UKC

What did anyone else do today to while away the socially distant time?

This evening I finally revisited a rabbit I started to whittle about a year ago. Nearly finished now and looking much better than expected.

I hung up loads of posters which have been languishing waiting for me to pull my finger out and sort out frames for the good ones. I got lazy and just shoddily Blu Tacked them so now my temporary home office looks like an on-the-cheap hipster bedsit ! Mostly repro movie posters, but Italian ones, some from specific film festivals that I didn't attend  

I’ve contacted the RSPCA 😊

I worked from home as I've done for 4 years. Then helped my wife with some DIY.  

I went to work as usual but with the added bonus of running a gauntlet of abuse from people who think that medicines just teleport from factory to pharmacy. I explained that I am a "key worker" to the first few and the rest got a grumpy "sod off". 

I planted spinach, Bussels Sprouts, onions and squashes.

I split just over a cord of Ash.

I ache quite a bit now, but in a good way.

I’m imagining a classier version of my old uni room - festival posters and blue tac everywhere. 

That does remind me that I have a box of photos that need framing and hanging. Another job for the isolation list. 

It didn’t struggle nearly as much as I expected. 

Ergh, I can imagine it’s a weird atmosphere out there today. 

Where these people out and about themselves? Or just hollering from windows? 

Nice. I did find myself wishing we had a veg patch earlier. Rented house makes a proper one a no no, but some big buckets or similar might be an investment once shops are open again. 

I had a nice early morning run... and then decided that the niggly foot pain is not as healed as I thought so back to the bike for the rest of the week.

Then I sorted some paperwork for a job I am hopefully starting soon, picked up a translation job, planted some veg in the raised beds and then kept going with translation. I will spend the rest of the evening hopefully getting it finished.

Still not progressed much through my shutdown list!!

A whole lot of laundry, made a banana bread and tried and failed to call the universal credit phone number.  Emailed a couple of kids about their study from home and drank lots of tea.  

I had idealistic dreams of getting through all sorts of jobs. After a week of self-isolation today I finally started writing the list. Spent more time scrolling through the news than working through any of those jobs - something that needs to stop pretty sharpish as it's doing me no good at all.

Mmmm, we've got a load of over-ripe bananas ready for banana bread later in the week. The weekend was spent perfecting gluten-free cinnamon buns. Batch 1 was dire, but I think we've got it now. 

Sorry to hear about UC phone failures. I did wonder what hope they had of managing a sudden increase in need. Hope you manage to get through to them.

Hi, would you mind elaborating on this, I am really interested in the details. Fine if you are not comfortable with it. It relates to my question elsewhere about how one "proves" that one is a key or essential worker, although that question was about when you get checked by police. Were you being hassled by the public, whilst on your way into your premises? I am just trying to build an accurate picture, because what I am picturing now is probably not accurate (I am remembering going past Kensington Gardens during the week after Princess Diana's death, and seeing news cameramen being abused and called "murderer" by various elements of the hordes who'd descended to sign the book and probably hopefully get on telly!)

It was people shouting from their front gardens and windows. I have a three mile walk through three villages and it is pretty much ribbon development all the way so I was walking past a lot of bored people. There has been much hatred stirred up on Facebook after the hordes descended on a nearby park at the weekend so everywhere feels tense right now. I have no idea how to prove anything and to be frank, if everyone who wanted to know stopped me for ID it would take all morning to get there.

I'm lucky that I'm not in urgent need. I'm sure I will get through eventually.

I'm not especially surprised to be honest.  

That sounds absolutely hideous, sorry hear it. Hopefully they tire of their pitchforks pretty quick. 

I've heard (third hand) that cars have been stopped.  Obviously teachers and nhs workers usually have an ID badge anyway.  I'm not sure about others.  

I seem to recall it was a mess of a system to start with, I dread to think at the moment

I'm our case we have a email saying that in the next 24 hours we will have a letter signed by the Head of Electrical and mechanical maintenance from the local water utility stating that we provide critical services to them and should be treated as key workers. 

A letter mailed to your home or something on email that you have to print, on assumption that you have a working printer at home? 

Thanks for the image/description. Sounds awful and somewhat bizarre (not bizarre in a “I disbelieve you” sense). You’re walking past their homes and you get abuse? Do they know you are going to a place of work as opposed to just out for a walk? Do they assume you are on your way to a virus spreading gathering in the park?! 

Today I registered to give blood.

Steve

I went for a run for the first time in years and then we had a family pub quiz on Zoom where each household came up with a round. Here's ours if anyone wants a go:
 

I went to the supermarket and I was unable to buy:

1. A hot spun coward
2. A cyanotic wedge
3. Long for forbidden fruit
4. Sod has COVID 19
5. Prince Harry goes mad
6. Hawaiian bands
7. Heard Reed misjudging a corner
8. Rover medicates
9. Ovine karate
10. Yellow snow

3. Pineapple

Love that, such a good idea! Thanks for sharing that one. 

Wine?

Lou rolls?

Peas?

Correct

Nope

Yes! Noone got this and I really liked it

Bit more to it...

Thought that was a really good clue. Nicely done.

Yellow snow - frozen pea?

Correct

Ovine karate - lamb chops!

Correct!

Yellow snow. Cornflakes?

Hawaiian bands - Hula Hoops?

Prince Harry goes mad - Ginger Nuts?

Correct!

Correct!

a hot spun coward = Rotisserie chicken

Rover medicates -  Dog treats

Cyanotic Wedge - Blue Cheese?

Correct

Correct!

Correct!

That's all except:

edit: which I admit has a poor pun at its heart

Sod has COVID 19 - Pasta of some sort?

I'm not surprised you ache. That's a hell of a lot of wood. 128 cubic feet!  I doff my hat. 

It was a full ash tree plus the best bits of an oak.

My store is 5m^3 and I have about a third over.

I do have a hydraulic splitter but the oak had quite interlocked grain and the big ash rings needed sledge & wedges.

Ive read some of WH Murray's Mountaineering in Scotland sat in the sun. Tried not to get cross with the people at the back of my house for seriously not complying with social distancing. Just gave myself a number 1 all over....virtually bald!!

When the going gets tough the tough get baking. So I started yesterday what was going to be a carrot cake but having no carrots I substituted grated butternut squash. The recipe is sweetened with black treacle, golden syrup and muscavado sugar and spiced with a good splash of ground mace, some chopped root ginger and a handful of soaked sultanas. It's quite nice.

After that I spent the rest of the time in the veg plot making a cage round my new row of raspberries. Then sowed lettuce, leeks and parsley. If  this warm weather keeps up there'll soon be asparagus. Yum.

Tried to keep the boys from killing each other by 1 hr (yeah right) of schoolwork at 8 am, 1/2 hr of Joe Wicks PE, 1/2 hr permitted fighting, 1 hr of Zoom remote maths on the laptop with their off-work teacher cousin (thanks R.!), 1 hr walk on the golf course (imagine, two months ago, thinking I'd be telling my youngest off for touching the grass because it might have virus particles on it -- is this way too paranoid? -- and squirting gel on his hands multiple times, it happened a lot, he's 6), cooked lunch, then lost them in their Kindles while I did some work and read Froome's The Climb (surprisingly good).

Sounds delicious!

Everyone round here seems to me taking it quite sensibly. Our neighbour’s son came round to visit her on his lunch break today. She’s set up chairs on either side of the garden so they can have lunch together without being in close contact and without him having to come into the house. It was quite sweet. 

I’ve started re-reading Sapiens today, after getting part way through last year. Got very sunburned. Interspersed with the odd bit of work but our home working options are pretty limited since all work laptops are server based and only work if connected to an organisational network. This was meant to be my annual leave anyway though, so I don’t feel too bad about that!

I seriously don’t envy anyone trying to figure out home schooling all of a sudden. Must be a real challenge.

I think it’s really hard to judge what’s too paranoid at the moment. 

Attempted to online shop.  No delivery slots available.  

Attempted to call universal credit, no answer after 1 hour and 10 minutes (got the washing up done while on hold). 

More laundry.  

Might go for a walk in a bit.  Looking out of the window far fewer people than yesterday.  

Found out I can watch some French TV programs on Netflix in an attempt to improve my French.  

Generally quite a lazy day. 

yes.

today i returned home from Glen Ey after a great munro bagging trip (9 in 3 days. a game keeper out lamping foxes turned up last night and told me about the lockdown..

So someone with the virus spits on the ground, coughs on the grass, my boy touches the grass, picks his nose and all the rest, bang. Not a realistic scenario then? Cumbria's quite a hotspot, for some reason.

I deliberately lounged around in bed till 9:30am and started my day’s work at 10am. I was pretty much done by 11:15am and some of that time was spent sticking posters up. Some more slow motion faff, big cups of tea, a lie down, a bike ride, very late lunch, a bit more work, and now lounging around again. Piano practice a bit later then some reading, dinner and a movie 

Afraid not. I'm thinking I overcooked this one... or maybe overroasted it.

Not lemongrass either then? 

i take your point - a minuscule risk if they were touching grass around the tee-off  or putting green (i was thinking a random blade of grass on the golf course)

Whoops, totally missed that, sorry! Nope, not lemongrass.

My guitar has experienced quite the resurrection over the last few days. I’m pretty terrible, but then I always was so I can’t blame lack of practice. 

We gave up on the dream of shopping deliveries. My partner went to Tesco earlier as it’s her first day out of self-isolation. Sounds like it was pretty quiet but a weird atmosphere with everyone trying to keep their distance. 

I really want someone to get this! I’m totally stumped. 

Went to work at 5am.

Had a busy day ( some of the f*ckwittery that goes on out there is jaw dropping )

By the time I’d cut the grass and cleaned out the gutters when I got home I was too knackered to use my allocated exercise ration ( maybe I could bank it and do double tomorrow? )

One of my guitars is about to take a hammering !

Lashed up a pull up bar in the garden using crap from the shed. I had wanted to fix up a regular pull up bar but didn't have the right materials so it ended up as a low one for Australian pull ups. 

And loads of weeding and went for a walk with my wife. We seem to be out of booze apart from a 2001 bottle of stones ginger wine, so we had a glass of that and pretended it was medicinal. 

Looked at work computer. Looked away again. More coffee. Cleaned bike chainset after a muddy excursion yesterday. Did the daily CV numbers modelling update.

The most interesting part of the day was the weekly shop. Spent an hour trying to figure out what I needed (as normally a daily shop is a good excuse to get out of the house) and an appropriate hygiene plan, and then gave up and just went for it mid-afternoon.

Sainsburys was pretty empty, most things available except eggs pasta and tinned tomatoes - presumably not arrived yet. Limit of 2-3 on everything so had to pop to Waitrose to top up on one or two items so I had enough for the week. Completely different: black-garbed bouncer on the door, marked 2 metre queueing area, trolleys only, wiped down before use. Much the same range of goods however.

One lad sneezed at the other end of the aisle and was immediately shrink-wrapped before incineration.