaining entry. It had been 12 days since I last shopped, so I was in there for a while and came out with a full trolley**. The shelves are getting fuller week by week, but there is still no flour or dried fruit (sultanas, raisins or currants) to be had.

There was also no bleach. Now that’s not a substance we use in any quantity. I would estimate that a bottle usually lasts us around 5 years. However, I wasn’t just shopping for us, but also picking up a few things for various neighbours, one of whom had asked for 4 bottles of bleach.

Fortunately for her, we’d picked up a bottle whilst in Spain (forgot to pack any; we use it in tiny quantities to clean taps before filling our drinking water bottles) and only used a few mil of it and thus happened to have the best part of a 2-litre bottle (the smallest we could find) to spare. It’s strange times when a neighbour is so chuffed to be gifted a bottle of bleach!

Snap unrelated to text. The daily ritual of the crossword usually comes with a snack.

Today two ‘on this day’ memories popped up on Facebook, both of which involved being on top of Scottish Marilyns. As it goes, we wouldn’t have been standing atop any hills today even if we weren’t subject to movement restrictions, as we would only have returned from Europe a few days ago. However, that’s exactly where we would have been heading next week. Will the fabulous weather still prevail at the time we would have gone? That remains to be seen, but there have been exclamations from both of us over the last week or so about how current conditions would have been magnificent for either a Big Walk or hill bagging. (As an aside, it was 12 years ago last week that we left Land’s End to walk to John o’Groats. Doesn’t time fly?)

My hankering after the hills hasn’t been helped by finally getting around to dedicating some time each day to bringing my logs up to date on hill-bagging.co.uk, which involves me adding a map snippet to every blog post (they're on our other blog) and reading the text I wrote at the time to jog my memory of the outing. After a week or so of steady daily effort, my logs are now complete up to mid-May 2017. I’d not realised I was quite so far behind and have to wonder how much bigger the task would have grown if it wasn’t for current circumstances giving me both the time and inclination to play catch-up.

Another snap unrelated to text, because a view seen from this morning’s run (another new route!) is more interesting that one of our scrubbed patio 

Otherwise, the garden is gradually getting tidier, the house cleaner and things are daily being ticked off the ‘pick and choose’ task list. I have noted, however, that I’m mainly ticking off the same things every day, with certain task options being studiously ignored. A bit more effort at variety is maybe required. Or perhaps there will be plenty of time for those other tasks at a later date?


^{(*I opted to pack my shopping bags in the car park, rather than using the packing shelf in store, so as to allow someone else to gain entry a few minutes sooner. When travelling in Bertie we don’t use shopping bags, instead decanting the contents of the shopping trolley directly into Bertie’s cupboards and fridge; it’s so much easier and less faff than this car-and-house scenario!
**I’m wholly unconvinced that, given how quiet the store is anyway, it was any easier to maintain social distancing this week than it was last week or the week before when customer numbers weren’t being restricted, but whilst I queued outside an old chap decided that he’d like to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with me for a chat.)}

Monday 13 April - Random Witterings from Home #9

What do you do when you can’t find something? You think about the last time you saw it. Well, the last sighting I could positively recall of our hair clippers was at a

Motorway service station to the N of Mazarrón

That led me down a mental rabbit hole of thinking that we have haircuts in some odd places. From the motorway services in Spain to the car park of a conference hall in Norway, when passers-by stopped and stared like they'd never seen al-fresco hair cutting before. Today our pop up barbers’ shop returned indoors, to its most frequently used location: our hallway, with the chair looking at the front door*.

After a spell of searching, the clippers had been located (still in Bertie, but missed the first time that location was checked). We now look like skin-headed thugs again. 

(*Five minutes of sitting looking at the front door was plenty to lead me to prioritise as my next task the cleaning of the glass in said door.)

Sunday 12 April – Random Witterings from Home #8

I’m going really random in today’s witterings. The subject is this stumpy little lamppost:

You may have noticed it in my previous comparison photo of the patio:

Significantly more progress has been made on the patio since this snap was taken, with Mick joining in with the daily scrubbing sessions.

It’s a tatty eyesore on our patio, in direct line of sight between the kitchen window and the lawn.

As we were scrubbing the patio yesterday Mick suggested that we should remove it. An excellent idea, but with a fundamental problem that links to the reason why (as useful as an outside light would be) we never use it: we have never found a switch for it.

“Surely you can trace the wiring?” I hear you think. Unfortunately, not easily. The armoured wire runs under the patio, in a direction and to a place unknown. There must be a junction box somewhere (because it doesn’t terminate in the consumer unit), and we’ve a hunch as to where that may be, but it’s so inaccessible that leaving the lamp standing is the route of least resistance.

The only (rather unsatisfactory) solution therefore seems to be to detattify* it and leave it as a white elephant. I think we’ve some Black Hammerite in the shed.

Then there are our other two mystery switchless lights (oh yes, some previous owner of this house really went to town on them), but we can more easily ignore those, as neither is within daily line of sight.

^{(*made-up word alert.)}

Thursday 9 April – Random Witterings from Home #7

In a parallel universe

Had the world continued in its usual manner, if we weren’t in the midst of a pandemic causing varying levels of movement restrictions in the relevant countries* and if we hadn’t thus aborted our trip, then last week we would have left Spain and entered France. On Saturday we would have visited Toulouse parkrun. Today we would have arrived in Paris, ready to meet up with Mick’s sons, their partners and all of the grandchildren for a long weekend at Disney.

Obviously a trip to Disney for 10 people doesn’t come cheap and in the absence of being able to recoup the expenditure, rearrangement at some future date wouldn’t have been feasible.

Expedia was quick to offer a full refund of our non-refundable hotel booking and gave an easy on-line way of making the request. We’ve not seen the money, but they did warn that it may take a while (completely understandably).

We’ve been more disappointed by Eurostar’s conduct. The message on their website, and in an email we received today (24 hours before the outward train), is that tickets can be exchanged for e-vouchers (to be used by the end of March 2021), with absolutely no mention that if your train is cancelled, you have the option of a refund. I had to do a lot of searching around their help pages before I found any reference to refunds and even then, when clicking through to the relevant form, reference was made to delays (which only give % refunds), not to cancellations. Eventually I read their terms of carriage, but how many people will have thought that, because they had non-refundable tickets, they had no option but to take the only offer given, of an e-voucher? For us, we have a happy ending: we didn’t believe Eurostar’s attempt at hood-winking and (fortuitously) our trains were cancelled. The one positive I will say for Eurostar is that they processed the refund efficiently over the phone (even though it will take a few weeks to reach us) and thus I didn’t have to go through the painful process of filling in 16 separate claim forms, one for each ticket.

Activity Report (Mainly Through Comparisons)

Just a few snippets of stuff I’ve been doing this week:

1.       Even though I’ve not finished de-weeding the borders, I decided that my next task in the garden would be to clean the patio. We don’t have a pressure washer, so it’s going to be a slow process, on hands and knees, with a scrubbing brush. This is the result of my efforts of the last two days:

Photos from 8th and 9th April. Which will last longer: my enthusiasm for the task or the good weather?

2.       I’m still cashing in my daily exercise token on running, rather than walking. Earlier in the week, on a glorious day, my route took me via four ponds/lakes, all of which looked fine under the clear sky…

…today I ran a reverse version of my newly found ‘ford’ route. I may have to rename it as today I found the ford to be dry:

Photos from 5th and 9th April

3.       Ma-in-Law’s cardigan is still coming along:

Photos from 6th April and 8th April


(*Movement restrictions in Spain have been increased since the initial decree that was put in place on the day we left. In amongst other restrictions, it is not permitted in Spain to leave the house at all for exercise; pets can be taken out, but only within 50m of your house; it is still permitted for one person to leave the house to obtain groceries, but the nearest supermarket must be used.)

Monday 6 April – Random Witterings from Home #6

Since we arrived home on 17 March Mick has not ranged more than a mile and a half from home and always on foot. My freedom has been a little greater, in that I am the nominated shopper for the household and, being 10 days since I last shopped, today, with the fridge too bare to summon up a meal involving fresh veg, I ventured into town.

By 9.30 I was home with what seemed like a ridiculous quantity of groceries* (with limited exceptions (like when we’re travelling in Bertie in places with few or no shops), we shop at least twice a week, so buying for 10-14 days in one go feels like a huge amount). By 10am I was dressed in Lycra and pounding my way towards my current favourite run location (fewest people; the nice scenery is a bonus).

Out in public twice in one morning! It nearly sent me giddy. This was nearly as exciting as being able to take advantage of yesterday’s fine, breezy weather to get the entire contents of the laundry basket dried outside.

Whilst this morning’s outings fell under two different ‘permissible reasons for being outside of the house’, it turns out (based on having had a little read over the weekend** of the Coronavirus Act 2020 (the legislation that specifies the current restrictions)) that contrary to what the government has been selling as mandatory, we are not currently restricted to only leaving the house for exercise once per day. The Act clearly states exercise as an exception to the ‘stay at home’ rule and nowhere states a limit on how much, how far or how often.

That’s not to say I’m going to be taking advantage of this knowledge. The government has put a moral and societal obligation on us even if it’s not backed up by legislation and I will abide by that, but (even in extraordinary times such as this) I can’t say I approve of the government blatantly misrepresenting the law.

Eeeh, I almost came over all political there and I don’t do politics, so let’s turn to knitting instead. Ma-in-Law’s cardigan is coming along nicely, although I can’t say I’m ever going to enjoy executing the T2P stitch:

 

^{(*I was lucky enough to be able to get a bag of bread flour last time I shopped and hoped that was an indication that flour was going to trickle back onto the shelves. Today the flour shelves were entirely bare. We’re not desperate for it yet, and there’s nothing I make with flour that we can’t live without, but you should have seen how excited Mick was yesterday when he found me making his top favourite item: herby cheesy scones.
**I was particularly moved to read the legislation after witnessing someone on Facebook get lambasted by numerous people for sharing her plans for a long run over the weekend. Many people quoted the restriction that we are not allowed to run for more than 1 hour per day, which wasn’t something that, at that time (I have since found the source), I’d heard or seen stated anywhere, so I thought I’d go straight to the horse’s mouth and look at the wording of the Act.)}

Saturday 4 April – Random Witterings from Home #5

Good things that have happened so far this month:

1.       I tried out a new running route and discovered new things surprisingly close to home. As well as finding that one of our local roads has a ford (with an adjacent pedestrian bridge, so no need for wet feet), I found three more chunks of forest with permissive access. With the current lack of traffic, it was a good route. I intend to enjoy it again tomorrow.

Not a flood but a ford

2.       I managed to turn one of the beds in the garden from this:

Taken just after I’d started digging. Judging by the amount of long grass that had grown into the bed I suspect I didn’t clear it last year.

to this:

3.       After 14 days of Mick putting together educational quiz papers for the grandchildren, we had a bit of fun to end with the week by putting together a real-life (i.e. no photo editing software) ‘Spot the Difference’. There are eleven deliberate differences between these two photos:

4.       After seven years of our functioning basin plug sitting on the bathroom window sill, and having a non-functioning plug sitting on the end of the chain attached to the basin, I finally got around to removing the old and fitting the new. It took approximately 2 minutes. By my reckoning that’s a procrasti-ratio* of around 1,840,000:1. I wonder if there are any other lingering jobs around the house that can beat that?

I take snaps of some really dull things! 

5.       I had a smile as I clocked these chaps as I trotted along one of the nearby roads this morning:

I also spent an unreasonable amount of time this week searching Ravelry.com for a knitting pattern for a cardigan that would suit Mick’s mum, having decided that it would cheer up her current situation of complete isolation to receive something that has been knitted especially for her. All those hours on t’internet and (with Mick’s assistance) we finally selected one that I already had in my pattern pile.

Where patterns are written to cover a range of sizes, and particularly where there are cross-references back and forth, I like to write the whole thing out, only covering the size I’m going to make, in a way that I find easier to follow. Because I prefer to knit in the round (in this case just the sleeves, because I don’t feel like this is the time to experiment with steeking**), writing out a pattern can also involve having to read every other row backwards and writing down the opposite of what it tells you to do. Of course, having done all that, some proof reading is needed. I very much appreciate Mick’s assistance at this final stage, even though he looks thoroughly bemused when faced with something like this:

I cast-on a couple of days ago and after finishing the bottom ribbing, I excelled myself by completing without error the row that increased the stitches from 95 to 150. My triumph was short-lived, when I realised I’d done the increases a row to early. Thought was given to fudging it, but I did the right and proper thing: I tinked (unknitted) the entire row, did one more row of ribbing … and then realised it had been right the first time. The extra row was thus tinked and the increase row re-done. An hour and a half later and I was back to where I’d started. I’ll post a photo later in the week once the pattern starts to emerge.

I think I need this mug!

^{(*Procrasti-ratio: a term coined by a friend of mine, meaning the ratio of the time spent procrastinating on a job to the time taken to complete the job.
**Steeking is where you knit a cardigan in the round then cut it down the middle.)}