mayday!
And so it continues, although the very welcome email from HMRC with details of the finally-upcoming SEISS grants announced a few weeks back brightened my day up no end (the online tool for anybody who wants to check eligibility for themselves is here, btw).
Living with nothing coming in and no idea when there may next be anything coming in (and nobody to ask, since nobody else has any idea either) while you watch what reserves you have shrink is pretty shit challenging, but we can only make the best of it and fortunately I had no end of practice in my younger days, even though it definitely didn’t feel fortunate at the time. Roll on May 13th, and fingers crossed we can all can start to breathe out a bit. And the sun is shining!
Now that the weather has brightened up I’ve had a lovely week getting through a couple of good books in front of an open window (a novelty in itself for somebody unused to being above the ground floor) and some gentle, low effort runs around the temporarily super-peaceful City streets. The running has been slow enough to allow me to further investigate my new neighbourhood and it’s many interesting features – my current favourites are the skulls above the gateway to St Olave’s churchyard just off Fenchurch Street, the bottom bit of the Scalpel building at Lime Street (which I have walked past from a couple of streets away many times and never actually found before) and a public ashtray that looks like a Cyberman – yay! I have no doubt there will be many more.
The weekend sunshine seemed appropriate for a more traditional stroll down to Trafalgar Square – the original plan was to try a bike from the docking station in the next street, but we’re not quite there yet. A quick river crossing later and I was set for a slow amble home again along the South Bank (largely unaffected people-wise compared with any other weekend afternoon apart from the taped off benches); the ambling became noticeably quicker about forty minutes after setting off when I remembered that the hotels were all closed, I’d had two mugs of tea plus a big glass of water before leaving the flat, and I am a middle aged woman. Thankfully Waterloo station and it’s facilities remain open. Relief is not the word.
The combination of time, a well equipped kitchen and a flour delivery has also allowed me to throw myself into the baking with aplomb and in a single day I managed to knock out bread rolls (the only thing I remembered to take a picture of), mini coffee cakes and apple kuchen, thanks in no small part to my washer dryer and it’s warm and cosy cupboard housing which has provided a dough-proving and butter-softening environment that would be the envy of anybody wanting to bake just about anything. I will certainly be keeping it up when I get back (and also the running, since the former really necessitates the latter if I’m still going to fit through the door, let alone into my work clothes when the time comes).
As everyone knows, you can have too much of a good thing and since there is little more I can do here for now and home is beckoning, tomorrow morning I will be heading back to Scarborough for a few weeks of more R&R by the sea. With a bit of luck the next time I return we’ll be permitted to keep some company, but either way I’ll be back around the end of the month if not before, and in anticipation of this have carefully stashed more Pringles, Snickers and a pack of Mr Kipling pies in the carb cupboard to welcome myself. I will also have some new pictures organised to (hopefully) cheer everybody up, assuming I can actually fit in the frame by then (I’m not kidding either; I tried to put on a non sports bra earlier for the first time in weeks, and the process was like trying to cram two water filled balloons into a pair of trainer socks). I’m also hoping to hear from my hairdresser soon, and I suspect I’m not the only one – I’ve noticed even in the limited time I’ve been out and about that the Eighties are definitely back.
Given the time being spent with wooden spoon and mixing bowl in hand, a kitchen singsong has been the order of the day many times over and there is surely no better place to start cheering oneself up than the Aretha Franklin back catalogue (before moving on to Dinah Washington and Sarah Vaughan, but I digress). Kitchen singsong = before 5pm, kitchen disco = after 5pm unless it’s the weekend. I don’t make the rules.
We’ll all have a bit more to work with on Sunday I’m told – until then, more Netflix (this week I shall be mostly watching Legally Blonde, Finding Nemo and After Life 2), and more cake.
Update soon!
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