Sunday 31 January 2021
Covid Update on a Sunday afternoon
Friday 29 January 2021
Archeology and bird boxes
We all watched a lovely film this evening. It’s called “The Dig” and it’s based on the true story of the discovery of the Sutton Hoo burial ship and treasure. It has a star-studded and excellent cast including Ralph Fiennes and Carey Mulligan, and it has everything you could wish for - history and archeology and treasure and friendship and romance and sadness and war and happiness. It was great. All credit to James for choosing it. At the end Cat said that she was emotionally exhausted and so was I! We had to play a couple of rounds of University Challenge to recover our equilibrium.
In other news, James was given a bird box camera by Ally and Cat for Christmas, for the bird boxes that he has recently made. He was delighted with this, and has especially installed an internet booster that can reach the top of the garden, so that hopefully in the springtime we will be able to watch baby birds hatching and being fed inside the bird box.
Thursday 28 January 2021
Pollok Park in the rain
Wednesday 27 January 2021
Burns Supper Lockdown Style
Sunday 24 January 2021
Cosy Afternoon
Friday 22 January 2021
Happy lockdown birthday James
Wednesday 20 January 2021
Inauguration
Sunday 17 January 2021
Sunny Sunday
Wednesday 13 January 2021
Art Class
I have resisted joining any online classes during our ongoing lockdowns (I count this as our third but of course we have never been completely “unlocked”) This is because I enjoy being in a class with other people rather than just seeing them on a screen. I loved my French class last year. However, since there still seem to be weeks ahead of lockdown, I accepted Catherine’s invitation to join an online Art class. This afternoon was my first class, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. It was on Zoom, so I could see my classmates, a couple of whom I already knew. The teacher is called Nina and she demonstrated various methods of painting and then people showed work that they have done. The two hours flew by and I think I’m going to like it. I would still prefer to attend a class in person though.
The Covid news is still not good - 1564 more deaths today, which is the highest daily total since the pandemic began. But apparently the number of admissions to hospital is beginning to drop, probably thanks to the current stricter lockdown, so hopefully the tide is slowly beginning to turn.
Tuesday 12 January 2021
New Passport
Sunday 10 January 2021
Huzzah!
Saturday 9 January 2021
Winter scenes
Friday 8 January 2021
Fresh Snow
Thursday 7 January 2021
Online
Wednesday 6 January 2021
Still Cold
Tuesday 5 January 2021
A Rollercoaster of a day
Monday 4 January 2021
Burst pipe and big lockdown
Sunday 3 January 2021
Winter Walk
Ten years and two days ago, on 2nd January 2011, Ewan started his blog. (I didn’t start mine until two months later, inspired by Ewan.) He mentioned this in his blog post today, and noted that the four of us had a New Year’s meet up exactly a decade ago. And ten years later, this afternoon Heather, Ewan, James and I went out for a New Year’s walk together. It was very cold and the paths at Frankfield Loch were very icy, so Heather and I were glad of our ice grips which we fitted over our trail shoes. I will tactfully draw a veil over who fell over while putting them on! We hadn’t taken a trail map and didn’t quite manage to find the correct route to our next target on the Seven Lochs trail, Bishop Loch. However it didn’t really matter; we made our way across frozen fields in the low but warming sunshine and were rewarded with sightings of roe deer and beautiful pathways and thickly frosted foliage before circling back towards Stepps. We had brought flasks and stopped for an al fresco coffee on the way, with mince pies and Christmas cake. It was a lovely afternoon.
Saturday 2 January 2021
Cold outside
When I closed the blinds before dinner our street looked absolutely freezing in the dark. The road and pavements are white with thick frost. It was cold when we went out for a circuitous walk to Burnside and back this morning, but it was sunny and pleasant to be outside.
By lunchtime we were all cosy in the front room to watch the Old Firm game on television; the annual New Year’s match between Rangers and Celtic. There was a wreath laying ceremony today because it’s the 50th anniversary of the Ibrox disaster, when 66 Rangers fans were crushed to death on the steps of one of the exit stairways. The crowd was pushing to leave the stadium and then probably someone near the front stumbled, resulting in lots of people falling and being injured or killed. As a result the new stadium was eventually built.
The football game went well for Rangers today; they won 1 - 0 which pleased the fans in our household!