Category: Pic of the week

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Jab!

Pic of the week 14/3/21

Today I had my Covid jab.

I had the AstraZenca jab at the West Mendip Hospital,

Was thinking it would still be another week or so until we Cat 9s (50 to 55 yr olds) could start booking our jabs, but on Thursday I got a text from the surgery, I booked my slot for today, turned up and, within 10 mins of parking up, I’d been jabbed. Locally, we are obviously doing well as nationally it is still only cat 8s that are getting the jab.

A huge achievement – perhaps humanities greatest in my lifetime? A year ago, it was becoming obvious that the virus was going to impact us, one year on and I’ve had my jab.  Becky gets hers tomorrow. It is the one good thing that we are doing as a nation and I hope that it won’t be too long (June, perhaps?) by the time the children get theirs.

So far, no side effects other than a big grin and a sense of hope.

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New job (role)

Pic of the week 7/3/21

First up, its hard to believe that March has arrived (and we are now a week into it) – I think one of the features of lockdown is losing a sense of time; it feels like we are in a perpetual February. (After last week’s lovely  weather, this last week has been cold and grey, although the sun has shone today.)

The week began with me being told I had got one of the new roles, so as of September I shall be an “AHOS” – assistant Head of Section in the middle school (basically Head of Year 10 ). A little more money, a little less teaching and a lot of extra work I suspect!  After the roller-coaster of the process I must admit I am pleased, and beginning to come to terms with the idea.

Tomorrow sees us start back in school for two weeks, and I must admit I am looking forward to it. It’ll be good to see other people, to break the groundhog of remote learning, and also a sense of change, a sense that, perhaps, things are getting back to normal.

The pic of the week shows some visitors that we have discovered hovering up spilt bird food on the deck.  Not surprisingly, Becky is not keen on these little fellas and so the bird food has been moved well away from deck, and poison placed under the deck. (I did fish out some mouse traps I had in the shed, but decided not to deploy them when I almost suffered a broken finger that nearly got caught whilst trying to set one of the traps.)

On Friday evening a cat got run over on the road outside our house. Becky and a work colleague (who was in the car behind the murder weapon) moved the cat to the bank outside Elmhurst school and I put a message on All New Spotted. By the morning it was gone.

 

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A new hope?

Pic of the week 28/2/21

Two significant events this week …

  1. The weather turned. It’s stopped raining, its warmed up and the sun has shone, and …
  2. on Monday Boris Johnson announced that all children are to return to school from the 8th of March.

The latter led our Head to change tack, and (physically) re-open the school from Monday 8th. Combined, both have led to a sense of hope and excitement, a sense that different days are coming.

So one more week of remote learning, and then two weeks of school, before the Easter holidays.  I think it is the relentless “groundhog-ness” of remote teaching that makes its so difficult, so to have an end in sight has, in me at least, generated an excitement that has been lacking for a while.

This time next week I’ll be polishing my shoes!

(In other news, I took advantage of the good weather today to mow the lawn for the fist time this season.)

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Half Term

Pic of the week 21/2/21

And so half term draws to a close …

Nothing major to write home about – after all, we’re still in lockdown 3, so there’s not much you can do – but I definitely needed the week off.

I’ve run a few times – did another 10K today: little/no wind and on the flat sections was starting to post a semi-respectable time.

On Thursday Becky & I went for a long (10K) walk – very pleasant, and even enjoyed some warm spring sunshine on the skin. But, about fifteen minutes from “home” (the car) the sky went black and hail lashed down. It was painful – particularly when a blob of ice would strike the tip of an ear!

On the whole, the weather has warmed up this week, but it has been fairly wet throughout. However, when the rain stays away you do get a sense that spring may be round the corner – the days are lengthening and bushes and trees are starting to bud up.

The decision has been made to shorten this term by a week and add it on to the summer term. So only four weeks more of the groundhog of remote teaching: coupled with the improving weather, a sense of hope is beginning to permeate my world. (Although the 7 week first half of the summer term will be long!)

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10K

Pic of the week 7/2/21

Its been strange week, Tuesday was (actually) Groundhog Day and it certainly lived up to its name. A low point in lockdown – weather was cold and damp, everything was just “bluhh” and everyone in the house was just fed up. But this is the key – recognising when you reached the nadir, so you do something to lift you from the gloom and despondency. I ran on Wednesday lunchtime, only 5K but everything was better after that. Music is my other route out of the doldrums, but running is better; I think I am addicted to endorphins.

On Saturday morning I went for a lovely long walk with Becky, walking to essentially the corner of Ham Wall.  Although cold, the sun shone and the spirits lifted. A lockdown bonus is that I would never have known some of the places that exist on our doorstep.

And today I went for my Sunday morning run. I was planning on doing my 7K, with a possible 1K extension, but for the first time since my back injury, running was becoming easy again, so I did my full 10K. Not swift, but managed a sub 50 and, despite the last two Ks being a little difficult,  it was a bit more like the cruise of old. Looked back at my stats for last year and I first ran 10K on 23rd Feb, in a time (slightly) slower than today’s so that’s encouraging – I perhaps haven’t regressed as much as I feared.

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Winter is here

Pic of the week 31/1/21

We are in the grips of winter. The pic above was from a week ago, when we awoke on Sunday to a lovely snowy scene that then soon turned grey, cold and damp. Today we’ve had more snow – a lot has fallen, big, wet flakes, but its not settled, and has now stopped, but it did enough to dampen any opportunity to do much outdoors today.

On the metaphorical (rather than metrological) front we have entered a big freeze – I’ve been told that my AHoY role is to be scrapped. On the one hand, I’m not completely surprised, but on the other hand I am rather miffed. In part because of the “process” – I don’t think it is being done properly, in part due to the significant finacial hit I will have to take, and partly it means going back to square one, and one has to question what is the point of being a “good teacher” and doing all that one does. Given the stage of life that it is happening, it is a significant event and could well be pivotal in my relationship with my career and Millfield School for years to come – perhaps it will now just be a job, my relationship with the school purely mercenary and I prostitute myself for money, and nothing else.  Time will tell.

Running: January draws to a close with me struggling to average 5mins a km. The good news is that I am now running again – its tough, certainly not the cruise around town it was before I hurt my back, but I did manage an 8Km run today which is progress. I’ve run 46 Km this month – not bad, I now need to look to increase that significantly next month. My weight is stubburnly sticking at around the 13 stone 4 pound mark: with lockdown, it may just be a case of accepting this post-Christmas/bad back weight for longer, until lockdown eases and general movement increases. But I must guard against any move northwards.

Some good news: this last week saw Dad, David & Anne, and Granny W all get vaccinated, looking forward to the day that I join their ranks.

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Haircut

Pic of the week 24/1/21

So we are three weeks into the latest lockdown, and its been five weeks since we had our haircut, so on Saturday the clippers came out.

All was going well until:

Oops!

(or, more truthfully, something a little stronger).

Admiring her handiwork, Becky felt the front needed a little more off so she took up the clippers and applied them to the top of my head, having forgotten that she had taken off the guard to tidy up my neck and ear hairs.

So just behind my fringe I have a barren patch.

My fringe/quiff acts as a barrier, and front on, the calamity can’t been seen. But look from above, and there it is – a patch of pink scalp in amongst a see of grey hair.

The good news is is that lock-down looks like its going to last for quite some time so I’m sure it will have grown back before I’m allowed back out in public.

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Birds

Pic of the week 17/1/21

(I was going to call this post “Nice Tits” but figured that might get me into trouble)

So lockdown continues, remote teaching continues, and one needs to seek out alternative hobbies and interests in these alternate times. Becky has taken to feeding birds in the back garden, with her feeding stations set up to provide good photo opportunities.  I must admit, I too enjoy looking at the birds and have put a couple of feeders outside my window in the hope of attracting some feathered friends to watch whilst I teach.

One of my “new” hobbies is tinkering with the cars – well, more than just tinkering, fault finding and rectifying. The Micra has begun to make the most dreadful noise – a rattling shriek. Anyway, after some fault diagnosis today, my suspicions were confirmed and the problem is the alternator bearings. I think it will need a new alternator ( I don’t think it will be possible to replace the bearings). Not a difficult job in terms of complexity, but access will make it blummin’ difficult. More research needed.

Hummed and hah-ed about running today, but glad I did. Still slow – I can only manage 7K, and average about 5mins a K, but did feel so, so much better for it afterwards. And my back feels a lot better, to. I think that maybe now the aches and pains I am still getting in my back are from sitting at my computer for most of the day.

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Adios 2020, y bienvenidos 2021

Pic of the week 3/1/21

So farewell (and some may say good riddance) to 2020, and welcome 2021.

2020 was an “unprecedented*” year, in early January we begun to hear of a strange new virus in the Wuhan province of China,  by February it was on Europe’s shores and beginning to enter the collective conscious, by March we were in full lockdown. Unprecedented times.

(*I think unprecedented must be the word of 2020, utter so often to describe the new world we found ourselves living in. Covid 19, coronavirus and furlough also all deserve a mention.)

Sophie came home, holidays and exams were cancelled, and my best buy of the year was a pair of fleece lined walking trousers. It began with our evening Boris walks, but has developed into a new normal (another pair of words worthy of mention) with Becky & I regularly striding out into the hills, to take the fresh air and gaze at the beauty of the countryside in which we live.

I started learning Spanish, and begun a weekly “chat” with Daniel – my Spanish tutor in Mexico – and I also ran over a one thousand kilometres. Looking back at the blog, I begun the year with a calf strain, and I finished the year with a really bad back injury – in the last week of the Christmas term I could barely walk, and it has taken me the holidays to recover. I did run today – and feel so much better for it – managing 7Km in 35 min 23 secs, a v. poor showing, but not surprising after a month of inactivity and Christmas weight gain; hauling my lard-ass frame around my 7K route was not easy this morning, but I am delighted that I was able to do it with no serious after effects. In fact, many parts of me feel a whole lot better, many niggles and aches and pains have disappeared.

So what does 2021 hold?

Who knows, but a rocky few months to begin with, I’m sure.

Although term starts this week, (Wednesday), we are beginning the week teaching remotely with Y11 and U6th starting back face to face on Monday 11th Jan, with all students in on the 18th. That’s the current plan, but I don’t see the plan lasting. Cases continue to surge and many people (myself included) think schools should not be going back yet. I expect (another) government u-turn before the end of the week.

On a more positive note, we do now have a vaccine, but we are hearing worryingly little about the gov.’s plan to get us all vaccinated. This could and should be a game changer, get it (the logistics right) and come Easter the back of Covid could be broken, ready for the return of the better weather.

So what are my goals for the year?

Other than the immediate, obvious and tangible: get my weight back under 13 stone, and get back to comfortably running 10K in sub 49 mins, I’m not sure I have any. I think the year is too unpredictable to make any resolutions. I’m enjoying work – hope that continues -, have been enjoying walking and I must make sure that continues, I hope to get some overseas sun (and culture) at some point.

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Christmas ’20!

Pic of the week 27/12/20

For many, this would have been a very different Christmas, Covid Christmas with strict limitations on how many families could mix (two) in one household. But for us, that was always the plan for this year, as it has been for the last few years.

And it was, once again, a great Christmas.

We rose at a sensible hour, settling down for breakfast at around 9 am, and opening the first gifts from our Christmas bags. Back in October, we all agreed to not spend (waste) lots of money buying gifts that the recipients may not want or like, so we created a few categories, drew lots and then you bought gifts for everyone from your two categories.  It was fun, probably a lot more targeted and, on the whole, everyone was happy with most of what they received. (The exception was Becky’s top/t-shirt. I was drawn to buy her this, and it quickly became apparent why, in 25 years of marriage, I have nvere bought her clothing. She wasn’t impressed, but hopefully we’ve created a memory that will be shared by the family long after the T-shirts have been worn for the final time.)

We ate like kings* and enjoyed each other’s company throughout the day. A good Christmas!

(*I do now need to take action – after three weeks** of inactivity due to my back injury, coupled with gorging like a gorgon over the festive period I am becoming “gordo” and need to start shedding some pounds – the boxing day scales had me tipping 13 stone 5 pounds.)
(** Yesterday I went for my first run since November. I did 5Km in a slow time, not sure if it was OK for my back: it was a bit sore at times during the day, but today has been fine. Went for a longish walk today, and did some yoga on my return and all is feeling good. Shan’t run tomorrow (tutoring) but aim to pound out a few miles on Tuesday.)