• Feeling: Tired
• Listening to: Nothing today
• Watching: Diagnosis Detectives

In contrast to my last post it’s been a more eventful few days – and not always in a welcome way (although all ended up ok). We had a lovely weekend, walking to Warwick on Saturday morning, getting to go to Warwick Books and get tea from The Golden Monkey Tea Co., which was lovely.

The weather was great, and the kids had fun playing in the park and climbing trees, and at the market we picked up some new herb plants for our planters (marjoram, thyme, strawberry mint and chives to go with the rosemary, sage and mint we already had planted).

Sunday was also a lovely day, and we (well, D and I) spent much of it in the garden – planting bulbs, digging up some more of the front lawn, mowing, moving plants around. I was tasked with getting some compost for our planters and after seeing how busy Homebase was I decided to go to Hintons – a local nursery which was an altogether much more pleasant experience – almost entirely in the open air, very quiet, and although they didn’t have a huge stock of compost, they had what I needed.

In the afternoon we had our regular Sunday Zoom call and quiz with my family, this week celebrating a special birthday for one of the cousins and it was a really nice occasion (not just because I came first in the quiz for the first time!)

Unfortunately a chest pain that had been bothering me for a couple of weeks, became much worse on Sunday evening, and by Monday morning I was in quite a bit of pain, and worrying about possible causes (especially given my sex, age, weight & family history). So I rang NHS 111 and they sent me to the Urgent Treatment Centre in Coventry. Despite finding nothing immediately worrying, the Dr referred me directly to the “Medical Decisions Unit” (or MDU – part of the Emergency department) at Coventry University Hospital. So I spent most of the day in hospital being while blood was taken and tested, multiple medical professionals listened to my heart, re-checked my ECG and finally X-ray’d my chest. The outcome being – nothing wrong with my heart, so almost certainly the pain is musculo-skeletal – possibly some torn muscle fibres in my rib cage. Gardening is dangerous!

Obviously this was a big relief, and although I’m still in pain I’m no longer worried, and managed to speak to my GP this morning who concurred with the diagnosis from the MDU.

Obviously both the Urgent Treatment Centre and the Hospital are having to work around COVID19 limiting their waiting areas (I was moved between waiting rooms at the hospital as the main one became too full, even with chairs down the corridor), as well as making the conditions for both staff and patients much more difficult. Despite this I was impressed with the speed with which I was checked out and although it took several hours I had a clear bill of health the same day – pretty impressive really – although I know only too well it’s not perfect, the NHS is pretty amazing when it works.

Yesterday and today were much calmer – doing some choir stuff, and working – but a quiet few days is welcome as I try to avoid doing any further strenuous gardening while I recover!

Stay safe, stay strong

• Feeling: Good
• Listening to: Lost in the woods / Country Roads / There she goes
• Watching: Terminator: Dark fate

A reasonably standard Friday overall. There have been several colleges and schools affected by COVID-19 cases, including B’s school, but so far no direct impact on us. Meanwhile nationally the talk is of a two week “circuit breaker” (don’t call it a lockdown!) to try to get the rising numbers back under control (although around 15% of the UK population is already under additional local restrictions of some sort).

To be a bit more cheery, after her online session with Explore this week, F decided that the online learning games they had were no good (she says the animations are no good, and the questions and/or answers are sometimes wrong). So F decided to build her own online learning games using the Scratch programming language – she has big plans for a full set of animal themed games covering all areas of the curriculum, but is currently working on “Spelling Shark’s Memorising Mouse” spelling game.

F is showing the same kind of tendencies as me and B when it comes to programming – by which I mean once she is working on a problem it’s hard to drag her away – we were almost late for school this morning as she tried to fix something!

The weather this week has been so nice, and we enjoyed our Saturday morning walk at Charlecote so much last week, we thought we’d better book another National Trust property for a walk first thing tomorrow – so we are booked in for Packwood House at 9am (and have an order for breakfast pastries in at Haddie and Trilby as well – so hopefully we can pick those up on the way.)

And the Heavenly Blue continues to bloom and even this late in the year is attracting bees (picture by D).

• Feeling: OK
• Listening to: Country Roads / Gilmore & Roberts
• Watching: Miracle Workers

First post since the weekend. Since the kids went back to school, and D went back to work, my days have become very routine all of a sudden – whereas all through lock down it felt there was almost always something that had happened of interest during the day, now it feels like the days are just very “normal” with nothing of note happening – so it barely seems worth posting about.

Since Sunday at Bs school the whole of Year 9 has been asked to stay at home after a Y9 student tested positive for covid-19. The communication from the school was good I thought – we got an email explaining what had happened and what action the school had taken/was taking. However, while Y9 students have to stay at home, siblings of Y9 students should still attend school – I can see the logic (you only isolate the direct contacts of the confirmed case not the “contacts of contacts”) but it feels like this means it is only a matter of time before there are more cases.

D was working at home today – I was happy to have the company, and D was happy to be able to spend a day without having to put a mask on 🙂 Unfortunately I had a rather busy afternoon with lots of calls, so I wasn’t the most sociable.

This evening we had our first choir sectional (baritones) rehearsal of the new season. This was on zoom, but was quite good fun – the first song is an arrangement of “Take me home, country roads” . A group of six had got together in a garden (socially distanced obviously) to join the Zoom call and it looked like that worked well – so I think we’ll have some more “small groups” together through the season.

In the garden a plant (Calyopteris x Clandonensis ‘Heavenly Blue’ – aka Bluebeard) that Mum bought us in remembrance of Dad is coming into bloom – it’s a lovely plant with slightly silvered leaves and small blue flowers. It was really nice to see it out this morning.

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And finally this evening my favourite folk duo Gilmore & Roberts did a free concert on Facebook (with a tip jar, half of any money donated to go to Refuge). It was a great set, and recommended if you are looking for a nice mix of modern folk.

Stay safe, stay strong

• Feeling: Bit stressed, but OK
• Listening to: Take me home, country roads
• Watching: Prodigal Son

End of the week. Work felt like I did a lot but every step forward had two more steps back 🙁

More new shoes for the kids today (trainers this time) and the new cable modem from Virgin Media which should mean we can get a faster internet connection. Getting the modem working took a little while this evening (at one point I gave up and put the old one back in so we could watch something on Netflix) but it’s now up and working.

Realised today how little time we all get together as a family now everyone is back at work and school. I feel like I’ve barely seen B this week since he’s basically out the door before I’m awake and when he gets home we’re all tired out. F I see a bit more because of the extra time in the morning and then picking her up at 3pm, and D I get to spend some time with in the evening (although we’re mainly just vegging out in front of the TV). Although the last few months have been really tough and being on top of each other all the time has its own challenges, I am missing aspects of it.

Think we’re all glad it’s the end of the week – tomorrow we’ve booked tickets for a local National Trust property first thing (Charlecote Park) and hoping we can have a relaxing weekend.

• Feeling: Busy but good
• Listening to: Take me home, country roads
• Watching: Legends of Tomorrow

A week since the kids went back to school. Feeling like we are gradually getting back in the rhythm (actually I think it may just be me who isn’t really quite with it yet).

Bs school bus service has introduced seat numbers so that they know where people sit in case of a COVID case they can advise just those sitting near the person with the confirmed COVID19. This doesn’t seem hugely practical since they are on that bus for 45-60 minutes each way – I’m not sure the virus is really going to observe the 2m rule over such a period with many people in the space and also touching the surfaces etc. It doesn’t sound like the seating went to plan today, but maybe tomorrow will go more smoothly with people more used to it.

Usual pattern for me today – drop off F, work, pick up F, work, everyone gets home, bit more work, tea, TV, bed! Major excitement was new shoes for the kids – I bought a foot measure so we could measure the kids at home and order online, although I was a bit late for the start of term! The kids have been putting up with slightly too small shoes for the last week, but hopefully tomorrow they will have comfortable feet again. F was especially pleased with her “tarantula” themed shows with a spiders web sole pattern!

Tomorrow expecting equivalent new trainers to arrive for the kids, plus a new cable modem to take advantage of higher internet speeds now available at home – all the excitement!

Stay safe, stay strong

• Feeling: Good
• Listening to: Nothing today
• Watching: Stumptown

Woke around 7:30 again although struggled to get moving until about 7:50. Gone are the days of just having to worry about getting myself up in time to have breakfast – we are back to getting the kids up and out of the house – and for me and F that means a slightly earlier start than previously because we have to get F to school for 8:30 rather than 8:50. Lying in until 8:30 but still being ready to work at 9 is something I miss about lockdown!

After dropping F off at school I had to drop a facemask off for D (she forgot to pack her’s this morning) and then to work. That was basically the rest of the day – work, pick up F, back to work until time to stop for dinner.

F had her weekly Explore tutoring session this evening – she never wants to do this and always ends up enjoying it – just one of those things that seems like it isn’t going to be fun at the end of a long day I guess (but by the end she was all smiles – she does really enjoy doing the English and Maths – especially today with lots of similes, metaphors and idioms to enjoy in the English work)

Aside from work, I’ve been working with the choir committee to put together our autumn season. Unfortunately even before the new, stricter, guidelines we’d concluded that meeting up and singing together just wasn’t going to be possible. I think we’ve put together as good as virtual choir schedule as we could have done in the circumstances, and smaller groups of six within the choir will be able to meet and sing together (at least under current guidance) if they want to and are comfortable/able to do so. We’re focussing on easy to learn, well known, songs which are being arranged for us by our talented pianist – I really love singing these original arrangements as I think it makes us stand out against others singing the more widely available arrangements which you can buy off the shelf. The aim is to be able to learn and record (unfortunately individually) our parts for six songs between now and Xmas, and have all the recordings brought together into a virtual choir performance.

The first two songs are Take me Home, Country Roads (John Denver) and A Little Respect (Erasure) and I can’t wait to start working on these next week 🙂

Stay safe, stay strong