Lockdownish week 17 - Friday - mainly starring Mr Life

We haven't been doing anything interesting over the past few days because we've been down at Daughter 2's Edinburgh flat, where Mr L has been slaving away painting the bathroom and the insides of built-in wardrobes. Having established that getting a video made of the flat for sales purposes would cost £500, Daughter 2 and her husband decided that Mr L should just make one - which he was quite willing to do. Then SIL 2, who is a chap who really really likes a gadget, decided that to do a professional job, Mr L needed a very complicated gimbal, which is, just in case you didn't know, a device for keeping the camera level. So they ordered one and we picked it up, and then Mr L spent quite a long time watching the instructional video and trying it out. (SIL 2 does a lot of video editing professionally and so will use it himself in the future.)

There hasn't been so much for me to do, but I've been giving the windows another clean - good, aren't they? - and generally acting as soother when various minor problems arose (now largely sorted).

The photographer comes on Monday, so it all has to be finished by then.

The bathroom painting is progressing.

Today was Big Grandson's 9th birthday. He's been SO excited because he'd asked for more Brio, and indeed got it. He has so much now - he keeps it at our house - that we have nowhere to put it except in big plastic crates in our sitting room. But - he won't be 9 forever, so we don't mind. His English grandparents are up visiting and we all had birthday tea together, which was lovely and made things feel almost normal. But we missed Auntie Daughter 2 very much. 

Daughter 1 made his cake. It's a Victoria line 2009 stock tube train. I'm told. 

I've been doing some cutting for my African fabrics quilt. It's very very bright. Very very very bright.

Lockdownish week 17 - Monday and Tuesday - style

Yesterday I did the garden in the morning and the evening - and was discouragingly stiff afterwards. My gardening consists mainly of getting on to my knees, weeding or chopping or whatever, getting up again and then down again a couple of feet along. And repeat - a lot. I don't feel that this used to be so difficult... .

In the afternoon I had coffee with a group of friends in someone's garden, which was very nice. We usually meet every Monday for about an hour, but this was the first time since March. 

Meanwhile Mr L was painting Daughter 2's Edinburgh bathroom, which has now got its new suite. 

I went down with him today and he continued painting - the bathroom and the insides of cupboards. My part consisted largely in wiping the insides of kitchen cupboards, cleaning windows and providing flat-dressing, as below. This plant is supposed to hide the communal bins in the street outside. As Daughter 2 said via WhatsApp, "Bins? What bins?"

The flat is painted white and the idea is to make it very neutral so that a buyer could just move in, but Daughter 2 put these shelves up when she lived there (or, to be more accurate, Mr L put them up for her) and so obviously we had to put some artistically-arranged what-nots on it. The boat picture was left by the tenants, while the other stuff comes from our house or Daughter 1's. Much WhatsApping went into getting it arranged just as Daughter 2 wanted it.

This is the very neutral new bathroom. The tiles are actually pale grey, not beige as they look here, and the suite is white.

She got us to buy two Ikea mirrors for it. Again, we consulted her as to where she wanted them.

We also needed to know the height above the shelf. (Talking of height - have I always been that much shorter than Mr L??)

It was quite easy because she answered our questions with a quick architectural drawing via WhatsApp. Isn't technology amazing? The bottle at the side in her drawing is a deep blue and I found another couple of blue things to go with it.

Obviously we want someone to buy the flat who cares deeply about the exact placing of objects... .

Talking of objects, I've been battling again with archives. I find it very difficult to throw away bits of paper of sentimental value or archival interest - but there's too much of it! Also photos - it's such a difficult balance. How many photos will our unborn descendants (if any) want of, for example, my parents? Probably only one or two, so that they can see what they looked like. But I find these hard to throw out. And how many will they want of my childless aunts, of whom I was very fond but who will be of limited interest to future generations?

So far I've put photos into boxes, to be sorted out properly on some cold winter evening when I have nothing much to do. Will that ever happen??

On days like this, when we've been by ourselves and just pootling along, it's easy to forget about the Covid situation. The other grandparents of the Edinburgh Two came up from England today for a few days because they're now allowed to, but we can't go down south because in England, we're not allowed yet into someone else's house - I think. It's quite confusing and becomes more so, the longer it goes on and the more (the different more) that things are loosened, here and in England. In Scotland, for example, you can't fly to Spain because the figures are too high there, but in England you can, so people are just driving down to England and leaving from there. Not that I myself want to go to Spain, or at least not in the foreseeable future.

I'm amused at how quickly masks have become fashion objects, to match one's outfit or express one's personality. I have two, one lime green and one turquoise, but I bought them somewhat randomly without thinking of stylishness.

London again

I've been down for a long weekend to visit Daughter 2, her husband and Littlest Granddaughter, who turned 18 months during my visit. That was quick! She's still very adorable, though has developed some strong opinions. As we all do.

After a couple of days, Daughter 1 and her family arrived. Daughter 2 and SIL 2 only have a two-bedroom flat, so it was kind of them to accommodate four extra bodies. At that point, I moved to a Travelodge. Two bedrooms, seven people - seemed like enough without an eighth.

Grandson took his father to the Transport Museum (no surprise there) while we girls visited a children's event near King's Cross.

It's surprising how much fun it seems to be, standing under a parachute while it collapses on you.

This is Oldest Granddaughter. Obviously.

Despite appearances, the weather was cold, but Granddaughter didn't appear to feel it. Fortunately her mother had some much-needed dry clothes for her.

This is the view from my Travelodge 7th floor bedroom. I'd never stayed in a hotel by myself before. It was very peaceful.

The next day we went on the Docklands Light Railway to Greenwich. Here you can see Littlest "driving" the (driverless) train. The day after that, climate-change protesters disrupted this part of the network (among other places) by glueing themselves to the tops of some of the carriages, causing huge delays. I'm so glad we missed this.

We'd brought a packed lunch to the Maritime Museum and a nice chap found us a completely empty room to eat it in. This was so good - the children got to run around while we had a seat.

Then I came home and finished the middle bit of the starry quilt for my nephew and his young lady. It doesn't look very impressive but there were a lot of corners. Now to decide on borders.

And now Daughter 2 and Littlest are at Newcastle on their way up here for Easter weekend. Hurray!

Come back, spring

When the snow started, I took these photos of crocuses peeping through, which I thought was rather sweet and brave of them.

Now, poor things, they've been deeply buried for a few days. I wonder if the blooms will survive?

We are surviving perfectly well, though I'm starting to get fed up with not getting much exercise. On the other hand, quilting is a pleasant and warm occupation. And we have enough to eat, thanks to fridge and freezer, long-life milk and a very local wee shop.

We keep hearing, don't we, of people who throw vast amounts of food away? Can this be true? (I realise that shops and restaurants probably do.) We have council food waste bins and most of our neighbours put them out to be collected, but we throw practically nothing away. It's partly because I'm vegetarian and so are Daughter 1 and family so we don't buy whole chickens and things which would leave carcasses, just portions of meat for the Carnivorous One. And everything else left over - well, we eat it the next day or freeze it for later or it goes into soup or gets composted for the garden. You can put almost everything into soup: broccoli stalks and cauliflower leaves (most of them) and leftover salad or vegetables. Who are these rumoured throwers-away?

Anyway. The Edinburgh family is about to arrive on buses, hooray hooray (we still can't get the car out of the driveway) so that'll destroy a bit of our peace - in a good way.

Very silly mother

Sunday was British Mother's Day. Daughter 2 visited the previous weekend and kindly brought flowers and chocolates. This weekend she was on holiday in Berlin, but being the sort of person she is, she also sent another little present. It was in a small, flat box. I didn't realise that it contained six little biscuits, and since I opened it upright, they fell out. I quickly replaced them in the box and we puzzled slightly at the message.

"You love you?" Seemed unlikely. I decided that it signified two horseshoes and a heart - "Good luck. I love you". (Was I in need of luck?) We didn't have much time to think about it because we were going out, and then the Edinburgh family came to lunch so again, we didn't give it much thought as we wrangled the grandchildren.

It wasn't till considerably later that Daughter 1, who is a more intelligent person than her mother, tried turning some of the biscuits over. Which achieved this result:

The plain white blobs of icing were on the back, simply to make the biscuits stick to the backing paper (which only two of them had).


How silly am I?


I suppose it could have been worse, ie

but then even I might have thought a bit harder about the situation.

By the way, Daughter 2: