After a ‘ bob’ last night we pondered on the role of Hugo and Lola on our Lockdown exercise routine. 5 days out of 7 the dogs are central to the plans of the hour long exercise event. The other 2 days the exercise is our cold water swimming session.
I think we both agreed that without the dogs some days would pass without any outdoor exercise. Today was certainly a day when indoors would have won the vote if it were not for the @theoldmortuary fluffs. To be honest if they had been given a choice they would rather have stayed in their pyjamas and read books.
As it was we made it, in dreadful weather to the Scott Memorial. The weather was so shocking nobody was there before us!
On the way we found this old tunnel and door.Revealed recently by storms blowing down the protective metal screens. It seems like a fine metaphor for January 2021 . All a bit dark and never ending with the promise of something different beyond the door. But who can even guess what the ‘different’ will be.
This is the start of a good day. A Christmas parcel, missing for 6 weeks turns up in Hong Kong. Miss VV checks the paperwork.
Every two year old needs a new bee.
The box contained more than just the bee, just in case you think we are wicked people who wrapped up something small in a big box.
So by video we get to share the excitement of Christmas in January. And I get to think again about our Christmas Festival @theoldmortuary which looks set to run for a few months yet. Fake Christmas, or Christmas extended is causing some complications. Our ‘Bobbing’ friends are amused by constant Post swimming snacks of Mince Pies.
I groan at the thought of cooking the bargain turkey who is resting in the outside freezer. In early January a local farm advertised frozen turkeys for £20
I booked one and turned up to collect him. He was one huge turkey. Common sense should have pre warned me that the only left over turkeys in 2020 would be massive. Cold and slippy I wrestled the turkey to the car with the same style as I’ve used with drunken work colleagues on the tube, I rested him in the child seat at the back of the car and strapped him in. There were immediately two worries. Would he fit in the freezer.? He does but the only other thing we can get in there is the ice we bought for our non existent Christmas socialising. That was a couple of interesting days of culinary experimentation trying to eat the frozen foods evicted by the Daddy of Turkeys. Worry number two was can we get him in the oven to cook him? This is a problem, we have no idea which cooker we will be using for Fake Christmas. It’s a worry but nothing a good swig of Christmas Advocaat can’t solve.
Greige is the colour of the day again. But an hours exercise must be taken . It was low tide and I decided to take the dogs to one of their favourite beaches. By coincidence it is the same beach we regularly swim from. Long before year round swimming was a thing it was a popular dog walk at low tide and we often had it to ourselves. Also in those giddy pre-Pandemic times, beach visits also involved a coffee shop stop.
Lola loves this beach at low tide because for once she doesn’t merge into the background.
Here is Hugo posing by the very rocks I managed to lose skin on last week.
Today the view is very different. Greige is enveloping everything. Beyond enjoying the visual pleasure and thrum of busy tugs passing the beach, there was not a lot of point looking out to sea. The benefits of dog walking in the pouring rain surrounded by fog might not seem immediately obvious.
The dogs were oblivious, enjoying seaweed and the excitement of being caught by waves as they scampered about. While I cast my eyes downward and captured the vividity of the shoreline.
The pebbles and seaweed that are agony to my sensitive feet after a cold swim put on quite a show in the pouring rain.
Tiny gems of sea glass and shells added to the glamour. But will stepping on such beauty ease my way in and out of the sea on future swimming days ?
I very much doubt it, for someone who has a robust and sturdy body my feet are clearly someone elses. The fairy story of the Princess and the Pea exactly summarises my access and egress to the sea. Drama Queen steps on Pebbles would be the best description. Every step is a symphony of pains, my body contorts like that of a puppet with knotted strings and a drunken puppeteer. Currently I stride in wearing an old pair of Crocs but even those dont stop me feeling a particularly persistent pebble and wincing a bit. The dogs, of course, dont really see what all the fuss is about.
A glorious weather weekend lifted our cabin fever this weekend. Snow and Bagels were forecast.
A favourite coffee shop reopened as a take away destination. Sweetening the deal with home made bagels. Bagels it seems got the good people of Plymouth out of their beds very early and by the time we arrived at 10:30 the bagels were just a memory. Good coffee in hand we set off on a city walk enjoying the sunshine. The sunshine kept coming and the walk kept walking. 7 miles or 11 km later we arrived home. Only then did the snow arrive!
Mornings can be strange when winter sea swimming is a regular habit. The times we swim are predicated by tide times and anticipated weather. The weather is the least important. It has become entirely normal to wake up, look out at frosty cars and know that all we actually need to put on for breakfast is a pair of swimming knickers and a wetsuit. The contrast is even madder when we realise that only twelve hours before we had felt cold dressed in several layers of thermal underwear and winter clothing to walk the dogs at the same location.
Sea swimming is a massive, positive, side effect of the pandemic. We have formed an informal group of swimmers and watchers so that anyone who wants a swim can find a swim buddy on our Whatsapp group. Everyone in the group knew someone but before winter swimming most of us did not know each other. We have never seen each other with our clothes on!
Equipment is the thing, in the balmy days of October we rocked up in normal clothes and congratulated ourselves on this wonderful free hobby that we had discovered. Incrementally winter started biting at our resolve to ‘keep things simple’. Birthdays and Christmas came and went and with it the gifts of accessories for our new hobby. One person gets something new and others fancy getting the same. Recently this took us to a strange place. Researching Sinx gloves on line is not for the faint hearted. Coupled with the phenomenon of jabbering like crazy beasts when the endorphins hit, our post swimming ‘ bobbing’ chats are far reaching and without the usual social restraints that you might expect in a group of people who don’t know one another well. Over-sharing might be the correct term. To onlookers it probably sounds like the random squeals and hoots of a seal colony. Social distancing doesn’t help matters but I think we would be loud even in a close knit huddle.
Organising life around just being allowed out for one hour a day takes a bit of planning. Some days I’m really lucky that the whole hour can be spent just walking the dogs somewhere local and beautiful or doing a sea swim. But other days, like today, require rigourously timed visits to achieve everything. Oh goodness it was a mundane hour today. Essential dog food purchases, farm honestly box shopping for eggs and a quick wizz round a supermarket before a scamper round a park. Just as I got home I noticed this feather resting on a geranium.
It was caught in the leaves and then whisked a little further onto a wind damaged bloom.
Such a lucky find on a day mostly filled with domestic chores and a bit of really dull knitting.
The wonderful bonus of dull knitting is that it is perfectly possible to watch television at the same time. You might think that a BBC Politics channel would be as dull as my knitting but we live in strange and dangerous times. With a strange and dangerous government. People used to knit while watching executions or great events. Within the restrictions of a pandemic I am carrying on that underated tradition and not a stitch dropped. Also photographing feathers. Lockdown in January. February is going to have to work hard to keep up with these excitement levels.
Merryneum continues, as do the leftovers. Turkey Pie, fresh sausage rolls and smoked salmon quiches were created @theoldmortuary baking session yesterday.
Under normal circumstances the above plate of food would have been hoovered up in half a day. Not so this year, on a positive note that is all the left overs gone from Christmas day food. I’m not sure how many calories Zoom meetings consume but that was our peak activity yesterday. Books were also consumed in large amounts. An activity not usually listed as a fat burner.
Dog walking in abysmal weather was also a feature of the day. Not satisfying to the body and soul of human or dog. The dogs now have thermal coats to pop on when we stop for coffee, so they can warm up. There are unlikely to ever be cute photos of them walking in their thermals. Because they refuse to walk in them but stationary dogs in thermal jackets might appear.
Like so much, our doggy thermals were made in Shenzhen an industrial town just north of the border between Hong Kong and China. The pollution from Shenzhen was dreadful for our granddaughter yesterday, she lives on the Hong Kong side of the border.
She was stuck indoors to avoid the pollution caused by the manufacturing industry starting up after the Christmas break. Inadvertantly, in a virtual world, we also got stuck indoors there too. Our Zoom chats took place inside her play tent and when she got a little bored of screen time she finished the call by leaving us and the phone inside the tent. The next day we were, again, talked to only in the tent while she busied about. Being stuck in a pale green teepee is our punishment for not shopping local. Although I think it will take more than us shopping local to cut pollution from the monumental manufacturing sites in Shenzhen.
Today’s blog was always going to be about leftover food and words. It still will be but my theme was slightly overtaken by this witty Twitter post by a cunning linguist , Suzy Dent.
These days of late December are indeed a blurry space between Christmas and the New Year. Awkward to navigate in normal years, 2020 blurrs the blurr even blurrier. A less Merry , Merryneum with the near future uncertain by the double anxiety of Brexit and Covid
Left overs were the theme of the day. Long before the notion of Merryneum landed on my Twitter feed. I suspect Leftovers will last just about as long as the Merryneum.
Things started with ‘Bubble’
And moved on to Samosas
But in, what is becoming a habit, we didn’t have the need or enthusiasm for the evening Turkey Pie.
Beyond cooking up the uneaten sprouts and other festive veg we walked the dogs. Or did they walk us?It is entirely possible that we might have stepped into a coffee shop. Thankfully the decor lent itself to the colours of Merryneum.
Flat White Flat Lay
And Hugo and Lola posed for small portions of cake.
It was a huge surprise to wake up hungry on Boxing Day morning. We had accidentally avoided doing anything too traditional, for us, on Christmas Day and were lucky enough to avoid any lachrymose moments. Avoidance worked to the point that we were too exhausted to even cook a proper festive roast.
Boxing Day has a tradition in our home of no traditions . It always has an organic free flowing style. Decisions are largely predicated by weather and participant enthusiasm and availability. Today despite the greige and the cold a walk on the Hoe was our chosen activity. Unusually for Plymouth we found some profound graffiti.
For us today it is about learning Tier 2 rules and working out a life pathway up to the next Covid based government decision. Basically we need to throw on the thermal underwear and do anything that involves other humans outside. What we have not considered is the dogs temperatures while socialising outside. As this is likely to go on for a couple of months we’ve just ordered doggy thermals. Meanwhile Lola loved a hat
Sell-by dates also inform our current lifestyle. Our festive season attendance @theoldmortuary was abruptly cut by 2/3 so there is an element of cooking food for 6 in a way that 2 can come out of the non festive season not looking like overstuffed Turkeys.
An actual roast is occuring today , purely to provide us with traditional left overs. One of the best meals of the festive season is Bubble and Squeak. Cooking it at home is one thing but eating it at Borough Market crafted by the wonderful cooks at Marias, takes Bubble to new levels.
In our house it never has its full title the dish is just known as ‘ Bubble’ the word is traditionally shouted with a South London accent.
@theoldmortuary has adopted the ‘love’ logo to share some love over the festive period because there is so much about the festive season and in fact the whole year that we love to share with friends and family, we’ve really missed you all . A little logo of love lets you know we are thinking of you.
And finally Christmas dinner was cooked and consumed.
Christmas 2020 it wasn’t Christmas but it was Christmas because that’s what it was.
The day started early with some ‘Bobbing’ admin.
Tranquility Bay
Mulled cider and mince pies were the actual admin that was required today.
Then it was a swift drive home and festive sandwiches made ready for beach #2 Harlyn Bay.
Harlyn Bay
Don’t be fooled by golden sands, if Tranquility Bay looked like madness, Harlyn was madness+. A great walk in freezing temperatures followed by a convivial two van picnic observing all current regulations for Covid-19 control.
The dogs, of course, moved vans due to the superior picnic being served next door.
To be honest the idea of returning home and then cooking a traditional turkey roast began to feel less desirable the colder we got. A cup of hot tea was about as far as we could stretch when we got home.
Much later a mushroom Wellington made an appearance.
In between walking and talking we zoomed and whatsapped with people near and far.
Christmas Day in a Nutshell with not a cracker in sight.
Our last day with the relative freedoms of Tier 1. Today Cornwall is downgraded , that’s a whole new set of rules to remember! In
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