• Feeling: A bit up and down
• Listening to: Nothing today
• Watching: Van der Valk

I’m feeling a bit down after the various announcements from government yesterday and today. I don’t think there are simple solutions to the situation, but I guess I’m worried that the current course of action seems foolhardy when we don’t seem to have adequate testing or contact tracing in place.

However, I don’t want to dwell on this too much although it has affected my mood this evening, we’ve had a good day.

We got some deliveries of some bean plants and new tea towels (D is fed up of my using the tea towels while baking and getting bread dough and flour all over them). The bean plants were pretty sad looking by the time they got to us – they were meant to be delivered on Friday, but only reached us today – so D has put them in pots and is hoping to revive them. On the other hand the tomato plants we got from C a few weeks ago are looking great!

The kids had art class and for the first time F actually enjoyed it. We had a talk beforehand about it, and she was worried that she would get upset because she already had a vision of what she wanted the picture to be like in her head and she didn’t think it would turn out as good as her vision. We agreed it would still be good to try, and she seemed to really enjoy it for a change.

Kids also got on with school work and had their online tutoring sessions (with Explore learning) which they seemed to enjoy. I was my usual work focussed self as it was Monday, but had a nice lunch with the rest of the family (although indoors today) and this evening we all watched Taskmaster together again (which is far too funny for the kids just before bedtime!)

F has been writing some more poems for her website, but this is one of my favourites from a couple of weeks ago:

The Outside
Listen to the howling lonely gale
Feel the cold harsh hail
The leaves stroke my cheeks
My head aches for weeks
The birds' song fills my heart 

Thick branches scraped my heart
The summer comes
The red leaf runs

So the breeze laughs and sings 
The leaves have wings
The birds loop the trees
And you catch the dancing bees

http://www.freyapatelstephens.com/poems/

My next baking challenge is brioche – a request from Bryn – and the aim is to bake some brioche buns for burgers later in the week – I’ve never done brioche before so quite excited to try.

Stay safe, stay strong x