I haven’t written in the last two weeks as there hasn’t been much exciting to remind me to write! At the same time, I’ve been very busy at work and it feels like a lot longer than a week and two days that we’ve been back at school. When we arrived back in London from Battle, we had one last ‘outing’ to the Design Museum to see the ‘Electronic: From Kraftwerk to the Chemical Brothers’ exhibition. I’d been really looking forward to this but it was a bit too busy for my comfort levels, and we did a bit of a rush walk through before heading home. After that, lockdown starting on the Thursday felt a bit like a ‘long weekend’ of rest, recovery and little activities before school started back on Monday. Peter was working all weekend, so I spent a lot of time reading, sewing, drawing in my bullet journal and doing yoga.

We started the new term with not only a new (old) headteacher, with David returning, but also a review by the new CEO of the Federation on the Wednesday. It felt quite weird having external visitors, as the school has been otherwise closed to ‘outsiders’ since the start of the school year, but apparently the Federation considered this an essential exercise. We’re anticipating an OFSTED inspection (big scary school inspection) this year as we were due last year, so it was treated it as good practise for that. We all worked very long hours from Monday to Wednesday as a result, and the week felt like it went forever. It was nice to celebrate a little bit on Wednesday night with a virtual tasting event for Cloudwater Brewery, although we only watched half of it and decided to save the rest for the weekend. We had our usual movie night on Thursday night and watched Sharknado, which I felt was the perfect mix of ‘watchable’ and utterly ridiculous, perfect for making fun of over Zoom! I was thoroughly ready for the weekend by the time Friday came around, and celebrated Friday evening by making a delicious fish soup with mussels and some wine!

On Saturday morning I read in bed, one of the routines that I’ve really been enjoying on ‘lockdown weekends’ and had a slow start with breakfast. Later I went for a run, picking up some skin care products from a ‘click and collect’ store. We’d planned to go for a walk later, but the weather was horrible and rainy so I did some sewing before we finished a few episodes of Dark and then the Cloudwater tasting. I made a very tasty ‘laksa bake’ with rice and laksa paste, chicken and pumpkin for dinner, and then we did an online swing dancing class!

We started Sunday similarly, just chilling and reading in bed. I finished my book (The Miniaturist by Jessie Burton, which I really enjoyed) and did my food prep so I didn’t have to worry about it in the evening. Before lunch we headed out for a bit walk as it was sunny, heading across a very deserted London city centre to Exmouth Market. We were quite shocked when we got there at how many people were about in the street and park nearby. We’d just planned to pick up some takeaway food and two special beers from the Mikkeller Brewpub but there also happened to be a gluten free bakery so we had to grab some cakes too. Then we got out of there, as it was a bit too hectic for us, even with masks on! We ate in a park on the way home and had perfect timing, arriving back home just as it started pelting down with rain. I had one of my book clubs in the afternoon and while I had a great chat with the girls about ‘Girl, Woman, Other’, Peter prepared a slow-cooked lamb shanks dish for dinner. Once I’d hung up on the Zoom call, we played an escape game and then had some dinner. All around a pretty successful weekend full of activities, considering!

This lockdown doesn’t quite have the same vibe about it as you’re allowed to go outside for unlimited exercise/walks and people seem to be taking advantage of this, as there’s constantly people around. Similarly, lots of stores are pushing the definition of ‘essential’ and ‘takeaway food/drink’ to remain open. It’ll be interesting to see what happens to the numbers in the next few weeks, as we had a major spike late last week (30,000 cases/500 deaths a day), although they’re attributing that to people socialising in the days before lockdown began. The government is still maintaining that schools will still stay open no matter what and that the lockdown will end December 2^nd, so I guess we just have to wait and see. At the moment I’m just focusing on trying to avoid people outside of work, and that’s not too hard with running before school and all the activities at home we’re organising for ourselves on the weekend!