enjoying the last few days of the winter break

 

How is the new year treating you so far? I thoroughly enjoyed the extended break from work. I think the first few days back at the desk will be quite hard. I am starting the year with a brand-new course, which is always a bit stressful

I spent the time off work wisely, listening to books, going on long walks, stitching EPP quilt blocks together and creating a new "design wall" for future projects. If you think a design wall sounds awfully posh, it isn't. I sewed a fabric strip onto a large piece of cotton quilt wadding, and made lots of regularly spaced button holes in it. Richard screwed the same number of small screws into the wall behind my desk, guided by my button holes. I used extra sticky velcro strips to secure the sides and bottom of the wadding design wall. I think this works better than blue tack and sticky tape, which is what I used recently. Quilt blocks stick beautifully to the wadding. 

I finally tidied away the Christmas tree. It was a good one, not much shedding of needle. I thoroughly scrubbed the living room as it has only seen glimpses of the vacuum cleaner and duster since before Christmas. I always enjoy this almost ritual post Christmas clean-up and every year I am astonished to find our living room is much larger than before. It reminds me of the children's book "A squash and a squeeze" by Julia Donaldson, a sweet story about an old lady who thinks her house is too small. Richard decided that the large wool rug under our kitchen table needed a clean and spent some time soaking it in the bathtub, and walking on it like a wine maker in the olden days walked on grapes. It might take weeks to dry but it is as new. 

I was delighted to find a new instalment of one of my favourite detective series on Audible. It is the Bryant & May peculiar crimes unit series by Christopher Fowler. He writes beautifully, although of course as someone with English as a second language I might not be the best judge of that. The two detectives are really, really old (for working police officers), well past retirement age. If I remember correctly, Arthur Bryant was born before World War II. When I read about him, I see my great grand father (who was a tram driver, not a detective). Anyway, I love this series and I always worry that one or both of the detectives might die and that would be the end of it. The author must get hundreds of worried emails about this.... the last sentence of the book is that Bryant & May will be back with another case. What a relief. 

These last few days have been extremely icy here in Glasgow. Last night it rained, then all froze over. Only main roads are treated here and leaving our residential road without breaking a hip is quite challenging. Annie (being less risk averse than I) and her friend took Jack out for a walk today. We got a phone call about an hour into the walk that Jack had hurt his paw and wouldn't or couldn't walk. Richard and I went to the rescue, on foot because it was not safe to drive the car. Jack easily fits in a backpack, which is how we planned to carry him home. It was not a blue light kind of rescue but a slow careful shuffle along the very edges of the paths. 40 minutes into the rescue mission, we got a call saying that Jack was now fine and didn't need rescuing after all. We wondered if he may have a small cut in his paw and maybe some salt from the road caused pain. The girls had walked across a main road, which may have been treated. We decided to shuffle and slide back home along the river, slowly so that the girls and Jack could catch up with us. It was good exercise, albeit on the risky side. 

Nature is doing its thing and on another walk, I noticed the first signs of spring. This made me happy.

Here in Scotland we are entering a full lockdown (stay at home order) at midnight. I welcome this. At the moment, here in Scotland the positive test rate is still quite a bit lower than it is in the South of England. For comparison, as of writing this post, there were 220 positive cases per 100,000 in Dundee City and there were 1294 per 100,000 in the London Borough of Havering. These were as far as I can tell the highest numbers. Scary, isn't it? A few months ago we thought 20 were too many. I hope this lockdown will prevent similar rates of infection in Scotland and that indeed the situation will improve as we stay at home and more people are vaccinated.

EDIT - I see BJ has now also announced a full lockdown for England, after telling parents yesterday to send their children to school today. It is a relief to know that this is a devolved matter. I don't know what the situation in Wales and Northern Ireland is, in case you are wondering.

For me personally, nothing much changes. I continue to work at home and I'll continue to walk the dog. I have a couple of medical appointments that are not affected. We already knew before Christmas that school start for the most of Scotland would be delayed until the 11th, with online learning until the 18th. This has now been extended to the end of January. I am glad that our children are of the resilient sort, they'll be ok. 

Anyways, I should probably stop writing and get ready for the night, I have an early start tomorrow. The sound of the alarm clock will come as a shock. 

As always, thank you for visiting.