In my last post I observed that I had only worn ‘normal’ shoes four times in six weeks and that Mick hadn’t been in a moving vehicle in that time. It was a few days later my mind put these facts together to realise that Mick & I have not stepped foot in public together – not even as far as the pavement outside of the house – in that time either.
This leads on to the curious fact that in this period of movement restrictions, when most multi-person households find themselves spending more time that usual with their cohabiters, we are in the opposite situation, in that we are exercising separately and I am shopping (albeit infrequently) alone, not to mention the time one of us is spending in the garden whilst the other is engaged in some other fun(?!) activity indoors.
Glancing a moment into a parallel universe: what if we had chosen to stay in Spain and were still there? Only one of us would have been permitted to go to the supermarket (the nearest shop, note, not necessarily the one we wanted to go to) and we would not, until this weekend, have been permitted to go outside at all for exercise (nor, if we had a dog, would we have been permitted to walk it more than 50m from Bertie). The Spanish movement restrictions have eased over the last week, with children (wholly confined to home thus far) now having a little freedom to go outside and, from this weekend, with adults permitted to exercise, provided that they stay within their municipality and only go out within the allocated timeslots for their age group (Mick and I fall within the same age group; others couples with an age disparity may not be so lucky).
I hate to think how much fitness (not to mention sanity) I would now have lost had we remained in Spain, but if I step back to reality from that parallel universe, I ran every day in April, covering a minimum of 2.5 miles each day, and finished the month having beaten March’s record mileage, coming in at just over 140 miles. There are some people that cover that sort of distance in a week or ten days (crazy people!), but in my world that’s a big number. I’m in two minds whether to break the running streak (currently standing at 43 days) now, to save putting undue pressure on myself later when there’s even more to lose.
I’ll finish with a selection of this week's snaps, involving a bit of sunshine and quite a bit of food:
I’m not sure this looks particularly good in photo form, but it was very tasty! The first broth made with barley since running out just after we arrived home and not being able to replenish our supply until this week:
I used up some of the precious flour supply so that the broth could be accompanied by cheesy herb scones. (We’ve even less plain flour remaining than self-raising, but as I can make a small fruit crumble with less than 2oz (I use 50/50 oats and flour) that’s exactly how I frittered some away this week. Perhaps I should be thankful about the lack of flour – a limited ability to bake may well be a good thing when taking the lack of exercise into account!)
I could roll out the dough and cut them into neat rounds, but it saves time, effort and cleaning up just to slap the dough on a baking sheet, flatten it out with the hands then roughly chop it up. They still taste the same.
More nettles have been harvested from the garden. Meanwhile I now have six healthy runner bean plants out in the garden and another four seeds germinating indoors. Unfortunately the courgette plants in the garden are looking rather sickly, but there’s another batch just springing to life on the windows sill that can replace them if they fail (and supplement them if they don’t).
Whilst most of the week was grey, with too much wetness for my liking, we had a gorgeous start to the day yesterday, causing me to change my intended running route 1-mile in, turning right to enjoy the countryside rather than left to pound the pavements.
This leads on to the curious fact that in this period of movement restrictions, when most multi-person households find themselves spending more time that usual with their cohabiters, we are in the opposite situation, in that we are exercising separately and I am shopping (albeit infrequently) alone, not to mention the time one of us is spending in the garden whilst the other is engaged in some other fun(?!) activity indoors.
Glancing a moment into a parallel universe: what if we had chosen to stay in Spain and were still there? Only one of us would have been permitted to go to the supermarket (the nearest shop, note, not necessarily the one we wanted to go to) and we would not, until this weekend, have been permitted to go outside at all for exercise (nor, if we had a dog, would we have been permitted to walk it more than 50m from Bertie). The Spanish movement restrictions have eased over the last week, with children (wholly confined to home thus far) now having a little freedom to go outside and, from this weekend, with adults permitted to exercise, provided that they stay within their municipality and only go out within the allocated timeslots for their age group (Mick and I fall within the same age group; others couples with an age disparity may not be so lucky).
I hate to think how much fitness (not to mention sanity) I would now have lost had we remained in Spain, but if I step back to reality from that parallel universe, I ran every day in April, covering a minimum of 2.5 miles each day, and finished the month having beaten March’s record mileage, coming in at just over 140 miles. There are some people that cover that sort of distance in a week or ten days (crazy people!), but in my world that’s a big number. I’m in two minds whether to break the running streak (currently standing at 43 days) now, to save putting undue pressure on myself later when there’s even more to lose.
I’ll finish with a selection of this week's snaps, involving a bit of sunshine and quite a bit of food:
I’m not sure this looks particularly good in photo form, but it was very tasty! The first broth made with barley since running out just after we arrived home and not being able to replenish our supply until this week:
I used up some of the precious flour supply so that the broth could be accompanied by cheesy herb scones. (We’ve even less plain flour remaining than self-raising, but as I can make a small fruit crumble with less than 2oz (I use 50/50 oats and flour) that’s exactly how I frittered some away this week. Perhaps I should be thankful about the lack of flour – a limited ability to bake may well be a good thing when taking the lack of exercise into account!)
More nettles have been harvested from the garden. Meanwhile I now have six healthy runner bean plants out in the garden and another four seeds germinating indoors. Unfortunately the courgette plants in the garden are looking rather sickly, but there’s another batch just springing to life on the windows sill that can replace them if they fail (and supplement them if they don’t).
Whilst most of the week was grey, with too much wetness for my liking, we had a gorgeous start to the day yesterday, causing me to change my intended running route 1-mile in, turning right to enjoy the countryside rather than left to pound the pavements.
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