Swimming will never be the same again...

...in fact, nothing, for me, will ever be the same again.

Ok, so I'm being over-dramatic, some may even say hysterical, but there's some truth to be found in my neuroses and I'm going to use swimming as an example. 

On Friday I went swimming for the first time in over a year. I hadn't realised quite how much my body had missed it but here's the thing. There were always rules like no running on the poolside and no taking photographs in the sauna, only now there are major rules. 

• Book ahead for your 45 minute slot
• 
  
  Arrive 'beach ready' (which means wearing bathing costume under clothes and remembering to take underwear for the journey home!)
• Only two people per swimming lane
• No sauna, jacuzzi or steam room
• No showering afterwards

But here's the proof, if proof were needed, that, for me, nothing will ever be the same again. About three years ago I ended up in hospital with pneumonia. I know where I caught it. I'd been swimming and went into the steam room afterwards. A guy in there was sneezing and coughing and he wasn't using the crook of his arm to catch the droplets. I should have covered my face, held my breath and dashed out of there but in typical British fashion I sat with stiff upper lip. I put up with it. I won't ever put up with anything like that again.

In spire of all the rules I did enjoy my swim and it's good to show my face out of the house at last, but I must remember to be careful... you know... hands, face space, all that sort of thing which reminds me of a recent altercation with a Twitter idiot and so:

A warning to a denialist: If you are the person who told me on Twitter that there has not been a pandemic and it was all a government plot then I am afraid you are misguided at best, an idiot at worst. I have a family member who works in an Intensive Care Unit of a large hospital so do not tell me that hospitals have had no extra patients. End of matter. I have heard more than enough of your denialist rantings. 

My Top 5 Pandemic Positives

We surely must be able to glean some good from this last year of death tolls and lockdowns so here are my top five pandemic positives, things that I would like to give thanks for. They are, in no particular order:

1.  Not having to scrape the frost off the car or even get dressed properly to attend a meeting ...thanks to zoom.

2.   Not always ending up in the slowest queue at the supermarket ...thanks to Ocado (and all the other online food suppliers).

3.  Not having to hold tightly to my bag for fear of pickpockets in a crowded area ...thanks to all the 2 metre signs and one way notices.

4.  Not having to handle cash - maybe never having to handle cash again ...thanks to contactless swiping (I know this was around before the pandemic - as was zoom and Ocado - but contactless payments are more generally accepted now even for small transactions.)

Last but most definitely not least:

5.  Not having to receive uninvited hugs plus kisses on both cheeks from men I barely know ...thanks to social distancing (and if that makes me sound like a miserable so-and-so I'm sorry but it's how I feel).

Have I missed anything? 

Are there pandemic positives that you would like to give thanks for? If so then do please share...

My contribution to World Poetry Day

March 21 is World Poetry Day.
I do hope you’ve all taken time
to ensure that your writing and clever word play
is exploding with rhythm and rhyme.

Record your to-do list in long ballad form,
leave the milkman a note in Haiku.
Your limerick emails will go down a storm.
Why not tweet out a tanka or two.

I’m planning to talk in rhyme all of today
chatting sonnets and ballads and more.
I will rap and give rhythm to all that I say
using couplets and triplets galore…

…except Mr A has asked me to please stop as it’s a tad annoying!

Looking forward - fire pits and all

There's nothing like seeing your name in print to encourage a return to the keyboard. I had been suffering from lockdown lethargy but when The Pomegranate London magazine landed on my mat last week I was proud, excited and enthused. It's a lovely magazine, quality print, illustrations, varied reading material and of course it includes my poem, The Circus Barker. Not bad for £5. As a result of this renewed enthusiasm I've submitted four poems this week and have several more just about good to go.

That doesn't mean I've not had time for other activities (with apologies for the double negative!) In the UK from March 29th we should, as long as the virus doesn't re-spike, be allowed to invite friends into our gardens for socially distanced afternoon tea - or indeed morning coffee. Leicester in April can be bitter but I'm desperate for social interaction so today I ordered a fire pit for the patio. 

Initially I thought it sounded like something from a Roman arena with battling lions and slaves but internet images have put my mind at rest. I might also order a chimnea - those pot-bellied affairs with a little chimney. I need to see how effective the fire pit is first. 

I must say, I am normally a careful and conservative shopper, taking days if not weeks to decide whether or not to buy new items but with the sniff of lockdown-relaxations I am afraid I have become totally reckless.

The rest of the day was spent helping Mr A with the rubbing down and painting of the patio table and chairs so that they're ready for the onslaught of visitors. All I have to do now is to find people who would like to visit!

How to keep a gratitude journal...

...or should that be 'how not to'?

A few weeks ago Daughter gave me a gift of a pink journal. It has a soft, leathery cover and is compulsively tactile. She told me it was for recording daily gratitudes. She said that this method of dealing with negative thoughts has now replaced the old 'dumping of baggage' journal, explaining that writing negatives down every night was reinforcing them in your mind. Writing gratitudes down every night will reinforce the positive. 

Reinforcing positives certainly makes sense but it took me a few weeks to get the hang of it. For a start I began by picking out events that had previously been a negative in my life but had now improved and so I could record my gratitude, for example the Covid rate going down to below 100 per 100,000 in our area. Daughter told me that this was not the idea at all. It was to find pleasing, gratifying moments. She saw the blank look on my face - I'm afraid I am something of a 'glass half empty' person - and so she gave me examples. 

    "Look Mum, how about writing it down next time you see that woodpecker at the bird feeder and the way you told me how he sends showers of seed all over the place for the smaller birds to clean up... or... or you could write about that daffodil bud in the garden, look, the way its yellow petals are just beginning to unfold. That's positive. That's gratitude."

I may have remembered the conversation slightly wrongly. Daughter will probably read this, roll her eyes and say that I've still not quite grasped how to keep a gratitude journal but I think I'm getting there. 

I saw the woodpecker again today and as for the daffodils, they're looking lovely and I had to smile at the pretty pink hellebore photobombing my daffodil shot...

Have a good week.

Counting birds

Every year when I begin my hour's count of garden birds for the RSPB's Big Garden Bird Watch I think of that TV advert, the one where the man is trying to take photos of pandas in a zoo. Nothing appears... nothing appears... nothing appears... so he turns round and eats a KitKat. Unbeknown to him pandas appear on roller skates and do crazy things behind his back. When he has finished his chocolate he turns back again and, inevitably, nothing appears. 

OK, so my bird count is not quite as bad as that but I'm convinced those birds know that I want to count them. They willing pose and posture for me as I hover by the kitchen window on any other day of the year but on bird count day the numbers are always down. 

Thankfully Woody made an appearance. He's our regular Woodpecker. He visits at least once a day with an entourage of small birds. It's soon obvious why the small birds faithfully follow him. He positions himself sideways on the bird feeder and pecks like a mad thing while his entourage sit on the ground beneath him pecking at the windfall... or should that be woodpeckerfall?!

I've contributed to the RSPB survey for many years and in the past it's always been a bit of a squeeze, juggling my many weekend commitments in order to give myself an entire hour to sit and watch and count. This year there was no such problem. I could have spent the entire morning on my hour's count...  but of course I stuck to the rules and counted for precisely one hour. My full hour's tally is below.

Once the time was up I got a tripod, the binoculars, my mobile phone and some gaffer tape. I wanted to try out something that I'd seen on last month's BBC TV Countryfile programme. It is possible to take a zoom-lens photograph using an ordinary phone camera and a pair of binoculars but the binoculars have to be securely in position, hence the gaffer tape. You move the phone around until you can see a clear dot of the image and then very slowly move it towards the binocular lens. One hand shake and the image is lost so it took me some time to get it set up. My next task was keeping still enough so that the birds returned but was it worth all the effort? I'm not sure it was.

Woody returned before I'd got the binoculars set up so this is just a click and crop photo:

And this is a coal tit who kindly posed while I faffed around trying to line up phone and binocular lens:

Verdict: It could be worth the effort but I guess I need to practice quite a bit more!!

Has anyone got any other tips for capturing images of wildlife without getting the full zoom-lens-expensive-camera kit?

My bird count tally:

• Blackbird 2
• Blackcap 2
• Goldfinch 1
• Dunnock 1
• Blue tit 2
• Robin 2
• Coal tit 2
• Woodpecker 1
• Great tit 1
• Pigeon 3
• Magpie 1
• Chaffinch 1

Not bad for a suburban garden.

Keeping amused during lockdown number 3

Lockdown number 1 was surreal. No one could quite believe what was happening but it was a glorious sunny spring and we all thought this virus nonsense would be over by summer. 

Lockdown number 2 saw me full of excitement welcoming Daughter back to Leicester. After living over 90 miles away for the best part of 20 years it was and is a joy to have her just round the corner. Once she had done the necessary isolating we bubbled and were able to help her settle in to her new home. 

Lockdown number 3 has arrived. Daughter is busy working, there's no sign of our vaccination call (not that a jab would release us instantly back to our old ways) and the weather is wet, cold and grey. So I'm trying to keep myself amused with:

The predictive text monkey: Most of our conversations are now conducted over various messaging services and so the predictive text monkey is having a field day. My friend messaged this morning to say she was off to her dramatist. There ensued a lengthy thespian exchange... Oh for a muse of fire... let slip the dogs of war... Of course it should have read dentist not dramatist but I rather fancy having an appointment with a dramatist right now. I was so meant to tread the boards, dahling!

Number awareness: I think I may be mildly dyscalculia. I've never been good with numbers but my immediate problem - and one which my Facebook friends will already be aware of - is working out sizes of food packages when doing online orders. Last week I ordered 2 kg of oats. I would never have believed that a 2 kg bag of oats could be so big or so heavy. I've made flapjacks, muesli and plenty of bowls of porridge but the bag is still so heavy that it requires both hands to lift it safely... and I'm still trying to forget the recent purchase of a large mixing bowl...

Puppy love: Yes, I've fallen in love with two dogs - two adorable internet dogs. They are Andrew Cotter's Olive and Mabel. If you haven't seen his videos on YouTube then I strongly recommend you seek them out. He is a sports presenter who, during the first lockdown, posted a video of his commentary on his two labradors eating their breakfast, building tension as to which dog would wipe his bowl clean first. It was an instant YouTube hit and he has posted many more hilarious videos since. This is a link to that first video called The Dog's Breakfast Grand Final.

Anything that makes us laugh is worth sharing right now so what is keeping you amused during Lockdown number 3?

* Update: Within an hour of publishing this blog post we were offered Covid-19 vaccination appointments for this week. Gulp!

*Update 2: I've just spotted that this is my 600th blog post - surely an excuse for some kind of cake related celebration!