ADITL for my own amusement
It’s been a year in lockdown and I think it’s time to do a DITL with photos, just because… well, I hope life won’t always be like this. I was planning to do this for 12 March, but I was feeling really ill then. I’m better enough to find it a cheering distraction now. And this Monday is pretty typical.
Alarm goes at 7.15, which is a smidge early, because Monday is a yoga day. The class starts at 7.30, but I’m literally putting on some leggings and going into my living room, then opening a Zoom link, so this is plenty of time. Aside from coping with my increasingly lockdown hair. Need more hairpins.
Monday morning class is gently dynamic, all about opening up, and very needed after quite a frivolous and sedentary weekend. I feel much better for it, the sun is shining and my living room is cheerful with silly spring decorations.
I have a quick breakfast: tea, toast with fancy butter.
I divest my desk of its weekend look:
And before 9am I’m at work. Not for that long, but enough to get through weekend emails, and draft an announcement for later. Radio 3 Breakfast for company (I rewind it)
By 10, I am on the long delivery round to my parents as I’m still shopping for them despite their having had the vaccine. They are increasingly frail, and isolated. It feels helpful to get over there regularly. I’m not sure what happens when we go back to offices; I will have some flexibility, but far from daily. Sigh. It is hard to plan.
But it’s a nice day to be out. And I can take them some cake.
My podcast companions today are You’re Dead To Me, which is always a cheerful history podcast. The Tang dynasty today, and very intriguing. I boggle a bit at our council’s pollarding policy - these two trees are round the corner from each other
I have to go to the chemist as well as a supermarket - illustrative social distancing gubbins for you. I love living in a caring dystopia.
But the chocolate shop/café is very cheering, even if you can’t sit inside.
But one reason I’m doing this in the midmorning is that the shops are so empty at that time. So I’m back well within two hours, which is my limit for this, usually.
I can post the announcement, as our website has updated, and finish off a bunch of tasks that go with it. My job has a definite rhythm to it, and this is the very end of a phase. Next phase starts the day after Easter weekend, so things are pleasantly low-key this week. (Or so I think.)
Lunch is ridiculous, because Saturday was a proper year in lockdown and we had a distanced party, at which I catered my childhood parties - and they always had leftovers for days, all the more so when there’s only one of you. Cheese n pineapple, and cocktail sausages, plus a smidge of that cake myself. I have mainly eaten really well in lockdown, so this is a silly treat, and I commend it to you if you’ve been cooking from scratch with loads of veggies for months on end.
I do my lunchtime things: covid admin (the Zoe app which tracks all symptoms/tests/jabs), word games with the Times, Welsh language with Duolingo.
I miss when this wasn’t the most important part of a newspaper. And I also miss two weeks back, when the test results were still going down. This is okay, but it’s not really plummeting; there’s still a lot of covid about.
And then I go back to work of course. Meetings (one that’s tricky enough, I put on a necklace to give myself slightly more authority), emails, trying to sort out the Welsh version of our application system which has gone so wrong when we migrated but I can’t just delete and try again because it has faked up tables in whose formatting will KILL me if I have to redo it.
About 4pm, just when I’m cross-eyed with Welsh and close to giving up for the day, the new health protection regs are published. We still don’t know whether archives are in Step 2 (like libraries) or Step 3 (like museums), and we’ve been told to wait for the regs before we can put out sector guidance. And… guess what? We still don’t know. I’d like to pretend we leap into action, and I’m sure someone does, but I just sigh heavily, again. At some point this week we’ll have to amend the guidance but we still can’t at this stage. I log out before 5 because why not?
I have in any case got a good reason to stop because I’ve got a bit of a new ritual, which is shutting down all screens and reading for half an hour plus after work, with an actual book. It doesn’t happen on busy days, but even a couple of days per week has helped to get me reading more than when I leave it till late at night, and it feels like a good break. This is a new book, and I’m enjoying it. Hoping it doesn’t turn out too Secret History, but so long as it dodges that, all good.
I catch the last round or two of Pointless after this and then House of Games, mostly on in the background as I am doing one of my fave occasional jobs: hooshing through my cookbooks looking out promising recipes for the next few months. I like to do this to have a list of recipes I might fancy when I’m planning my week menus (which are still alternately vegan/veggie/white meat/anything). I love a cookbook browse, and this is an organised way of doing it, looking for recipes for April-May, lighter ones with not too much oven, but not completely given over to salads and top produce yet. That will come…
Then it’s dinner, which is super quick as it’s leftovers from yesterday. Some rather collapsed polenta balls, with roast tomatoes and yoghurt. It’s good. And it takes 15 mins to warm up, which is perfect time to do the bins (non-recyclables, carboard and food tonight).
I eat vaguely watching Poirot, and write up part of this too. Then watch Only Connect a bit more pointedly. Then drift off to University Challenge and basically go to bed. I have a KJ Charles to finish, and I read a bit more of the Truants. Then I put on Stephen Fry reading PG Wodehouse, and I roll off to sleep pretty quickly, sometime after 11.
Alarm goes at 7.15, which is a smidge early, because Monday is a yoga day. The class starts at 7.30, but I’m literally putting on some leggings and going into my living room, then opening a Zoom link, so this is plenty of time. Aside from coping with my increasingly lockdown hair. Need more hairpins.
Monday morning class is gently dynamic, all about opening up, and very needed after quite a frivolous and sedentary weekend. I feel much better for it, the sun is shining and my living room is cheerful with silly spring decorations.
I have a quick breakfast: tea, toast with fancy butter.
I divest my desk of its weekend look:
And before 9am I’m at work. Not for that long, but enough to get through weekend emails, and draft an announcement for later. Radio 3 Breakfast for company (I rewind it)
By 10, I am on the long delivery round to my parents as I’m still shopping for them despite their having had the vaccine. They are increasingly frail, and isolated. It feels helpful to get over there regularly. I’m not sure what happens when we go back to offices; I will have some flexibility, but far from daily. Sigh. It is hard to plan.
But it’s a nice day to be out. And I can take them some cake.
My podcast companions today are You’re Dead To Me, which is always a cheerful history podcast. The Tang dynasty today, and very intriguing. I boggle a bit at our council’s pollarding policy - these two trees are round the corner from each other
I have to go to the chemist as well as a supermarket - illustrative social distancing gubbins for you. I love living in a caring dystopia.
But the chocolate shop/café is very cheering, even if you can’t sit inside.
But one reason I’m doing this in the midmorning is that the shops are so empty at that time. So I’m back well within two hours, which is my limit for this, usually.
I can post the announcement, as our website has updated, and finish off a bunch of tasks that go with it. My job has a definite rhythm to it, and this is the very end of a phase. Next phase starts the day after Easter weekend, so things are pleasantly low-key this week. (Or so I think.)
Lunch is ridiculous, because Saturday was a proper year in lockdown and we had a distanced party, at which I catered my childhood parties - and they always had leftovers for days, all the more so when there’s only one of you. Cheese n pineapple, and cocktail sausages, plus a smidge of that cake myself. I have mainly eaten really well in lockdown, so this is a silly treat, and I commend it to you if you’ve been cooking from scratch with loads of veggies for months on end.
I do my lunchtime things: covid admin (the Zoe app which tracks all symptoms/tests/jabs), word games with the Times, Welsh language with Duolingo.
I miss when this wasn’t the most important part of a newspaper. And I also miss two weeks back, when the test results were still going down. This is okay, but it’s not really plummeting; there’s still a lot of covid about.
And then I go back to work of course. Meetings (one that’s tricky enough, I put on a necklace to give myself slightly more authority), emails, trying to sort out the Welsh version of our application system which has gone so wrong when we migrated but I can’t just delete and try again because it has faked up tables in whose formatting will KILL me if I have to redo it.
About 4pm, just when I’m cross-eyed with Welsh and close to giving up for the day, the new health protection regs are published. We still don’t know whether archives are in Step 2 (like libraries) or Step 3 (like museums), and we’ve been told to wait for the regs before we can put out sector guidance. And… guess what? We still don’t know. I’d like to pretend we leap into action, and I’m sure someone does, but I just sigh heavily, again. At some point this week we’ll have to amend the guidance but we still can’t at this stage. I log out before 5 because why not?
I have in any case got a good reason to stop because I’ve got a bit of a new ritual, which is shutting down all screens and reading for half an hour plus after work, with an actual book. It doesn’t happen on busy days, but even a couple of days per week has helped to get me reading more than when I leave it till late at night, and it feels like a good break. This is a new book, and I’m enjoying it. Hoping it doesn’t turn out too Secret History, but so long as it dodges that, all good.
I catch the last round or two of Pointless after this and then House of Games, mostly on in the background as I am doing one of my fave occasional jobs: hooshing through my cookbooks looking out promising recipes for the next few months. I like to do this to have a list of recipes I might fancy when I’m planning my week menus (which are still alternately vegan/veggie/white meat/anything). I love a cookbook browse, and this is an organised way of doing it, looking for recipes for April-May, lighter ones with not too much oven, but not completely given over to salads and top produce yet. That will come…
Then it’s dinner, which is super quick as it’s leftovers from yesterday. Some rather collapsed polenta balls, with roast tomatoes and yoghurt. It’s good. And it takes 15 mins to warm up, which is perfect time to do the bins (non-recyclables, carboard and food tonight).
I eat vaguely watching Poirot, and write up part of this too. Then watch Only Connect a bit more pointedly. Then drift off to University Challenge and basically go to bed. I have a KJ Charles to finish, and I read a bit more of the Truants. Then I put on Stephen Fry reading PG Wodehouse, and I roll off to sleep pretty quickly, sometime after 11.