Those people, They got nothing in their souls;
And they make our TVs blind us
From our vision and our goals.
Oh, the trigger of time it tricks you
So you have no way to grow.
But do you know that
Tonight the streets are ours?
Saturday
Getting far too used to lazy starts. Sent the kids downstairs to watch TV while we lounged in bed. Eventually dragged ourselves out of bed and fed the kids before making a half-hearted attempt at tidying up the kitchen and doing a bit of washing up.
Dragged the kids out into the garden while J was doing a fitness class over zoom. There was much grumbling at first but they both enjoyed planting out the potatoes, and I got the lawn mowed as well. Looks like it’s full of moss. I’ve given up on the front garden, it’s always been pretty scrubby and over the winter it seems like a wild invasion of violas has happened; big parts of the lawn have been usurped by little purple flowers. A few weeks back I sprinkled a load of meadow seed over it; seems like that’s starting to wake up, and later in the year it’ll look wild but pretty.
Just as everything was going a little too well, I sliced into my finger while trying to prepare lunch while distracted by arguing from the garden. The knife is super sharp, so it took a while to get a plaster on it and mop up the blood, but it’s not too deep a cut so in the grand scheme of things, an annoyance rather than a problem.
After lunch, took the bike out for the first time in a week. Aiming for 10 miles, I got home and Fitbit clocked me at a mere 9.93. Damnit. Most of the journey was uneventful but there were a few clowns out there – a group of three women, all pushing buggies close to each other and nattering, and what seemed like the entire population of a small riverside council block sitting out on deckchairs on the grass by the river. The path was a little busier than I’d have liked, and while I could stay well clear of everyone it felt a little claustrophobic at times.
Back home, something had gone wrong with the performance test they’re running. Attempted to log on to AWS but found I’d been locked out of my account. Eventually gained access, having resorted to calling the offshore help desk, and diagnosed the problem as a failure of an application on the other side of a VPC endpoint that belonged to an entirely different part of the business. Cooked a chicken casserole while answering questions on slack, which turned out better than I’d expected (the casserole, not the work, which was much as expected). Got the kids into bed and had a chilled out evening watching the first Ant-Man movie.
Sunday
Another late, lazy start. Goodness knows where my body clock will be by the time this all ends. At least I had some determination to get things done; spent part of the morning fixing a jammed curtain rail that the kids had done a proper number on, and had been getting increasingly broken over the past six weeks or so. Checked in every now and then with work but all seemed quiet; ready for the big release.
Given the rumours of a more stringent lockdown, I took advantage of the weather and headed out on my bike again, this time sticking to roads. A little bit further this time, but out for about the same amount of time; avoiding potentially crowded (in the loosest possible sense of the word any other year) river paths was probably a good call, I think.
Made pizza for dinner from the “pizza base mix” packets I managed to buy on Friday. Turned out well enough but I don’t think I’ll be repeating the experience, it’s a very expensive way to buy flour and yeast mixed together, and hopefully by next week I’ll have plenty of both. Spoke to mum while the dough was rising, she’s keeping her distance from the world; her only annoyance right now is that her Tesco delivery had no eggs. She’s getting out for walks early before people are about. All sensible stuff.
School term ended on Friday, with a grand total of exactly zero fanfare! As a special end of term treat, we promised Sleeper Jr. that he could stay up late and watch Spider-Man: Homecoming with us. I’d suggested that on the assumption it would be with all the other MCU movies on Disney+. Nope. Thanks, Sony. Fortunately it was available for streaming from Amazon but only paid-for, rather than inclusive. Thankfully it was pretty cheap, or I’d have had to find something else to watch instead. All entertained, I escorted him off to bed, then we headed up ourselves not too much later.
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