Working From Home Herald

  “Yesterday was a bad day” Last Tuesday was officially a day of reflection as it marked a full year since we went into Lockdown. There have been several thousands of words written on what this has meant for many.  As a family we sat down at dinner and reflected on the past year and focussed on the positive memories from the past 12 months. A lot of it made us truly thankful. From the barbecues in the garden to splashing in the paddling pool, from the surprisingly good insular Christmas Day to the endless walks. Each of us recalled a favourite memory but when we asked Toby, he said, “It was a bad weekend.” He was of course referring to our latest walk, where we decided to try a new part of the common. It started off very nice, walking through woodland and running down steep craters and then I had the bright idea of crossing a road to enter the common on the other side.  All I can say is that it was the definition of the grass not being greener on the other side. The g...

  Christmas vibes I think I mentioned in a previous issue that one of my favourite things about Christmas morning was walking the dog. There is something magical in the air and everyone you meet are just so happy and wish you a “Merry Christmas,” it fills you with a warm glow and just happy to be alive. I am always disappointed when I next walk the dog on Boxing Day and the world reverts back to some people returning your greeting, whilst others ignore you or at best grunt. This week however it all changed. On Monday bright and early I was out with the dog. It was a chilly morning but not cold, it was bright as well, the perfect conditions for a 6am walk. The first couple I saw with their dog offered an enthusiastic greeting, the person on the other side of the road waved and by the time I saw one of my neighbours who is a Dad at Jamie’s school we broke into broad grins and both fist pumped at the same time!! Monday, of course, was the day the children went back to school. ...

  Dressing up I am not a massive fan of dressing up. Not sure why I am just not. I groan whenever I am invited to a fancy dressed party. Partly because I have loads of ideas and then do a load of research online, get my heart set on a costume and then have a sanity check just before I click the purchase button and realise I don’t want to spend £100 on a costume that I will never wear again, just so some random people can laugh for 2 minutes when I first arrive. Inevitably, I am left scrambling around for something to wear an hour before the party and turn up with an underwhelming naff costume and see the disappointment in other’s eyes when I arrive (although that could just be my arrival rather than the rubbish costume). However, last week I found myself dressing up twice: The first was for a charity event for the kids in half term to raise funds for some equipment for a local epileptic boy. One of the mums thought it would be good to conduct a masked singer contest and appro...

  The obvious joke:   We had new sofas delivered last week. We ordered them back in October and they finally arrived. The night before they came, the old ones were due to be collected and taken away.   Being the helpful couple we are, we managed to get one of the sofa’s out of the front room and into the hallway ready for the collection team. They arrived and were grateful and carted it away. They then moved onto the next one (bigger one). They lifted, they twisted and they manoeuvred as they attempted to get the sofa out of the living room door and past the stairs. They sweated, the uttered curses and exasperated they enquired whether the sofa definitely came in that way.   It was at that moment I recalled it didn’t and remembered facing a similar situation when we they were delivered and we ended up coming through the garden. Did I admit that? Of course not, Instead I insisted that it had come through that way.   After a few more minutes of s...

  Drastic measures:   I love writing. Throughout the pandemic, I have found finding time to write far harder than I normally would. It is ironic, as when the lockdowns first started, the silver-lining was that I would be working from home and so the wasted travel time could be used for more writing. That just hasn’t happened. The travel time has slowly been absorbed by work time and just like many find it hard to differentiate between work time and home time, I find it hard to switch between working on a laptop and then sitting at the same desk and suddenly writing fiction.   With me writing creatively was all about location. My desk at home was somewhere different from work, a coffee shop was different, the pub was different. All of them triggered the creative part of my brain. I’ve tried changing rooms, but it is not quite the same. There have been the odd good days but like everyone Lockdown 3 – the return of the tedium has been hard. The kids are really strugglin...