Feest Isolation Days

Feest Isolation Days – 28 September

The weather has been totally glorious in England!  Cold and a bit windy but sitting in the sun with a warm layer or two on is golden.  The trees are turning and Autumn has officially arrived. Twice. It arrived on the 1^st of September if you are a meteorologist, and if you’re an astronomer, it arrived on the 22^nd  September.

Both have valid claims to be marked as the first day of the new season. Meteorologically, the seasons are based on the Gregorian Calendar which makes it easier for the forecasters to observe and compare seasons and monthly statistics. 

The first day of Autumn to these folks is always the same each year…the first of September.  It’s simple if you follow the calendar.  Spring is March April and May, Summer – June July August, Autumn – September October and November and Winter – December January and February. 

However, for the astronomical calculations, the seasons are defined in a different way.  The first date of the new season is defined by the Earth’s axis and orbit around the sun.  This Autumn date is determined by the 23.5 degrees of tilt of the Earth’s rotational axis in relation to its orbit around the sun. Both the equinoxes and solstices are related to the Earth’s orbit around the Sun. 

So officially, both of these dates are accurate.  Now we know! This year winter arrives on the 21^st of December.

For years I have had this argument with my husband about when the start of the season was. I never looked it up before.  After all these years, it’s good to know we are both right.

We have a magnet in our kitchen on our bread maker (the fridge doesn’t have a metal door) that says…”You can agree with me or you can be wrong”  Not that there has ever been a problem with sticking to what we each thought and arguing it out in this household.  It’s no fun when we can’t get to an agreement, and hours have been spent in setting out one case or another over the years.  It is a total delight when we can both be right!   (but I never argue, I just explain why I am right – ed)

Sometimes, being right is important.  Other times it doesn’t matter.  Pick your battles.  Boris and his MPs are heading for a show down.  I like Kier’s style.  Now there is a man who knows how to do battle!  Let’s see what happens over the next while.  Boris is in for a bruising it would seem.

Time to head out into the glorious golden day and forget about everything for a moment or two and take in the fresh air and the sunshine. 

Sanitiser, check.  Masks, check.  Ah the new normal!

See you soon.  Enjoy!

With love

Kathy x

Feest Isolation Days – 25 September

People move on and sometimes they leave you with a vacancy you could do without.  Our lovely cleaner Marinella became overstretched and sadly had to stop coming. Shame as she was a bubble and a delight.  I found an agency that looks great and I love their attention to detail and their sense of humour.  The man who runs the firm interviews all of the cleaners and goes to their homes for an hour or so for a chat and a peek.  Clever. He tells me he has over fifty applications for each cleaner he takes on.  Life is incredibly tough whatever you do these days it would seem!   He also visits the homes of the people his staff will be cleaning for.  The business owner is nothing if not thorough!  We will soon see how our new cleaner gets on.  In the meantime, this is a poem on the literature he left for me.

Dust If You Must by Rose Milligan

Dust if you must, but wouldn’t it be better
To paint a picture, or write a letter,
Bake a cake, or plant a seed;
Ponder the difference between want and need?

Dust if you must, but there’s not much time,
With rivers to swim, and mountains to climb;
Music to hear, and books to read;
Friends to cherish, and life to lead.

Dust if you must, but the world’s out there
With the sun in your eyes, and the wind in your hair;
A flutter of snow, a shower of rain,
This day will not come around again.

Dust if you must, but bear in mind,
Old age will come and it’s not kind.
And when you go (and go you must)
You, yourself, will make more dust.

Dust in Old English meant “mortal life”.  The “elementary substance of the human body, that to which living matter decays” is the meaning the dictionary gives us.

Then there are dust covers to protect furniture, dust jackets to protect books,

It’s the Americans who first used bite the dust in the 1930s as slang for to kill or die.  Thanks Americans…

But are we really made of stardust? Apparently so!  Scientists using sophisticated wave length technology have surveyed 150,000 stars and discovered they are composed of CHNOPS (I know me neither!) which are the basic building blocks of humans…and stars! Carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus and sulphur. The difference is proportion but they, and we, all contain the same basics. If you want to read more about this you can do that here…be careful though there is a seemingly never ending series of more information that, should you be so inclined, will take you ages.  And why not? Have a peek at least. It’s all about you….

https://www.space.com/35276-humans-made-of-stardust-galaxy-life-elements.html

So dust isn’t so bad after all!

Then of course when discussing dust and especially stardust, Ziggy comes to mind.  I leave you with David. There’s plenty more of Mr. Bowie to delight you as well if you have the time.  And of course you do!  You are made of stardust, and you’re in this world now.  Pretty amazing! 

Stay safe – Enjoy!

With love

Kathy x

Feest Isolation Days – 24 September

This morning the skies are grey again and threatening to spit rain on us.  Ollie our tree pruning man came round and sorted out a few trees that needed attention.  He contacted us one day years ago by simply putting a card through the door.  That has led to a lot of work for our chap!  Our neighbours and two friends now use his expertise as well.  Nice!

While I was leaning out the window and asking Ollie to make sure he saves our willow tree (it is leaning over wayyyyy too far to make it through winter storms without some help), our window cleaner parked up to clean the neighbour’s windows.  Another good chap! We found him through searching the web and reading all the excellent reviews.  They were right!  Banter with the boys out the window is fun!  And it wasn’t even nine o’clock.  My windows get done next week I’m told.  Fine.  More banter!  These are the sort of exchanges we all need and miss when they never happen.

Before Ollie

I heard a thoroughly good programme on Radio 4 last week all about Virago Press.  In a series called “Reunion” Kirsty Wark speaks to people who have accomplished something or other together and gets them united once more to talk about the event.  This week was all about the Women’s Press Virago.  It is a great listen.  The history that comes through besides the information about the publishing house itself is fascinating. You can listen here!

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m000ml9z

They reminded me about the Greenham Common protests.  These well organised protests were aimed at stopping the storage of nuclear missiles at the RAF Greenham Common base. In April 1983 I joined about 70,000 female protesters for a day as we formed a human chain around the chain link fence at Greenham.

My nearly one year old son was in his pushchair as were so many other children with their mothers.  We were largely all women and we had something to say to the soldiers on the other side of the chain link fence.  I placed my fingers through the chain link and a soldier pointed his gun at them and motioned me to move them.  I smiled at him and said I didn’t think my fingers were going to do any harm.  I think those nuclear weapons might though.  We are mostly mothers I remember saying, and we want our kids to have a future.  I said something else to him that made him smile, I don’t remember what, but I do know that when he smiled and our eyes connected, for a minute or two he became a human being. And moved along. My hands remained where they were.  The missiles by the way, were removed in 1991. It’s just that some things take longer to get rid of then others…

There were brave women who lived at Greenham and were treated shabbily by not just the police, but by many locals as well. It was amazing to have participated.  “All we are saying, is give peace a chance”.  I’ve been singing that same tune for years.  Do listen to the women of Virago on Kirsty’s programme, they will undoubtedly spark a few memories for you as well. 

Memories are an interesting place to be at the moment, but staying with now isn’t bad either.

Look at what Ollie has done to our Willow!  Impressive.

Banter with the boys, even at Greenham with soldiers, reminds me that somethings never change! 

Stay safe and stay positive! 

With love

Kathy x

Feest Isolation Days – 23 September

Monday, the Chief Scientific Officer Patrick Vallance and the Chief Medical Officer Chris Whitty, held a joint news conference. It was the first time they did this without any politician present.  They clearly set out the current Covid issues.  The virus is on the move. They clearly said we need ed decisive and immediate action  People could be left in no doubt when they finished their briefing that strict measures need to be put into place to stop the spread of Covid.

Yesterday, we heard the government’s new plans.  Clever of them to get the Scientists to tell us all what we didn’t want to hear first.  The Scientists said that we need to prepare to spend the next six months with the virus around us. Boris has taken that one on board. No more “we will be back to normal and jolly by Christmas” from the PM. The reality is quite different.

The politicians are no longer precisely following the science, however, but bowing to the pressure that everyone feels after restrictions have gone on for so long.  There is a fine line to walk here, but a real leader would no doubt have found a better way through this. Boris is nibbling about the edges.  Pubs and restaurants must be closed by ten pm.  There will be no standing at the bar, only table service will be allowed.  People who can work from home, now must do so.  Retail workers as well as customers must now wear masks. The rule of six…no more than six people inside or outside is still in place.  Except in Scotland where there is no mingling at all in households.  No visiting anyone in another household. That seems more like what is needed. But not in England, at least not yet.

For the first time, Boris said some people were not following the rules. He was clear that there would be repercussions from now on if they didn’t. The police will have the power to enforce the rules and heavy fines will be imposed on people and businesses that do not follow them. The PM also said if the police needed support to enforce rules, the army could be called in to do this. A change of language certainly, and the threat hanging over everyone that things will get tougher if people don’t adhere to the rules, or the virus continues to thrive.

On a more positive note, the Scientists did think that by next Spring, there is real hope that there will be a vaccine.  That and only that will open up the world again to the likes of us.

Nevertheless, Monday was a splendid day.  A perfect Autumn day when the light is golden, the sun warm, not hot, the breeze a mere whisp of gentle air.  My bike ride across the Downs was wonderful.  People in their cars smiled and were friendly and helpful to me, a mere cyclist trying to cross a road or turn into a junction.  Hard to believe that there is so much virus around on a perfect day like that!

Yesterday became a gray day but a long walk in Leigh Woods with a friend certainly was cheering. We found an astonishing array of mushrooms!  I didn’t pick any as I have no idea which mushrooms are edible and which aren’t. But they were lovely to come across as we ambled through the forest.

Yesterday was fishing day for the editor.  His bag was packed and he was raring to go.  The bright sun first thing meant he packed his Tilly hat! 

It was the best fishing day he’s had on Blagdon Lake so far this year.  He brought eight trout home. The most ever in a day!  If you are anywhere near, do give a call and a trout is yours! 

Buckle up, stay safe and enjoy life in the new world we find ourselves in.  Another six months or so to go it would seem.

Dig deep, find those things you love to do and do them a bit more.  Stay safe.

 Remember when we thought the pandemic was only going to last a couple of weeks?”

With love

Kathy x

Feest Isolation Days – 22 September

Fog! The rolling white blanket swirling around our garden this morning is oddly a welcome and reassuring sight.  The first fog of the season!  It isn’t the freezing variety, but the sort that will lift by the time my second or maybe third cuppa is raised this morning.  And firsts are always cheery,

Choir!  Finally, after seven months our choir rehearsals are back – on Zoom!  Every Monday night from now through to December there are rehearsals with a schedule and a plan drawn up by the people who work on these things.  So exciting! A bit of normality and another first! 

Not our choir but nevertheless a lovely recording of the Benedictus from  Karl Jenkins The Armed Man…a lovely piece we sang last summer. What’s not to enjoy?

A new garage door!  There are so many firsts today.  On Friday our old garage door was taken away.  The brown broken down couldn’t be opened without much effort door is gone.  In its place is a shiny new white door that opens with the touch of a button.  My bike riding has now changed.  Instead of humping my bike in and out of the front hall and crushing the geraniums, the control mechanism can be on my key ring and with one simple touch the door will open as if by magic.  The garage is not a place for cars, but is actually a large garden shed.  It wasn’t built for modern cars and we couldn’t open the car door if we got the car inside it unless we place it prefectly, but bikes, that’s another story.  There is an old bike of mine in there that needs to go to a good home. I’m sure a bike fixer upper would be able to get the old mountain bike up and rideable for someone in need. I will look out for just that sort of bike person. 

A new coffee machine!  The old one decided to give up the ghost and stop making coffee at the touch of a button.  It chuntered on grinding away as though it needed to grind beans but then produced a sip of coffee. Or nothing at all. The new one is shiny and holds a lot more water.  It’s mostly the same as the other one but I like its shiny newness in the kitchen and don’t miss the groaning noise of the old one at all.

A new series to watch!  New to me anyway.  I have never seen The Jewel in the Crown.  There are 14 two-hour episodes and last night we watched the first. I was totally captivated. It was so authentic!  Unlike the Suitable Boy which was neither exciting or authentic.  We tried.  We watched three but haven’t finished the series.  The Jewel in the Crown episodes are two hours long so we can break them up and watch an hour a night.  That will make it last longer.  Mind you, I so enjoyed the first two hours it might become difficult to hit pause.  We shall see. 

18A new tube of Lucas PawPaw ointment!  If you’ve never used this amazing Australian ointment, I promise you it is worth a try.  It is magic for a variety of uses and the distinctive red tube it comes in is really clever. It means when you have a burn, or a cut or need some you can easily find it in the drawer that all those lotions and potions are thrown into.

All these firsts!  Celebrate the small things.  We sure are. Later today, apparently we will hear what the new rules are for all of us on going out and about.  Covid is so not new.  In fact it is getting very old.  Meantime, enjoy.  And if you’re in the neighbourhood and allowed to, call.  The coffee machine is waiting!

With love

Kathy x

Feest Isolation Days – 21 September

Ruth Bader Ginsberg was a woman to be reckoned with.  She was born in Brooklyn, New York to Jewish immigrant parents. At Harvard Law School she finished top of her class.  There were 9 women and 500 men studying law at the time.  Not one single job offer was forthcoming despite her obvious abilities. Yet, she persevered with her chosen profession. In 1972 she became the first tenured female professor at Columbia Law School.

President Jimmy Carter nominated her to the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia in 1980.   She was appointed to the Supreme Court by President Bill Clinton in 1993, becoming only the fourth female justice. 

According to Jewish tradition, a person who dies on Rosh Hashanah, which began the night she died, is a tzaddik, a person of great righteousness. Totally fitting for a woman who spent her life fighting for justice.  Rest in Peace Ruth.  We all have a lot to thank you for.

More than ever before, it is important that the Democrats win the November Presidential election which is six and a bit weeks away.  They would be able to serve up more Justices if they are in a position of power. This will no doubt be necessary.  Within hours of her death being announced, Mitch McConnell said he would be endorsing Trumps pick for the Supreme Court. 

There are times when the current situation we all find ourselves in is really rather tough to watch.  This is one of them.  Ugh. But Ruth left us with some excellent advice.

I liked her style. She’s my kind of woman.  Here are a few more quotes from RGB:

1. “Real change, enduring change, happens one step at a time.”

2. “So often in life, things that you regard as an impediment turn out to be great, good fortune.”

3. “Reacting in anger or annoyance will not advance one’s ability to persuade.”

4. “When a thoughtless or unkind word is spoken, best tune out.”

5. “You can’t have it all, all at once.”

6. “I’m a very strong believer in listening and learning from others.”

7. “In the course of a marriage, one accommodates the other”

8. “In every good marriage, it helps sometimes to be a little deaf.”

9. “A gender line…helps to keep women not on a pedestal, but in a cage.”

10. “If you want to be a true professional, do something outside yourself.”

11. “Reading is the key that opens doors to many good things in life. Reading shaped my dreams, and more reading helped me make my dreams come true.”

12. “Don’t be distracted by emotions like anger, envy, resentment. These just zap energy and waste time.”

13. “You can disagree without being disagreeable.”

14. “If you have a caring life partner, you help the other person when that person needs it. I had a life partner who thought my work was as important as his, and I think that made all the difference for me.”

15. “Women belong in all places where decisions are being made. It shouldn’t be that women are the exception.”

16. “I would like to be remembered as someone who used whatever talent she had to do her work to the very best of her ability.”

Here in Britain, Covid is on the march again.  We wait to hear what new plans there are in England to manage the latest outbreaks.  Today’s latest is that people who have been identified as having Covid or have been contacted by Test and Trace and should be at home in quarantine will be fined up to  £10,000 if they go out and about. How will that work?

Speaking of Test and Trace, it doesn’t seem to be doing the job very well. NHS Test and Trace is an outsourced service provided to the National Health Service in England. What’s NHS about it?  The woman who heads up Track and Trace, Dido Harding, now also heads up the replacement for the governments abandoned agency Public Health England.  She has no healthcare experience in any capacity at all. Her husband, John Penrose is a member of the advisory board of the think tank ‘1828’, which calls for the NHS to be replaced by an insurance system and for Public Health England to be scrapped. One down one to go!  Ugh!

In these Covid coming back days, it seems a good time to enjoy the flowers in the garden.  And to have dinner with friends.  Wish I could invite you all round!   

• 

• 

It’s also time for another round of cake baking as well. 

Pear upside down cake.  As the world does seem like it’s being turned upside down, it seemed the perfect cake for now.

Enjoy what you can and be safe.  The second wave is approaching…..

With love

Kathy x

Feest Isolation Days – 18 September

The weather has turned again.  Our glorious Indian Summer days have vanished.  Sweaters have been pulled on in order to have our cuppas outside with our friends as we socialise in the garden.  Where did the Indian Summer days go?  And where did they come from?  Not meteorologically, but etymologically.  It would seem that these bright summer like days that occur between September and November (maybe we’ll have another spell!) are called Indian, not after the Colonial rule in India, but were named first by the  American Indians on the East coast of the States in the 1700’s.  The first instance of the term used by an author is found in St. John de Crevecoeur’s work of 1778. The Frenchman wrote:

Sometimes the rain is followed by an interval of calm and warmth which is called the Indian Summer; its characteristics are a tranquil atmosphere and general smokiness.

In England in the late 1860s these warm spells were known as All Hallowed summer or Old Wives’ summer.  Those names didn’t become common parlance though.  The  Met Office first published a meteorological glossary in 1916, and defined an Indian Summer as ‘a warm, calm spell of weather occurring in autumn, especially in October and November”.  We were fortunate to have one in September! 

We certainly made the most of it! As we headed out of Bristol to meet a friend and have a walk, we picked up a hitchhiker.  We didn’t even have to stop the car, he/she just hopped on board.  Now I had no idea about the difference between a cricket and a grasshopper, but I reckoned our hitcher was a cricket.  It had large antennae and that indicates cricket.  There are 11 species of Grasshoppers and 23 of crickets in the UK. Both of these insects are among the most ancient living group of chewing herbivorous insects. They hatch from eggs into nymphs and undergo five different moults until they become adults.  If you hear them in the daytime they are most likely grasshoppers as they are diurnal and crickets are crepuslcular. Yes, I had to look that one up, too. Those who studied Latin will no doubt not have bothered as they would have known it meant twilight.  As our little friend was with us in the morning I’m guessing now not cricket but grasshopper!

The journey was short, he/she hopped off at the roundabout, only a few miles down the road. Hope he/she got back home all right!

When we got back home it was a different sort of cricket.

That the Australians won.

Stay safe, have a good weekend and see you again next week!

With love

Kathy x

Feest Isolation Days – 17 September

Argggggh! The internet was down.  Just our internet not the entire street.  This began overnight Friday and the Virgin tech man (and they are always men!) couldn’t  come to sort it out until Tuesday.  And that was organised on line!  Just as well we had a 3G signal on the phone.

Bad enough to lose the internet, but even worse is the time spent (hours) trying to talk to someone at Virgin so that they can put the situation right.  Terry tried.  I tried.  Terry and I both tried again. Twice I waited to dreadful music on hold.  The minutes became an hour plus. Someone eventually answered (!) and I handed the phone to Terry. The person spoke in a very heavy accent.  Understanding him wasn’t easy and when Terry asked him to repeat something again, he rang off. Grrrrrrr.

Not amused.  I dialled again. This time I pressed 1 for Sales and the first girl who answered said not our department and hung up.  I tried Sales again…at least they pick up the phone!  Very nice man Mike in Sales, listened and helped.  Mike understood. He Listened.  And connected us to the tech support team.  Nice guys.  We still didn’t have a slot until Tuesday.  Heigh ho.

Tuesday arrived as did our tech guy.  He couldn’t fix it. The problem was in the street.  It wasn’t just us. Three or four other people were in the same boat.  He promised the tech man who did network work would arrive within the next twenty four hours.  We didn’t need to be in, this was an outside job.  Hurrah! 

This is a long-winded way of saying sorry for not having anything posted until now.  I tried, I really tried, but without the internet it is tough.  The phones have some 3G but the signal here is very poor, and writing on a little phone didn’t work for me.  Problem now solved. Internet back up and working.  We are now back.  Hmmmm.  Life is SO different without Mr. Google and his chums to help us along as we do whatever it is that we intend.

A little Ronnie inspired computer humour to get me over the hassles of earlier this week…hope you find it fun as well…

I missed you all!  No communication for what seemed a long time (reality check..six days) so I had a homecation.  Different than a staycation.  It means being at home. Going out locally, and in my and our case walking.  We have done a lot of walking. 

The weather has been stunning.  Glorious September days with warmth and golden sun.  If the internet was going to go down, this week was as good as any I suppose. 

Whew!  Back to school time, and back to routine time.  Are there parents out there who are secretly relieved that the time has come? I bet there are! 

The rule of six is now in force. No more than six people inside or outside are allowed by law to gather together at any one time.

Covid times are still here.  Wouldn’t it be magic if it just went away for a bit…the way my internet did!  Sadly, that is not going to happen.  So stay safe. Enjoy the last moments of summer.  And with no more than six people at any one time!

With love

Kathy x

Internet down – temporary blog pause!

Our cable internet at home has gone down, and we cannot get an engineer to attend until Tuesday evening. So, sadly, we have no proper effective net access, which makes posting a blog very difficult. There will therefore be a temporary pause – we hope to be back on Wednesday (16th September).

Kathy and Terry

Feest Isolation Days – 11 September

The first press briefing for weeks!  There is something reassuring about having the Chief Medical and Scientific Officers giving us information. Less so having Boris talk to us. Especially when he starts on about Moonshots.  I had no idea what he meant…but neither of the head boys to his left or right talked about going to the Moon.  Apparently Boris’s Moonshot is, well, a long shot.  He wants to get back to normal and so we can all have a test that gives us the result in twenty minutes…like a pregnancy test. Only Boris would have used that as a comparison. If the test is negative we can go to the theatre!  Or to concerts!  Or get on a plane!  Nice idea in theory. The real problem with his solution however, is that the technology is nowhere near ready to accomplish this.  Oh yes and when it is ready it will cost upward of a 100 billion pounds.

Meantime, back on planet earth, we are all now told not to meet more than six people at a time indoors or outdoors.  There goes book group!  We will have to work out a plan.  There goes the visit with one of our kid’s family….there are six of them!  Maybe we can fit a quick visit in before Monday when the six people rule becomes law. 

They had a nice shiny new graphic to remind us all of what we need to do….Hands!  Face! Space! But not, alas the Moon for now.

Something had to be done.  Young people are fed up and not listening to advice.  Will they now?  The police have the right to enforce this law and pass out fines, but will they do so?  It remains to be seen.  Meantime, we get ready for a long winter ahead.

There are still lovely garden moments to be had before the weather turns.  Yesterday morning we had breakfast outside!  The light this time of year is golden and although the flowers are fading, some still cling on. A little robin found us and flitted around while we nibbled.  Life goes on.

Looking for a joke or two I thought I’d scour the best of Edinburgh Fringe jokes this year.  Dave has been sponsoring the best joke award for eleven years.  You know the real joke?  There was no Festival this year!  Ha Ha! 

For some naughty boys there will be no more US Open Tennis either.  Mr. Jokeavich,   I mean Novak Djokovic is out of the US event after hitting a line judge with his tennis ball – in the throat.  The top seeded guy was angry.  Bet he’s even angrier now that they threw him out!  This is a man who said he wouldn’t get vaccinated.  Didn’t believe in vaccination.  His wife spread antivax conspiracy theories on her social media page.  He hosted a tennis game and several players got Covid.  So did both he and his wife. Perhaps it isn’t his year?  Let’s hope young folks take note….

A funny Edinburg from a while back.  A friend tricked me into going to Wimbledon by telling me it was a men’s singles event” Angela Barnes

I know how he feels…

Take care, be safe and Enjoy!

See you next week.

With love

Kathy x

Feest Isolation Days – 10 September

Around the world in Eighty Days! Wouldn’t that be grand?  Around the world in any days at all…actually we can do it now in about 72 hours. With stop overs and waiting around at airports. Who would want to do that though?  I just want to go there…not come back on the same trip. 

New Zealand friends are travelling in the South Island and I’m feeling just the teensy weensy bit envious.  If you’ve never been, the South Island is splendid and filled with the most wonderful people and scenery. Our friends have stopped in Kaikoura and tell us the earthquake damage from a few years ago is now pretty much sorted. When we visited during the year we spent living and working in New Zealand we visited this lovely coastal town.

The boat trip to get to the seals was a bit too bouncy for me at the time so I gave it a miss. Terry went swimming with the seals while I just listened to their dog like bark.  I picked Terry up when he had finished his amazing time in the water swimming with these large mammals, and we carried on our journey to other lovely parts of the South Island. 

As we travelled, the distinct smell of dog became more and more obvious.  The hire car people clearly hadn’t cleaned the car from the dog lovers that must have rented it before us.  Or so we thought.  As the sun streamed in the window the smell got more and more intense.  We didn’t have a dog with us but it certainly smelled like we did!  We learned a lesson or two that day.  Terry’s wet bathing suit was drying on the back deck of the car. 

Fur seals, millions of years ago, were related to dogs!  Exact ancestral links are  unknown and widely debated, but science tell us that dogs and seals are both canifomia (meaning doglike). They come from the same taxonomy. Apparently the skulls of sea lions, bears, and large dogs are “nearly indistinguishable at first glance.”   A dog smell we can honestly say is definitely seal like!

Bringing us back down to earth with a bump on this side of the world…Coronavirus cases are definitely on the rise. No smell. But if you lose yours, or your sense of taste…beware.  The results of testing are in and at the moment it’s young people who have been getting the disease. They don’t tend to get very sick with it which is a good thing.  But this is tricky for both the young and the old!  Giving your parents or grandparents the virus isn’t something many kids will want to do. On the other hand, they have lives to lead.  How do they manage?  Restaurants, bars, and cafes want to keep open.  But where is the spread occurring and how?  The government isn’t giving out very much information anymore.  Even though the numbers are on the upward trajectory, there doesn’t seem to be a great deal of planning.  Or advice.  We take matters in our own hands and carry on social distancing, mask wearing and washing our hands. And staying away from young people.

Like the young, though we too have lives to lead!  Let’s hope if we get to this old granny’s stage we have as much pluck as she still does!

Stay safe and Enjoy!

With love

Kathy x

Feest Isolation Days – 9 September

I do a lot of writing.  Which means I do a lot of sitting. I also do a lot of tea drinking. Now what on earth do these two things have in common you may well ask.  Several things actually, but the one that I am about to tell you of is a direct result of Covid.  I used to write and sit a lot before Covid, but I was also going outside a lot more, doing more walking around than I do now, swimming three times a week.  Exercise has changed. Now, every time I make a cup of tea, I do some exercise in my kitchen.  I either grab two tins from the shelf and do my arm exercises while the kettle boils, or I practice nearly sitting in a chair fifty times.  Go on try it.  Don’t sit all the way down, just nearly on the seat. Don’t use your arms to get up.  Start with ten or so and work up to the full fifty.  Or a hundred.  The arm exercises with tins are from my Pilates routine.  There are plenty of people on- line who will help you find these.  The important thing is that you make them a part of your routine. This is not, by the way, instead of my Pilates or bike ride or walks or indoor cycles, but in addition to them.  Why I didn’t think of this before Covid, I have no idea.  But there has to be some good that comes from this wretched virus!

Where do you get your ideas from, my friends ask.  How do you come up with all these paragraphs day after day? I honestly don’t know the answer to that!  What I do know is that once you get into the flow, something happens and ideas emerge.  The ideas are there flitting in and out and some of them land and others never do.  I thought I’d see where other people got their inspiration from and had to share this one!  I have always been a fan of Simon and Garfunkel.  Both as a duo and as single entertainers later when they split. Here’s Paul Simon singing one of my favourites.

You will no doubt have heard it hundreds of times!  He shared the genesis for these lyrics.  He was in a Chinese Restaurant looking at the menu deciding what he was going to eat, and one of the dishes was called the Mother and Child Reunion.  He filed it away and said to himself that one day “I gotta use that one!”  Paul certainly took us as far away from a restaurant, Chinese or otherwise, with his eventual lyrics.  Little known fact, (to me anyway) about Paul Simon?  He was married to Carrie Fisher for a year between 1983 and 84.

You never know what you may find out in your day when you just set out and let it happen.  Some of the more interesting bits of life head your way if you keep your eyes open.  Better than watching and listening to all the political shenanigans every day!  No one knows where that word shenanigans comes from by the way.  Yet we all know what it means…tricksters a foot.  And that is all I’m saying about the political landscape in the UK today.  Except –  I can’t help myself…TONY ABBOT GO BACK TO OZ!

There, got that off my chest.

Have a great and trickster free day!

With love

Kathy x

Feest Isolation Days – 8 September

Schools back! Kids are heading back to their places of learning.  And teachers have quite a task ahead of them.  It didn’t take long for youngsters to forget all about school and develop new habits. Apparently rather a lot of them spent days on end playing games on their handheld devices.

Sleeping patterns for many went straight out the window.  Instead, they played and got what one teacher calls “twitching fingers”.  They sit in their classroom unable to be still for long without moving their fingers.  They have become so used to using them as they spend hours playing games.  The teachers take them outside and get them to run around and get rid of their pent-up energy.  Older kid’s heads hit the desk in the middle of the afternoon and they fall asleep.  They aren’t used to routines anymore.  Where were their parents? I suppose they were working, and trying to do their best.  Poor families!  Not easy.  Poor teachers.  Let’s hope normal happens soon for these folks.

Normal is going to be a while yet.  Will we ever get back to normal?  Will we remember what it is when we get there?  Travel? Dinners out? Coffee inside in a café sitting close enough to someone else you can smell their perfume?  Who knows when this will be?  Not yet.

The government’s Eat Out To Help Out scheme was such a total success that now they are trying to do the same sort of thing for Theatres and Sporting events.  The differences are huge though. I want to get back into theatres and concert halls as much as anyone, but it needs to be safe.  Seat Out to Help Out is in the pipeline. We will watch this space and hope that something becomes possible soon.  Concerts!  Theatre!  Sports!  We all so want to be back surrounded by others and cheering or clapping away. 

Actually, I really am a bit of a rugby fan (!!) I am delighted that the players are getting back to it and look forward to the Six Nations.  Last year’s Six Nations results have yet to be  declared as Italy and England never happened. The plan is that they will play in October.   One person who is unlikely to be playing is Captain Owen Farrell. Someone needs to take that young man aside and explain to him the high tackle rules.  This weekend he was playing for his team Saracens and a dangerous and shocking high tackle cost him a red card.  Come on Farrell, you are the Captain!  There’s no teacher around to take you outside and get you to run off your pent-up energy.  You are the person who ought to be doing that for others.  Shame on you.  Wasps went on to win the game and Farrell is sitting on a bench.  The naughty chair!

Covid 19 hasn’t yet got its red card and is still very much around.  The numbers are going up.  Be careful.  Stay safe.  Distance, hand wash and mask up. It isn’t much to ask really is it?

Enjoy!

With love

Kathy x

Feest Isolation Days – 7 September

Hope none of you were in Portugal at the weekend!  Or if you were, that you were at least flying into an English Airport and not a Welsh or Scottish airport!  Bad luck if so. The breakup of the UK seems to be happening already.  If you live in England, Portugal is Covid secure. Wales?  Scotland?  Nope!  Then you have to quarantine for fourteen days.  What?  How could that possibly be right?  Perhaps it has something to do with a Government in London that cannot make decisions.  No, wait, that’s not true!  They can!  They just change their mind all the time. The amount of U Turns they have made since the start of the Pandemic are really laughable.  Unless you’re a student who didn’t get into the University you wanted to because of the shenanigans with the algorithm or…unless you weren’t traced by track and trace and end up with Covid. More U turns happen all the time.  And where is Boris? 

He doesn’t seem to be seen anywhere these days. There are no press briefings, no leadership.   He did show up at this school and these teachers nailed it….

The weather certainly has changed!  There is more than a whiff of Autumn in the air and despite the gloomy news from around the globe, there remains lots to be thankful for. 

Nature is a delight and a wonder! Outside our front door, we have been watching a squash plant grow.  We didn’t plan it. Or plant it.  The pot outside the door is filled with a lovely geranium that lives in the hall in the winter.  But this squash plant was determined.  The compost that we make must have had a seed in it that grew  It’s such fun to watch.

The back garden has had a few little extras as well. A strawberry plant appeared between some patio stones and has borne some tiny fruit, and this tomato plant, again that we didn’t plant, and a pretty pansy…our favourite blue…have all taken up residence.  They are more than welcome here.  It would be a hoot if these vegetables produced something edible.

When we first moved here…twenty nine years ago…a decision was made. There wasn’t  enough room in this garden to have both vegetables and flowers.  Flowers won.  I’m delighted. When we lived in Exeter we had a garden with both veg and flowers as well as an allotment.  We really didn’t have time for that when we moved here.  Work was full on for many years.  And gardens take time.  Now that we have more of that perhaps it would be fun to have an allotment…hmmm. Maybe those vegetables that have turned up are trying to tell us something? 

However our vegetable supplier since the lockdown, Reg the Veg of Clifton needs our custom now more than ever!  Flowers it continues to be then.  Unless we decide to make a big U Turn?  What do you think?

With love

Kathy x

Feest Isolation Days – 4 September

I’ve avoided it for as long as I can. I’ve talked about our lovely holiday and shared some fun.  It’s time. I need to get this off my chest and then maybe I’ll leave it for the longest time.

Speaking of the longest time, here’s a quarantine choir from Canada singing just that!   Thanks to Don in San Fran for sending this one across.

Okay. Trump.
Like many other people I think about the possibility of him having another term in office and quiver. There is no way that anyone with an ounce of integrity can think this man is the right person to be the leader of the free world can there? Remember that phrase? The Leader of the Free World!   He has lied and lied and has brought America to a dark place.  The worrying thing?  The quivering making concern?  That there is even a question about the likelihood of his getting back into office. How can so many Americans think he’s the right man for them? 

My father was a Republican most of his life and finally crossed the floor over Guantanamo Bay. I remember him saying that America didn’t fight World War Two so that we could treat people like that. He would be aghast at what has been unleashed upon America. Dad was a man of law and order. He worked in a federal prison.  I will never forget when I was a young teenager and he was about to take a few prisoners somewhere in his car. For some reason or other he asked me to help him clean it.  They are prisoners – I’d said, not wanting to bother – why does the car need to be cleaned?  Because it’s the first time they’ve been in a car for years was his reply. Dad’s version of law and order wasn’t always mine, but he would never side with police who shoot and murder. Or a man who’s a thug and a mobster

and is allowing the worst of America to rise up. They have always been there, the thugs and the rednecks.  Somehow I always believed there would be a handbrake on to stop them from their excesses.  They hate Socialists…John Steinbeck spoke about these things and is paraphrased as saying, “Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat, but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.” They may not have been his exact words, but they capture something important that may go some way to explaining the antipathy to “socialism.”

Let’s hope that the Biden Harris team will appeal to enough people who can see through the flimsy curtains of the White House and whose votes will be counted. This cartoon sums up exactly where I think Trump is and what he is doing. 

Thanks especially to the cartoonist Duff Morris for this.  Perfectly captures the mood…and he drew it a year ago!

It’s going to be a long few months before the votes are in…  In the meantime, we all have lives to be getting on with and in these worrying times we all need a few more laughs than ever before. 

My favourite steps in once again….

Randy Rainbow!

That’s enough from me about the election for a bit.

This one from the western Australian philharmonic is also a good antidote. Enjoy!

Have a great weekend and see you again on Monday.

With love,

Kathy x 

Feest Isolation Days – 3 September

     The drive beyond  Llanthony to reach Hay Bluff remains one of the most wonderful in the country.  We stopped at Llanthony priory on our journey last week  and I was disappointed that the Splendid St. David’s church was shut. Covid closed it. It’s been standing since the 12^th century. It got me thinking.  How many pandemics have there been since then?

1350 –  Black Death or bubonic plague arrived which decimated one third of the world’s population. It was caused by a bacterium.

1665 –  Bubonic plague returns to kill 20% of Londoners. (Just as it was ending in 1666 the great fire of London began)

1817 – The first major cholera epidemic began caused by a bacterium and millions died in Russia and India and then throughout the world

1855 – Bubonic plague returns to China and India and 15 million die

1918 – The Spanish flu kills 50 million people – a virus

1957 – Asian flu kills 14,000 people – a virus

1981 – HIV – Aids 35 million people die – a virus

2003 – Sars 774 people die – a virus

20019 -Covid19 – 861,251 have died world wide – to date – from this virus

These all seem good reasons to visit peaceful and serene places.  Over the years we’ve been to Llanthony many times.  We have never seen so many cars and people there before! People parked everywhere all along the roadside as well as on the grass, presumably eager to take advantage of the great walking nearby. Like us, they were having a staycation I suspect. The little road over Hay Bluff was filled with cyclists.  Many of them looked like they hadn’t been riding that long. Maybe, like me, they got a new bike during lockdown. They weren’t wearing much lycra, but then like us they were mostly not young either.

When we got into Hay, we found a place outside for a cuppa, and also managed to shop in two of the more than twenty book shops in the town. Sanitizer stations greeted us at the front door and masks were worn by everyone. If customers didn’t arrive with a mask on, they were politely handed a mask before they went any further. Routes were taped out and entrances and exits were one way only.  Both shops felt very safe. They both had squeaky wooden floors so you could hear someone coming your way from more than an aisle away. It didn’t take long to get lost in books! I only found one book on my first trawl. It didn’t seem enough.

After a comfortable night we headed out into the book world of Hay again the next morning.  We sat outside in the rain huddling under an umbrella drinking our tea and coffee and watching the world go by. We laughed a lot.  What else does one do when the rain is dripping and the tables are running with water?  Why would the café only put up one umbrella when it placed six tables outside? Is it a Welsh thing?

The town was packed. Lots of families with kids were braving the rain and wandering around the town. An all-day rain had set in.  Another visit to the large bookshops again and we were set up for the afternoon.  It stopped raining about five o’clock  and we booted up and headed up and up on to Hay bluff –  no not virtually!  After a few miles of walking, the cobwebs were well and truly gone.  Dinner and a cosy evening were well earned.

The rain the next day was intermittent again. Homeward meant driving through more rain but we did manage to have a picnic!  We stopped at one of the many Welsh woodland places just as the rain stopped.  Terry produced a huge plastic sheet from the car and we draped it over the sodden picnic table and scoffed our sandwiches.  We managed a few miles through the woods before the skies opened up again. 

Going away is important.  It makes you aware how good home is!  Despite the intermittent rain, and not being able to eat in a restaurant, we had a good break.  Life on holiday is not the same as it once was.  All the missing ingredients mean it is easier to tuck back into life at home once more. 

Placing our pandemic in a list with so many that have occurred previously is somehow oddly reassuring.  I do miss those closed churches. They too help put things in context. Good to know that even though they are closed for now, they are still standing.  So are we. Make the most of it! 

With love

Kathy x 

Feest Isolation Days – 2 September

September! It’s as though the calendar knows.  Somebody told the trees it was time to start to drop their leaves. And the temperature to plummet.  Summer is behind us.  Now we’ve got Autumn and Winter to look forward to.

September always seems like an even better time to make new resolutions than New Year. Maybe it’s that hang over from the start of school all those years ago.  Great to get back to it with friends and possibilities to learn more new things!   Now with months to come of more indoor focused routines, taking stock and making a plan for the cosier times ahead feels important.  My plan includes a lot of writing this year.  These paragraphs daily (except weekends) for a start!  The exercise bike and road bike will get a lot of use.  And Pilates!  Having just finished my one to one Pilates with Danni in Auckland this morning, I have no doubt this is a routine that will be continued.

There are a few other plans.  I love a good course to keep my brain active.  This year it’s a six week course on “learning the essentials of how to activate positive experiences, prolong and enrich them, and then heighten their absorption into emotional memory”. This helps in the management of stress and dealing with life’s challenges. Who doesn’t need to learn latest tips for that? The chap who is delivering the course is Dr. Rick Hanson. I like his no nonsense style. I did one of his longer courses awhile back and learned a great deal.  Never too old to learn new things!  https://www.rickhanson.net/teaching/   What are your plans for the coming months? Time to think them through?

Covidiots!  A new word that hopefully we won’t have to use too often over the next months.  It especially applied recently to some people on a plane from Zante in Greece to Cardiff.  There were people not wearing masks, or if they did, hanging them about their chin.  Sixteen people were infected and two hundred people are now isolating.  Two hundred people on the plane?  Doesn’t sound promising does it?  The covidiots are out there.  Be careful!

Who knows how we will socialise over the colder months in these covid times?   Will we still be happy to have one couple at a time in the dining room?  Will the winter mean more illness around? These are issues we will all have to grapple with. 

We had our first meal outside in the last days of summer during our recent stay cation.   It was a stunning day.  There was a little bit of rain but we were in an outside garden with a big wide umbrella keeping us from the showers.  The Village Pub at Barnsley (that’s actually its name) is one of those wonderful English finds that keeps you coming back for more.  Located in the Cotswolds, it nestles in the middle of the village between pretty stone houses with their lovely gardens.  The food is excellent and for the first time since March a chef cooked for us, the waitress waited on us and somebody else did the washing up! Talking to strangers at the next socially distanced table was fun.  Having moments with other people at other tables a long way away was also part of this rare new experience.  The weather was kind enough to allow us a walk after the meal. No rain and perfect blue skies.  Bliss!  A memorable wedding anniversary.  

We were meant to head to Hay on Wye the next day, but the weather had other plans.  The winds were ferocious and the bridge we would have crossed to get to Wales was closed in both directions. Instead, we stayed at home and leisurely prepared for our forty-eight hour trip.  I have to admit as I packed my suitcase I got a tear in my eye.  The loss!  All those trips we haven’t had this year, or aren’t going to have, or can’t have for now. Once I got over my sadness at what hasn’t been, I was able to enjoy what was to come. A suitcase packed!  A car stuffed with our needs for the next few days!  Fortunately, we were able to shuffle along our stay an extra day so the storm merely shifted our plans a bit. Covid times mean more people even in the most remote places so finding a little used road and running into a flock of sheep – literally, as this video shows- was a delight!

Those sheep were not socially distanced!

Until next time!  Enjoy!

Love,

Kathy x

Feest Isolation Days – 1 September

Taking a break from routine is much to be recommended. I have SO much to tell you about!  First though, a big hello and welcome back. There were moments in the past week when I thought I’d bring these musings to a close, but then realised I’d miss not just the process but the sharing with everyone which is why I started this in the first place. From what people have told me, it would appear that many of you are getting something out of these tales and snippets. More than a hundred of you from all over the world are regularly reading these paragraphs! Thank you so much. My hope is that I can continue to share something inspiring, make the mundane a little less so, and give you something to laugh about. 

Did you know that kids laugh a lot more than adults typically do?  The studies are there. Apparently babies start to laugh at about 10 weeks. By 16 weeks they laugh about once per hour. Some studies say four years old laugh about 300 times a day and adults manage about 17 laughs. Dr. Michael Miller, director of preventive cardiology at the University of Maryland School of Medicine in Baltimore, recommends we all should laugh about 15 minutes per day.  That shouldn’t be too hard should it?  For the cynics amongst you…..

The world is still in a bit of a mess. But hasn’t it always been a wee bit of a mess somewhere?  Or a big pile of poo somewhere else?  A sense of humour does seem to be a bonus on the way through life.

The political saga in America is the most frightening in my lifetime.  Everything seems backwards, especially the trajectory of the Presidency and the Republican party.  Another few months until we get the verdict on the current lot.  It is hard to watch, but whatever happens, I am grateful, truly grateful that I moved to England forty years ago this month.  It was one of the better decisions I ever made!

Looking back, what decisions have you made that you think – yep!  That was the game changer….there are plenty of them I’m sure. There are certainly quite a few others I can think of.  Over the next weeks and months in these Covid times, I no doubt will be sharing them with you

For now though, another little something that will hopefully add to your 15 minutes of today’s laughter.  As travel by air remains off limits to this household, this funny reminder of things that are sometimes lost…

Enjoy!

With love,

Kathy x

Feest Isolation Days – 21 August

A lot of firsts are coming up next week! Just as well as the cancellations of this week have been slightly disappointing.  We were to have had lunch with the kids in Exeter, but our hostess had a headache and a sore throat so we stayed in Bristol. Shame.  We will meet again in the next few weeks.  Plans for Friday also didn’t pan out as my friend who was to visit didn’t feel well either.  Neither of these seem to be Covid thankfully, but irritating to them none the less.

Next week the firsts will be SO welcome!  We are heading out on Monday.  It’s our wedding anniversary!  With a bit of luck the weather will be reasonable.  We are going to a Michelin starred pub in a Cotswold village that we’ve been to before. It’s a small place with a big garden and weather willing, we will manage to eat food cooked by someone else.  No washing up to do either!  Yea!  There are lovely walks from the pub, so we intend to fit that in as well.

The next first is a few days away.  Yep!  We are going to stay, on our own, at our friends’ place in Hay on Wye. They generously invite us to stay there every year and we have been there with friends and family as well as with them and on our own.  We had planned our annual Easter trip to see them, but of course that never happened. This will be the first place we have stayed at other than home since we returned from New Zealand in March.  That’s a very long time for we former travellers.  I will be wearing my mask as I visit book shops…it’s Hay!  What else is a woman to do?

The next first for over one hundred and sixty days for me, is that I will be taking a holiday from writing each day next week.  This will be the last musing from me until the first of September.  It seems a good time to start again, and I will no doubt be refreshed and raring to go.  I certainly hope so! In the meantime, remember that the scientists are busily working away on our behalf.

Until then, enjoy the last days of August and lets all hope for an Indian Summer in September.

Take care, wear those masks, socially distance, use your sanitizer, and whatever you get up to, have fun!

See you on the 1^st of September….

With love,

Kathy x

Feest Isolation Days – 20 August

Our young neighbour whose bedroom faces our garden apparently came running down into his kitchen earlier this week to tell his mother excitedly, “Mum, Terry is fishing in the garden!”  It’s true there was a line being cast into the garden, with my fisherman attached to it, but sadly, there will be no fish at the end of his line. 

People who are serious fishermen (or women) practice their casting the way a pianist plays scales, or a basketball player shoots hoops, or a painter doodles, or a writer –  well – writes!  There isn’t always a fish at the end of the line, or a melody or a score, a finished painting or even a finished story.  It’s part of the journey along the way. Practise is what we all do a lot of the time in pursuit of whatever it is that we are trying to achieve.  Doctors “practice” medicine.  It’s called a law “practice”.  It’s often about the journey. And if you want to get anywhere with anything at all, practice is required!  Fish or football, words or paint, practice as they say – whoever they are – makes perfect.  If not quite perfect, getting on that way!

This week, more than most for ages, has been wonderfully social.  Daily plans that include spending a bit of time with other people in various ways sure do feel great!  From a walk and a coffee out with a girlfriend, to tea in the garden with a guy friend, Zoom Pilates and then….a visit to the kids with lunch being provided.  Wow!  A more usual sort of August week.  To top it all off we are having a socially distanced dining room with the window open meal with friends on Saturday! 

Normal it is not, although new normal it is becoming, I think there needs to be a better term.  It’s our life after all and we are living it.  Whatever is “normal” anyway?

That of course depends on who you ask!  It can mean:

A line or vector that is perpendicular to another line, surface, or plane.

A person who is normal, who fits into mainstream society, as opposed to those who live alternative lifestyles

Describing a straight chain isomer of an aliphatic hydrocarbon, or an aliphatic compound in which a substituent is in the 1- position of such a hydrocarbon

Denoting certain hypothetical compounds, as acids from which the real acids are obtained by dehydration; thus, normal sulphuric acid and normal nitric acid are respectively S(OH)6, and N(OH)5

Normal is an incorporated town in McLean County, Illinois, United States

So you can describe your life as normal for you.  You choose!  What is your new normal? Mine, thankfully, has begun to mean that there are other people in it from time to time a bit more often.  Hope your normal is agreeable to you. There may be a few different parameters for us all these days, but there are still lots of choices for us to make. Choose well.  And remember, practice makes perfect at whatever you choose! Even just living!

Be well.  Stay safe.

With love,

Kathy x