So I knelt there at the delta,
At the alpha and the omega,
At the cradle of the river and the seas.
And like a blessing come from heaven
For something like a second
I was healed and my heart was at ease.

Friday

Still haven’t got the hang of this sleeping in late thing. Up early, working a little before the kids disturbed me too much. So much for my meeting-light Fridays; I sit down at the kitchen table with them at about 9am and didn’t have a chance to take my headset off until gone 12, by which time one child was getting frustrated with his home learning, stuck trying to work out how to get his chromebook to do what he wants, and the other had long since run out of colouring.

The state of the house is getting to me; it’s a tip. I’ve resolved to try to give it a good tidy this weekend but we’ll see how well that works out. For the afternoon I attempt last-minute bug fixes for the big switch over at the weekend, not helped by vagueness of bug reports and complaints that something doesn’t work being greeted with silence when I ask for more details. Eventually we get the green light, and on Sunday night our hard work will be live. I’ll have to be online at 7am to take the second shift of handling any fallout, but that’s a small thing. This is a project that 6 weeks ago, when I joined, was predicted to fail and fail hard. Had a brief interlude for a “pub quiz” with colleagues around 4pm; was a bit of fun, and manage to get dinner on the table for a reasonable time. Kids in bed, had plenty of time to kick back and watch the finale of Star Trek: Picard and drink beer. My supplies are running low. The Kölsch in the fermenter will need a bit of lagering time before it’s ready to drink. Hopefully my monthly Northern Monk delivery will be here soon; even with that I might have to start drinking beer from the supermarket soon. Bah.

Saturday

Awoke only slightly less early, after a restless night. I was expecting after the staying-up-late-to-make-beer shenanigans that I might get a better night’s rest; no such luck. Ocado order arrives with a bunch of substitutions, one of which I have to send back as it’s unsuitable due to ingredients. The most annoying part was the substitution of things for smaller sizes; can’t make dinner for four with only ingredients for two. On the other hand, it’s not a massive problem. Next week I’ll have to actually go out grocery shopping, our next delivery isn’t until two weeks’ time (and we only got that due to having priority over non-Smart Pass customers).

Went out for a bike ride. The roads were mostly quiet, and I didn’t see anyone taking liberties with the speed limit like I’ve heard of happening. Most people seemed to be being sensible and following the guidance, apart from one group of six adults who obviously weren’t all from the same household and had taken it upon themselves to go for a meander in a tight-knit group. Top idiot-of-the-day points, however, go to the runner who got way too close while I was going through a staggered gate on the Wandle Trail and yelled at me to get out of his way.

“Dad, when can we have picnic in the park?” Social distancing rules mean we can’t, so we had a picnic in the garden. If was cold, but also fun. Nice to have these little moments of not a care in the world. Had flashbacks to eating sandwiches under a tree in the pouring rain outside York Castle Museum last year, that had the same “We’re going to have fun regardless” vibe.

Took the kids out for a short walk around the block later in the afternoon, to count rainbows in the windows. Technically that’s twice for exercise in one day but walking (or indeed, cycling) with them isn’t exercise for me, and they needed to get out of the house if only for ten minutes, plus I hadn’t managed to get out at all since Sunday. Fisherman’s pie for dinner, then got them ready for bed at some semblance of a sensible hour. Had our usual family episode of Doctor Who – this week it was Vincent and The Doctor, in which an invisible threat is killing people. Sounded a little familiar.

Kids in bed, I collapsed on the sofa in front of Altered Carbon. Hopefully we’ll get more tidying done tomorrow.

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