The UK is now in national lockdown until…well, that is the question! Possibly mid February, maybe until the end of March. It all depends on numbers of cases, but with hospitals at bursting point, normal life will not be returning for some time.
What does a travel blogger do? I cannot go anywhere except to exercise once a day, and only to local places, places I have blogged about and taken many photos of in the last nine months. Not only that, but it’s winter, and very, very cold right now. Today it might get to 1 degree. Not my kind of weather!
So, today I thought I’d share with you some photos of what is keeping me sane, which is still taking photos, and when I get desperate I bake! Of course, I can do what I did earlier in the year during the first major lockdown, and dig out something from the archive to share with you. I guess it will be a mixture of things, so bear with me.
I stupidly decided to start a new challenge to take one photo a day for a year which I am sharing on Twitter and with my Facebook friends. What was I thinking! It’s going to be quite a ride.
Wherever you are in the world, stay safe and think positive thoughts.
This week there has been a birthday celebration. One of sons shares his birthday with Sir David Attenborough, and it happened to fall on the day of VE Day celebrations this year – that odd Friday Bank Holiday that put me in a tiss about where in the week I was!
I decided to do something different. Normally, we would go out for a meal as a celebration perhaps, but with lockdown that was off the agenda. Instead I arranged a garden games party. I baked a lemon cake and followed a recipe for homemade lemonade and made notes. I even put together an invite with a list of refreshments and games to email to the rest of the family stuck inside this house.
The weather was perfect and the afternoon was great fun. It’s amazing what you can devise with a clutch of sponge balls, flowerpots, buckets, sticks and chalk. It got everyone together, and despite smirks and no responses when I first mentioned it, they all pitched in, found their inner child and competitiveness and went with it.
The garden is bursting into life as new plants flower, and we had our delivery of plants ordered online from a company keen not to lose their stock while in lockdown. We purchased a random box of around nine plants and a bag of compost.
A whole lot of weeding going on
My peas have flowers, but my other veg is sadly silent, in that they haven’t even surfaced. I think they have perished. I am not a natural gardener, I think I may have said before, but I’ve worked on the garden more this year than any other year. This week I cleared another bed of plants that are taking over the whole space. My youngest son began weeding the lawn of plants that have rooted themselves into it. The task is endless and I swear there will be no grass left if everything that shouldn’t be there is removed. However, my son has become addicted to weeding, so let’s not say too much! He says it is therapeutic and who am I to argue? I find cleaning out the filter of the hoover therapeutic (when I’m in the mood), so each to their own, I say.
From the archive I have something a little different. In 2016 my son told me about a cars and bike meet within walking distance of us. I’m not sure if this is a regular thing, but we went over for a look. Although I’ve never been on a motorbike I do have a bit of a thing for them, and maybe one day I’ll get to travel on the back of one (though as I get older I get more nervous about it). Anyway here is a selection of cars and bikes I took photos of that day. If it’s not your thing there will be something different next week. Take care.
My London+ 