Making it Complicated

We were pretty comfortable. I’d stocked up the store cupboard before panic buying struck the nation.  We’d gone out and bought supplies for DIY and craft projects.  We’d sorted out home-working via Zoom easily.

And then we made a mistake.

As new Lockdown guidance made it possible, the kitchen design company got in touch.  We had arranged with them to have our kitchen done at the start of April.  However, everything had been postponed.  

But now we could go ahead (with careful social distancing precautions, of course).

What better time to renew the kitchen?  We can’t have friends round for dinner and we’re not going anywhere.

At least, I thought it was a good time.

But today our formerly pleasant kitchen is a hollowed-out waste.

I am cooking on a camping stove on the patio.

Worst of all, the fridge is now in the room where Nigel works.  Every time I creep in for a surreptitious snack, he flicks his laptop open and says, “I’ll just add it to the spreadsheet!”

And I’m not sure he’s joking.

Woe is me.

The Lost Meadow

We’d been walking across the local golf course in order to access some of our favourite stretches of countryside.  

We had thought we were being very daring and trespassing until we discovered the golf club had kindly opened up pedestrian access during Lockdown.

For several weeks we took only certain routes which joined up with the public footpaths we were aiming for.

Then last weekend, for no particular reason, we abandoned our plans and swerved off down a path we had never followed before.  

We discovered a massive tract of verdant golf course.  We had not even known it was there.  The blue sky above emerald grass, close-mown over rounded hummocks, was almost too good to be true.  It reminded me of Tellytubby Land.

Here and there, parents with tiny children were having a gentle toddle, or rolling balls.  Walking beside the ‘Rough’, we caught sight of a great-spotted woodpecker, a tom-tit’s nest, the first comma butterfly of the year.  It was idyllic. 

I’m glad now that we ventured out there because the following day, golf courses were declared open once more and our trespasses have come to an end.

I shall always think with longing of this Lost Meadow.

But not enough to consider taking up golf!

Make your own milk!

I’m a great one for avoiding faff. 

But logic made me change my mind this week.

After approximately six weeks of trudging to the Co-op mainly in order to score some milk, I finally remembered that some of my acquaintances had mentioned making their own milk.

Before you recoil in horror, I mean oat milk.

Oat milk is way greener than dairy milk in terms of carbon footprint.  Even greener than soya milk. 

I had mentally filed it under ‘faff’, but right now, it looks like less faff than social distancing at the Co-op.

This, coupled with the fact that we now have about 2 kilos of porridge oats which Nigel has rejected as being ‘Not the kind I like’, means that the time has come to make oat milk.

The first recipe I looked at described the problem of milk turning out slimy.  This was a bit off-putting, especially as my first batch really was slimy and sank like a stone in my tea.  

However, I tried again with a different recipe and this time it still sank like a stone, but at least it wasn’t slimy.

Nigel’s not keen, but I’m going to keep going.  I like a challenge.  And if I succeed, even after Lockdown ends (someday), it means we’ll have fewer of those hard-to-recycle tetrapaks.

Has Lockdown caused a Time Warp?

It’s been two weeks since I blogged.

When was the last time I allowed so much time to elapse?

I guess it is an effect of Lockdown.

A number of friends have said that they are losing track of time.  Nigel and I are both still working and have scheduled meetings so that helps to keep a grip but even so…

The main clock for me has been the dandelion clock. 

At the start of Lockdown my phone filled up with pictures of each spring flower as it blossomed – celandines, violets, purple ground ivy, red dead nettle, bluebells.

Blackthorns and cherries blossomed luxuriantly.

However, the clock has run on, and there are now some different photos, of flowers run to seed.

Like the dandelion clock.

It has made me feel a little melancholy that this perfect spring of gin-clear skies and abundant blossom is past its peak.

Yet without the seeds, there would be no new flowers.

Just so, the Lockdown period of simple, black-and-white rules, which has in some way been comforting, is likely at the end of next week to give way to a world where there are more grey zones and one must use judgement.

But without that, how can life move on?