Watching the seasons pass
Thursday, August 27th, 2020 01:06 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
caddymanAs yet another season begins to wind down in 2020 and we draw ever closer to autumn, I am finding relief in the lower temperatures.
Nearly every working day since the end of the first week in March, I have been sitting at the conservatory table with my office laptop, carrying on as usual. Or as near to usual as we can manage. At the hight of summer, which is really only a few weeks ago, I had to have a fan blasting me at close range, even with all the windows and the skylight open. All it did was blast me with warm air, but it provided some relief. Now I am happy enough with just the door open, or if it’s particularly blustery, the door closed and a couple of windows open.
Temperatures have yet to get to the point where I am looking at breaking out the hoodie, but even that is now on the horizon.
We have been quite lucky during lockdown. Until last Thursday – a week ago today – the furthest from home I’d been was for a couple, or three circuits of South Park. South Park is okay as parks go, but walking around them for the sheer sake of walking is tedious. Beyond that, I’d made a couple of forays a hundred or so yards up the road to pick up my prescriptions and that’s been that. Elle wandered into town once, to find out that by and large, anything she wanted to do couldn’t be completed, or was frustratingly complex to achieve. So we’ve not bothered. Except for last week, when we decided to take advantage of the easing of lockdown and take the train into Liverpool Street, and mooch around London a while.
Even in late lockdown, London is a strange place. I wish we’d braved it during lockdown proper to see it completely empty, but as it was, off the main thoroughfares the place was largely deserted and even the busier places felt more like a quiet provincial town during half-day closing. If I can find somewhere to host a few pictures so that I can link to them, I might put something up in a later post. There are some across on Face Book, if you’re interested (and have access), but it might be nice, in time, to decorate a page here, like the old days.
I doubt that we will repeat the exercise anytime soon, however. Whilst we remain blessedly Covid-free (indeed free from any ailment!), other, underlying conditions make me vulnerable, so I do not feel the need to place myself in a position where I can catch something too frequently.
If the Great British Public actually played fair, this should not be too much of a consideration. To be fair, the majority do follow advice and follow the distancing rules, wear masks and so forth, but there is a significant minority who are happy to wear a mask around their neck and pretend to themselves and the world that they are following the rules. So, we continue to shield.
Quite how I would have coped if this had all happened while I lived in Clapham, I do not know, or indeed how we would have coped whilst living in Whetstone. The ‘Athenaeum’ as we called it would have probably been easier to survive in on account of the space, but the second flat was about the same size as The Gin Palace, but without a garden, and I think that it access to that garden that has kept us sane. We are relatively self-contained and lockdown hasn’t been the chose for us that it has been for many and being able to sit outside, do a bit of gardening, or just drink cider out there, has helped.
A summer winds down, we’ve bought a gazebo. We might get some autumnal (and spring) use out of it, so we can enjoy the outdoors a little longer, as this all spins on.
Nearly every working day since the end of the first week in March, I have been sitting at the conservatory table with my office laptop, carrying on as usual. Or as near to usual as we can manage. At the hight of summer, which is really only a few weeks ago, I had to have a fan blasting me at close range, even with all the windows and the skylight open. All it did was blast me with warm air, but it provided some relief. Now I am happy enough with just the door open, or if it’s particularly blustery, the door closed and a couple of windows open.
Temperatures have yet to get to the point where I am looking at breaking out the hoodie, but even that is now on the horizon.
We have been quite lucky during lockdown. Until last Thursday – a week ago today – the furthest from home I’d been was for a couple, or three circuits of South Park. South Park is okay as parks go, but walking around them for the sheer sake of walking is tedious. Beyond that, I’d made a couple of forays a hundred or so yards up the road to pick up my prescriptions and that’s been that. Elle wandered into town once, to find out that by and large, anything she wanted to do couldn’t be completed, or was frustratingly complex to achieve. So we’ve not bothered. Except for last week, when we decided to take advantage of the easing of lockdown and take the train into Liverpool Street, and mooch around London a while.
Even in late lockdown, London is a strange place. I wish we’d braved it during lockdown proper to see it completely empty, but as it was, off the main thoroughfares the place was largely deserted and even the busier places felt more like a quiet provincial town during half-day closing. If I can find somewhere to host a few pictures so that I can link to them, I might put something up in a later post. There are some across on Face Book, if you’re interested (and have access), but it might be nice, in time, to decorate a page here, like the old days.
I doubt that we will repeat the exercise anytime soon, however. Whilst we remain blessedly Covid-free (indeed free from any ailment!), other, underlying conditions make me vulnerable, so I do not feel the need to place myself in a position where I can catch something too frequently.
If the Great British Public actually played fair, this should not be too much of a consideration. To be fair, the majority do follow advice and follow the distancing rules, wear masks and so forth, but there is a significant minority who are happy to wear a mask around their neck and pretend to themselves and the world that they are following the rules. So, we continue to shield.
Quite how I would have coped if this had all happened while I lived in Clapham, I do not know, or indeed how we would have coped whilst living in Whetstone. The ‘Athenaeum’ as we called it would have probably been easier to survive in on account of the space, but the second flat was about the same size as The Gin Palace, but without a garden, and I think that it access to that garden that has kept us sane. We are relatively self-contained and lockdown hasn’t been the chose for us that it has been for many and being able to sit outside, do a bit of gardening, or just drink cider out there, has helped.
A summer winds down, we’ve bought a gazebo. We might get some autumnal (and spring) use out of it, so we can enjoy the outdoors a little longer, as this all spins on.
(no subject)
Date: 2020-08-27 03:09 pm (UTC)Summer's fleeing our part of Scotland fast. The mists, if not the mellow fruitfulness of Autumn has definitely kicked in. Yesterday we had to have the heating on.
(no subject)
Date: 2020-09-01 12:53 pm (UTC)We have been so glad that we chose to move out of London into a house with garden and fields last year. We used lockdown to build a 750m3 lake, which has filled up in the recent storms and has been planted with hundreds of pond plug plants.
We are hoping for a bit more warmth, to dry out the fields where the lake overflowed, so that we can rotovate and sow a wildflower meadow.