In the last of these ‘weekly’ posts, which turns out was in the middle of November - meaning this post covers a little more than a week, I said the week had been dubbed as uninspiring. Well, little did I know the events that would follow, namely Tier 4, the return to national lockdown and the stratospheric rise in the number of Covid cases, that would quite literally ground us either side of Christmas.
While not that much of note happened in those weeks, this post will just be a quick canter through the notable events, and even that won’t take long. I paused these posts as I was taking few photos, and that hasn’t really changed that much, but anyway.
We headed into central London in December. It was peculiar to think this was the first time I’d been in town since March, when for so long it was my daily commute, although more recently my commuter has changed to a walk, but even that hasn’t happened for a while. We’d carefully chosen a date that would give us plenty of time to self-isolate, should we need to, before meeting up with family at Christmas.
Before heading to a restaurant we headed to Fortnum & Mason to buy, our now traditional, purchase of posh mince pies. It was busy in the shop, but much less so than normal and as you’d expect with Covid-safe arrangements in place to protect everyone. Outside the streets were less busy, and we spent some time wandering about and window shopping. Our plan was always to walk from Piccadilly to Borough, mainly to save getting on a tube. We added an impromptu detour to Covent Garden along the way, taking in many of the Christmas lights. By the time we reached Borough we were more than ready for a very large steak, and a nice sit down to be honest. Neither disappointed.
Moving into Tier 4 was almost expected, I knew that the number of cases here in Greenwich was increasing. There were some lovely days before Christmas and one of those we did one of our extra-long walks to the shops, taking in the views at the top of Greenwich Park. It’s a view that is wondrous, and even better on a good day.
The same day as this fantastic view there was the ‘cancelling of Christmas’ as the papers and media would have us believe. Our Christmas wasn’t cancelled, but it was rearranged at short notice like a lot of other people. We weren’t able to go to Norfolk, and nor did we think it sensible for MOH’s mum, who lives alone, to come to us in a taxi so that needed to be factored in, along with a supermarket shop - something we rarely do, as we’ve been long-time online shoppers, topping up at a smaller local supermarket within walking distance.
Mostly we stay in for New Year’s Eve in any case, and so this year wasn’t too much different for us. Having had much success ordering with Cote at Home during the year we decided to order our favourite fougasse, Cote de Boeuf and frites and creme caramel. It was due to arrive the day before allowing for any mishaps. As it turned out it gave us time to contact them as the only common denominator between what we ordered and what arrived was the frites. And there was three boxes of them.
The people there were very helpful, but couldn’t explain what had happened. The order was similar, but not ours - there was a rib of beef, lots of frites, some roast potatoes, a chicken and bacon pie topped with mash, some gravlax and two chocolate fondants. But no wine, our order had two bottles - though thankfully we have a bottle or two we could use instead.
Like the people at Cote we were bemused, and of course at such short notice it couldn’t be redelivered and so we had the almost-but-random delivery as our meal, and with a full refund it was more than palatable, and not a bad way, all things considered, to end the year. Though we did have visions of the people who received our box going hungry, but at least having a couple of bottles of wine to help them through!
Our usual New Year’s Day is a walk which more often than not ends in a pub. This year we did neither, though we did recreate the pub feel at home, complete with beer, beer mats and pub snacks. Not quite the same, but something to do in this strangest of years, which seems to have handed over the batten to 2021 to start with. Let’s hope 2021 has more about it and gets back on track.
You’ve probably also noticed that it’s been quieter on here than usual, that’s partly because before Christmas my day job was super-busy, even busier than it had been before and also because after a long day on my laptop for work the last thing I wanted to do was spend time on my laptop for pleasure. My plan was to catch up and get ahead over the longer Christmas break, but actually taking a complete break worked much better. I spent a fair amount of time crafting, including picking up my patchwork quilt, which turned out to be the first time in two years and crocheting, as I’m sure you guessed. I didn’t quite get around to starting a rag rugging project, or some lettering, but that’s true to form - I’ve always more than I can actually do on my to do lists, but at least I know this!
Usually at the start of the year I’ll look back at my posts over the previous year, and I fully intend to do that - they will of course be different this year, and need some work to make happen, but after umming and ahhing about whether to or not, I’ve decided that last year should be marked as any other would be, and what it shows could be interesting in itself - the data nerd in me is almost looking forward to what it might uncover.