100 Days - day one and twenty

Not nice: many dead trees on Alison Street:

Nice: Dunk walking:

Three cootlings:

Three cygnets:

Thirteen on the iPlayer, and Tish, Monkey and Toby talking over it most of the evening because the plot had so many holes:

Hope your day had some nice to balance out the not nice.

Stay safe. See you tomorrow.

#100DaysToOffload

100 Days - 20th day Houseiversary

Today is my houseiversary, a whole year since I got the keys to my very own house. I have pretty much fulfilled my challenge to myself to get the whole house painted within a year (Toby helpfully closed the door to the under-stairs cupboard so I didn't have to be reminded of the one little space left to paint). I continue to arrive home from work to a deep sense of contentment and security. Much as their inability to use the recycle bins properly drives me crazy, the neighbours all seem lovely, and none of them owns a noisy dog or plays loud obnoxious music. All in all I am satisfied that I made a good decision.

Stay safe. See you tomorrow.

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100 Days - 19th day - did he jump or was he pushed

Lots of good news today. Rico Back 'quits' as CEO of Royal Mail, taking with him, of course, lots of money, and all the shares he's been acquiring over the years. The union is delighted because under his leadership there has been almost constant conflict between the union and management; they argued that his plans were a threat to the universal service (which he wanted to get rid of naturally) and were aimed at breaking up the company. He has been sharply criticised for 'running the company' from Switzerland for the last two months. I mean I know senior management are notorious for being a long way from the people on the ground doing the actually work but that is taking things to the extreme. Ever since privatisation there has been a shift away from the idea that we are a public service towards an emphasis on profits before people. Every year we do an employee survey on which I write that the company should be taken back into public ownership. And apparently we are all going to get a nice little bonus to thank us for keeping the economy afloat while nobody could go to the shops. So that's all right then. And I forgot to mention, lovely lady on Beech Grove gave me some choccies, just for being an excellent postlady.

I have been feeling bad for enjoying the chaos. Listening to the word salad that comes from the mouths of ministers as they try to explain what we are and are not allowed to do is just ripe for ridicule. Snarky articles in the Guardian like this one by John Crace are entertaining, because they need to show up the incompetence of the government's policies, but then I remind myself that it's serious. And then you read the latest reports from across the pond and it almost makes your feel better ... almost. If you are feeling that things can't possibly get any worse the advice from Oliver Burkeman is to accept the state of the world and stop trying to feel you have to fix it all. Good advice for me there.

Book to Make You Think - Inside the Wave by Helen Dunmore from 2018 (poetry)

Stay safe. See you tomorrow.

#100DaysToOffload

100 Days - the eighteenth

What I really want to know is when are they going to open the libraries.

Trying hard to appreciate the positive.

Blue skies.

Sunshine.

Goslings.

Quiet roads.

Cats who roll over and let you rub their belly.

Rhubarb jam tarts.

Mangoes.

It's not helping.

Have volunteered to work Sundays collecting coronavirus tests from key workers. Hoping that making a positive contribution to the crisis might make me feel better.

(Listening to the others play Pirate Flux has worked a little bit)

Book to Make You Think - The Philosopher and the Wolf by Mark Rowlands from 2009.

Stay safe. Will try and see you tomorrow.

#100DaysToOffload

100 Days - day 17

Aaargh! We finished the new puzzle and there is a piece missing! It was secured under the sofa at night and no evidence that the cat had tried to interfere with it, but still, a piece missing. We have puzzle gremlins.

On the plus side I recycled some soap scraps and made a new little bar of soap. I even improvised a mould out of a yogurt pot lid. Tish warned me not to put it in the microwave, apparently it does not work, so I just melted the pieces in the pyrex jug over a pan of hot water.

The goslings are coming along well. Tish says they are considered an invasive species and the park keepers would usual prick the eggs so they do not hatch, but apparently not this year. Haven't seen the original cootling, which is making me anxious for it, but did see another family with three. We can't see the heron's nest any more now all the foliage is out. Dunk says there are four fox cubs in the garden ... but I don't get to watch them.

The finished puzzle is Antagony by Robert S Connett, produced by Flame Tree Publishing. While we very much appreciated the fact that there were two copies of the picture I was a little disappointed that there were a number of damaged pieces (outies that were bent or where the image was becoming detached). Also all the pieces were two innies/two outies. We like variety in our puzzle pieces. I think I will get Convergence back out now.

Book to Make You Think: A Long Long Way by Sebastian Barry from 2012. (And very much looking forward to his new book A Thousand Moons).

Stay safe (don't bother with the alert thing, doze on the sofa if you like). See you tomorrow.

#100DaysToOffload

100 Days - 16

Chatted with family last night over zoom; when I say chatted, I mean they chatted. I feel ambivalent on the subject. It's nice to be able to see them, it's nice to be included, but I have nothing to say. I don't feel it is conducive to conversation, it feels stilted. I also find that it makes me feel more remote. I have this sense of being on the periphery of everything; on the outside, looking in at people. I am not good at staying in touch and have gone long periods without seeing my family much. They all see each other much more frequently than I do so I have ended up feeling like an outsider, like I used to be part of it but am not any more. I have been struggling with a feeling of unreality, and then I have times like Saturday when the irrelevance of everything I do all just becomes overwhelming. 

This is not what I wanted to write. I wanted to write a nice upbeat little piece about how mum and dad shared their memories of VE day (they were both nearly 9 at the time). I wanted to say how I felt like an effective parent because Tish had a migraine and I helped her calm down and looked after her until she was able to go back to sleep. I wanted to say how nice it was to come home and find Monkey and Toby making the dinner, though by the time it was ready I felt sick and not hungry. I should be trying to focus on the positive things, how am I supposed to help Monkey be more positive if I can't even do it myself. 

Also why am I waffling on about what's going on in my head when what's going on outside in the world is so much more important.

It's late. (This is Monday's post, but posted after midnight).

Stay safe. See you tomorrow.

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100 Days - day fiveteen

Oh how I laughed. Look, parents are going to sue the government for failing to provide education for their children. Having been a home educator for many years with the Education Welfare Officer breathing down your neck every now and then, demanding that you demonstrate you were providing an education for your children on pain of having them forced back into school, I did find this report most entertaining. Call it karma or something. 

I have read, mostly on facebook, a lot of posts about people 'homeschooling' during the coronavirus lockdown, both positive and negative reactions. Lots of jokes about how teachers should get a big pay rise because making two children sit down and jump through the academic hoops you have planned for them is really hard. Others saying how much their children have flourished away from the stresses of compulsory school attendance. Also home education pages pointing out that what parents are currently doing is *not* home education. It is crisis management. If you're interested Idzie Desmarais writes at 'I'm Unschooled, Yes, I Can Write', and this article on National Geographic. I hope that the experience, the enforced extended companionship of their children, has shown parents that children are people too, and that they don't need to control their every waking moment for them to be 'learning' stuff (whatever that means).

In keeping with the rest of the post, today's Book to Make You Think: Weapons of Mass Instruction by John Taylor Gatto from 2013

Stay safe. See you tomorrow.

#100DaysToOffload