Keeping busy!

There's not a lot going on around here, for obvious reasons. Even though lockdown has eased a little since Saturday, we still can't mix with other people, although we are now free to go out shopping, as non-essential shops are slowly opening up. Bars, restaurants and gyms will remain closed until 20 January at least (ouch) and my various classes are still off limits until then, although the yoga teacher has sent round classes for us to do and I can log on to do a pilates "zoom" class if I want to. Trouble is, I don't really want to - zoom just doesn't seem to do it for me! From what I understand they are hoping to get our Italian classes going again shortly via remote - there's not really much else they can do is there but at least they're trying! So since we're still in semi-lockdown I thought I should get my act into gear and tackle some of the UFOs (unfinished objects) that have been hanging around here since forever!

So with that I pulled a card table up to one of the sofas in the TV room and finally opened up the "wasgij" puzzle I bought about six months ago. If you remember, a wasgij is "jigsaw" backwards, which means the picture you see on the front of the box only slightly resembles the finished puzzle. It's a bit painful to start with but it gets more interesting as you get more pieces in. Actually, André and I were having lunch yesterday and I saw him sidling over to the wasgij and try to find a few "obvious" pieces, so I'm thinking I might buy him one for Christmas, although who knows if he will ever give it a shot. I doubt it somehow!

Knitting bag - finally finished!

Quilt - unfinished - a recurring nightmare!

Jen would like me to make this bag for her - 
not even started!

Darn it, I have so many things I could be doing (should be doing, really) that if I don't do it now, during lockdown and with winter on the horizon, when will I do it? A friend and I also bought a couple of cross-stitch projects about three years ago, so I pulled one of them out to finally get started on it. What a nightmare. You start in the middle of the fabric with cross-stitch so I stitched in the letters "O", "P" and "Q", but now I've started on the teddy bear in the car it's starting to look like a big ball of knotted thread plonked on top of a car. It's much trickier than it looks!

Sorting the thread!

There are three sheets like this. Already
the teddy driving the car looks more like a cow pat!

I've just finished reading a book called One Man and His Bog, which was written in 1986 and describes the author's hike along the Pennine Way in England. It's extremely well written and very funny, but to be honest there's only so much you can say about trudging through 250 miles of bog isn't there!

So now it's on to Michelle Obama's book Becoming (I've had it for a year already)! I've only just started it but I very much like the fact that she came from a poor background and made her way in life through intelligence and sheer grit. Of course marrying Barack didn't exactly hold her back either but I sense that she is a woman who was always going to be a success even without Barack in her life!

In other news, the oven that I bought just over two years ago started playing up (I bought it 30 months ago to be exact, so no longer under guarantee), so I dashed out today and ordered a new one, which should be delivered on Monday. The old one was a Whirlpool and I have to say I wasn't at all impressed with it from the very beginning, so the fact that it's just conked out after such a short time just confirms to me that I won't ever be buying Whirlpool anything ever again!

Other than that, there's not an awful lot new here. We've been keeping the walking up every day, if not all four of us then at least me and one other person, so that's a plus. Then today I saw John's post over at Going Gently reminiscing about Christmases past and what were your best/funniest memories of Christmas? We first moved to D.C. in 1985 after we got married and the Marine Corps shipped my furniture but it took over four months to get there so my then-husband and I spent four months with no furniture. I remember on Christmas Eve we went to the cinema to see White Nights with Mikhail Baryshnikov and Gregory Hines, and featuring Lionel Ritchie singing Say You, Say Me. It was a great movie and when we came out it had started to snow - something that didn't happen that often in D.C. It was a truly magical evening. For Christmas lunch we had spag bol on paper plates sitting on the floor. We had nothing and yet we were happy! Funny how that works isn't it. Another Christmas, when I was just a little kid in junior school, unbeknownst to me my parents had bought me an upright piano and hidden it in the garage at the back of the houses. Now these were council houses (subsidized rental for poor families) and the garages were not attached to the house but round the back and down a sloping road. After I had gone to bed that night they tried pushing my piano up from the garages but it had started to snow. My sister's description of my dad and my brothers trying to push that bloody piano uphill in the snow was like something out of The Keystone Cops but it's a sweet memory nonetheless!

And finally, about 10 minutes ago I got a call from my ex to tell me that his cousin, Danny, died yesterday from covid after a four week stint in ICU!!! Bloody hell! The expression "only the good die young" certainly applies here as he was one of the kindest, gentlest men you could ever wish to meet. The sad thing is that his wife and family hadn't been able to sit with him all the while he was in hospital and like so many others he died alone! His daughter just posted that when they were clearing out his papers at the hospital they found a note to them saying "Peace and love, see you in heaven"! RIP Danny!

A right pea souper!

I'm so glad my neighbour set up our little Whasapp group for a few of us to meet up to go walking. I've been out every day this week and am loving it as I love walking in the cold weather. Today we ended up plodding through the woods for around 90 minutes. Don't tell Mr. Macron as it's supposed to be for an hour or less, but as my neighbour couldn't keep up we ended up taking longer than we thought! It's been cold and sunny, if a little foggy early in the day but that soon picks up and it's just perfect to my mind. And would you believe it, on 19th November I actually passed my 1,000 miles in 2020! I'm dead pleased because it hasn't been easy with all the restrictions. Since I knew I'd make it I sent off for my medal and certificate a while ago - and I'm going to hang the darn thing on the wall right next to the cycling proficiency certificate I got when I was seven!

I wore my medal to go out walking with my neighbours today and they cracked up laughing!

It's just a bit of fun really but I'm definitely signing up again next year and maybe aiming for 1,500 miles (2,000 would be wonderful, so who knows)! As I was about to head out I mentioned to André that it's around this period that the firemen stop by to sell their calendars for next year and if they did happen to come by while I was out I always leave cash in a bowl by the front door just in case. It's always one of the local lads that knocks on my door and he's an old friend of my kids. So I told him if "Zoreille" ("Ears") knocks, to take that cash and buy one off him! I think he's kind of hoping Zoreille does stop by because they haven't seen each other for years!

There isn't much on TV that interests me at the moment (or ever really) but last night I was watching Saving Lives at Sea, which features rescues carried out by the RNLI (Royal National Lifeboat Association). They are my favourite UK charity, are self-funding (because they want to organize themselves as they see fit) and manned by volunteers. Well last night they featured an incident where an idiot had gone out surfing during Storm Ciara and got into difficulty. The Hastings' lifeboat was launched and after over an hour searching in horrendous conditions they got word that the surfer had somehow washed ashore some six miles down the coast. All well and good for him, but then the lifeboat had to try to get back ashore during a storm and avoiding an approach to the beach that was known as "the washing machine"! It was stomach churning to watch their attempts to get back to land, and at one point a massive wave knocked the boat onto its side - and all this while the men were wearing bodycams and we could see what they were experiencing! Thankfully the boat righted itself and they ended up making it safely to the lifeboat station in Eastbourne. They made me laugh though because at the end they said the reason they were desperate to get back into Hastings was because they knew they'd have a cup of tea waiting for them!

Hastings lifeboat!

The idiot who nearly cost the lifeboat crew their lives!

I mentioned recently that I've finally signed up to Netflix and have started watching The Crown. In the episode I was watching last night the story developed around the 1952 "pea souper" smog that hung over London for three days killing thousands of people. Using Churchill's inability (or unwillingness) to deal with this crisis (remind you of anyone?) they tried to introduce a vote of no-confidence to oust him. Britain is often foggy (I'd say that's an understatement) but a convergence of unusual weather conditions and the fact that most people heated their homes using coal meant that the acid smog was basically trapped over the city and many thousands of people died. They refer to these fogs as "pea soupers" and at best they are depressing. At worst, as they saw, they can be deadly! Mind you, as André said after having been to Delhi, we in the west have nothing to complain about compared to some parts of the world where you can actually taste the sulphur in the air!

A "pea souper" in London!

The 1956 Clean Air Act was passed as a result of this incident, but even so when I was growing up these were pretty normal. I will never forget one time, though, when I must have been about 13, we had the densest pea souper I had ever experienced and to top it off all the street lights were out. I remember having to walk the couple of miles from the school bus back up to home by feeling my way along hedges and railings in the dark, dark fog. I knew that route inside out, of course, but it was so scary nonetheless! Not that you would have guessed it by my mom's reaction, which was more or less "oh there you are, what took you so long?" but then, as Bill Cosby used to say, "our parents walked five miles to school each day, uphill, both ways", but I do remember being so frightened! We were asked to write a story about it in school shortly after that. What I wrote was crap but my friend wrote a beautiful short story which ended with "and a blind man walked me home"! She went on to become a teacher, as you might imagine!

In other news President Macron went on television last night and since the rate of infection is heading in the right direction he will cautiously allow all shops to open as from this Saturday, although attestations will continue to be required and masks, of course, remain mandatory. The big difference as far as I'm concerned is that we can now travel up to 20 km from home to exercise and can take up to three hours to do so. It's pretty selfish that that's what I'm concerned about but .... Then, on 15 December, if things are still going in the right direction, cinemas and so on will be allowed to open up, although gyms, restaurants and bars will remain closed at least until 20 January!!!! I guess it's a start and much as I hate it I do feel he's right to be more cautious this time round, however much the French call him an idiot who doesn't know what he's doing! Frankly would any of you want to be responsible for making that call? I know I wouldn't! He also stated categorically that although the vaccine should be available shortly there will be no mandatory vaccination. Thought as much, although how any (democratic) government could force over 60 million people to be vaccinated is beyond me anyway. Just scaremongering I guess!

Like everyone else's I'll be glad when (if?) we can get back to a more normal life and am really looking forward to next spring. That being said, I took some stuff up the garden to my composter and when I came back to the house I caught sight of myself in the window. Damn! The legs of my sweat pants had ridden up over my socks and I looked a dead ringer for Eminem! Ha, I always thought his name was "M&M" so I did wonder who "Einaman" (as I called him) was that I read so much about in the papers! I put André's baseball cap on sideways and fished out my 1,000 miles medal and André burst out laughing. I think it's time I got out of these four walls before I go completely insane!

Eeww!

My bloody computer seemed to have screwed up my "favourites" file today, it was just such a mess to find anything. At one point it seemed to indicate that I had 563 "favourites" - no way! So after lunch I started messing around trying to get everything back into some sort of order and managed to get them back in an alphabetical format so I thought I'd just start deleting those I hadn't looked at in ... well, forever I guess. I reckon I deleted about 100 files and now I'm much happier with how things look. Then just as I was finishing up a neighbour sent me a Whatsapp request. She's decided to set up a "lockdown walking group" and so three of us ended up going out for an hour's walk together this afternoon. The weather is glorious, if cold, and it was so lovely to just get out there and breath some fresh air!

Like most people I have certain blogs and FB groups that I follow. One of the FB groups I got into after my husband left me so you can imagine the kinds of stories that are on there. Today, however, one of the male members of the group sent round a post basically saying "ok, so you got dumped after how many years of marriage, but what is it you are soooooo thankful that you never have to put up with again?" OMG!!!! By the time I'd finished scrolling through over 350 comments only about five of them were from "dumped husbands" as far as I could see. Some of the comments were so gross I wouldn't write them here but .... The guys tended to write "she would make a cup of tea and just dump the teabag on the kitchen cabinet", or "she always moaned at me about the state of the house, all the while sitting on her backside messaging her affair partner"! But the comments from the women!!!! "My ex only used to brush his teeth once a week. When I commented one time that it wasn't fair to his employees he just said he was going to drink coffee before he got to work so they wouldn't notice". Then the guy that only took a shower once a month, having to wipe snot rockets off the shower wall, the toenail clippings on the kitchen counter (if she was lucky and if he hadn't already eaten them). Another lady's husband was a lay preacher and as soon as they opened the front door he dropped to his knees and said "thank you God" and other prayers, but he had to say each one 10 times and each one lasted about a minute. Never mind that she was struggling to carry in the baby or the groceries and that the older children would have to step over his splayed legs to bring their school stuff in. Given that this guy was also screwing around I guess it gives a whole new meaning to the words "lay preacher" doesn't it! Oh they were so gross - but the ones I've posted here are tame compared to the worst. Makes you wonder doesn't it. And oddly enough it would seem one of the main reasons that your spouse just had to cheat on you was because you stack the dishwasher all wrong. I was guilty of this apparently so it's no wonder I'm still single isn't it!

Anyway, all this to say, I was on zoom with some old friends this afternoon and we were chatting about scam phone calls/emails and so on, and I mentioned the "die boomer, die" troll doing the rounds in blogland at the moment. Well it turns out my friends didn't know I had a blog (why would they?) and asked to read it. So under strict confidentiality conditions I'm going to send them the link. Say hi to Janet, Patters and Maureen if you get a chance!

Not sure how I feel about that!

I had a call from my old friend yesterday for a catch up - not that there's much to catch up with at the moment is there. I mean, if you're not going out and not seeing people! G was the girl I met at the hotel my first night in Geneva when our employer flew us both out on temporary contracts. She stayed with our employer for a couple of years and then moved to the World Health Organisation, from where she retired a few years ago. She had gone ahead and requested French citizenship way before me and had her final interview about 18 months ago so I asked if she had had any news. She said not (not that that's surprising at the moment as everything is delayed), but said "she was slightly concerned about the proposal to make the new covid vaccine mandatory and how it might affect future administrative decisions"! Say what? I hadn't heard that, but then again I don't have French TV so ... again, no surprise there. When she asked how I felt about that I said I wouldn't like it at all. Heck I never got the annual flu vaccine which was offered free at work because it's just not my thing. Thankfully I've only ever had the real flu once in my life so maybe that's why. So I looked it up, and apparently a French politician has proposed making it mandatory and has received support from several others. When I started reading about it, for me personally, I think the French will have another revolution if they try to make it mandatory and I honestly don't see it going too far. I mean, Liberté, égalité, fraternité starts with "liberté" doesn't it!  So I asked G why she felt the same way. She said that when she retired she had been working in one of the "vaccine units" of WHO and knew that it took two to three years for the side effects of such vaccines to be known! And I'm with her on that one. So I mentioned it to André (who had already heard) and he said "yeah, that's why the CEO of Pfizer sold off over 60% of his stock when the vaccine was heralded a success"! Make of that what you want - and I'm not saying anything negative about it - it's just that I feel it's too much of a new vaccine for me to want to rush to the front of the queue to get it as yet, even if it means continuing to live the way I live for a while longer!

https://www.businessinsider.fr/us/pfizer-ceo-sold-stock-6-million-30-percent-compensation-vaccine-2020-11

From today's Sky News

Yet again last night André forgot to lock the door when he came in from outside so yet again I told him we could have been "murrrderred" in our beds. At that he did his impression of Private Fraser from Dad's Army. I can't win with this kid!

There's a big hoo-har in France right now about whether we wait until 1 December to ease the restrictions, because businesses are pushing back, saying that they would at least like to be given the chance to make some money from Black Friday if they can - although I never thought Black Friday had caught on much over here. Well it certainly hadn't when I was in Italy this time last year. Aaahhh Italy - seems like a dream to me now! I know what I want to get for the kids for Christmas so I'm looking forward to being able to go out and get that sorted, plus I want to get myself a chainsaw at the local DIY place before my 10% discount offer runs out. But more than that, what I really want to go out and buy is new socks. Mine have pretty much had it. The thin ones aren't suitable for walking and the thicker ones are all starting to look like this (the legs too)! Never thought I would get so excited about the prospect of buying socks!

Picture courtesy of Dreamstime.com

I made garlic mushrooms yesterday and as there are some left I'm going to use them up to make stuffed baked potatoes for lunch. After that off for my walk and I'll try to do a bit of sewing, although I really have lost my mojo there. There's bugger all on TV that interests me so I might sign up for Netflix in order to watch The Crown, and other than that I'm back to reading and trying out new recipes. Even Words with Friends on Facebook is getting a bit boring for me now as all I seem to get is a load of vowels. E-I-E-I-O! Pity that isn't really how you spell "farm" isn't it!

Feeling better already!

So in a bid to start as I mean to go on, tonight I decided to give myself a manicure and a pedicure (it's been a while). While I was in the middle of the pedicure André came in and asked what I was doing, so I told him I was shaving my feet. His response - "what are you a hobbit?" Damn I'd forgotten how quick he can be. When he's on form - which is most of the time actually - he can be so much fun! Since he's planning on going in to work tomorrow I asked what time he planned on getting up, to which he replied that if he couldn't get out of bed in the morning he would work from home in the morning and go in in the afternoon. "And that's one of the disadvantages of working from home, you get out of a routine and you end up working from bed". So I suggested that if that was how he preferred working the only alternative occupation I could think of for him was prostitution, but he might need to have a shave occasionally! Said he'd give that a miss - well he definitely will in my place anyway!

He's been binge-watching The Crown lately (I must start watching that as I've heard such good things about it) and said that if he watched much more he'd have to start speaking with a British accent. And oddly enough I'd just come across this clip on Youtube not five minutes before. Sandi Toksvig is actually Danish (but lives in England) and did this brilliant clip of how Donald Trump is possibly just misunderstood - in the literal sense of the word!

Time to get back in that saddle!

We're into week four of this lockdown and while the government said it would be "reviewed" on 1 December they're not giving any indication that much will change then, even though they've managed to bring the R number down dramatically to less than one. Trouble is, I guess, we can't keep going into a severe lockdown then lifting it and having people start taking silly risks and we get hammered again. Maybe there's a chance we might be able to start going to DIY places or garden centres - who knows, because at the moment all of those are off limits. And everyone seems to agree that it's much harder this time round, maybe because we're heading into winter rather than spring, maybe it's because ... who the hell knows anymore! We're just so tired of it!

I was doing ok with the walking but just like the last lockdown I resent the hell out of having to carry a "permission slip" on me every time I leave the house, being limited to how long I can go out and how far, so the walking just started dying a death here - which was silly because I know how much good it does me, however cold the weather. So tomorrow I'm going to get back at it and start trying to get a few things achieved round here too. Heck, I looked tonight and I've only got four miles to do to achieve my 1,000 mile goal, so if I give up now I might as well give up 100 metres from the finishing line right! I've also been pretty lax about cooking, not making much effort (although we eat of course) and housework too, although again we don't live in a pigsty. So tomorrow, as André is going in to Geneva to the office I'll try to get the house sorted and make something more interesting for dinner!

Then today I received an email from the André Rieu group to inform me that the concert that had been postponed from October to January (for obvious reasons) was now being postponed again, but this time until January 2022. So knowing that the friend who was going with me has serious health issues I decided to just write them back and ask for a reimbursement. I don't know what will happen, if they're allowed to hang on to the money for 18 months like here in France or what. We'll see. So I wrote to T and told him that I had asked for a reimbursement ($200). He responded saying he was having a hard time in this lockdown too, had been in a bad car accident (although uninjured thankfully) and was missing his new grandson. And then he sent me another email and said "you know what, if we get reimbursed why don't we just give the money to a charity of your choice"! Isn't he great! So I replied and said that was a wonderful idea and that I donated to the local food bank every week and had given them money before so would he agree to that? It'd be a nice gesture (and frankly pretty typical of him)!

Then, in an effort to get more forward motion going, I went online and bought the pattern for a bag that Jen had told me she liked ages ago. I seem to have lost my sewing mojo and when I hear about what others are achieving I could kick myself. I know you can't be "up" all the time but you've got to start somewhere haven't you!

And finally, I saw that our FB walking group has a subgroup aimed at walking to lose weight so I joined up. Again there are no rules and you can go as fast or as slow as you want, but people are getting impressive results. Heck even half a pound a week would give you 26 pounds wouldn't it. Apparently you send in your weight loss (hopefully) to the lady that runs the group (and only she sees it) and she keeps a tally, so I'm going to start logging that in January along with my walking miles again, as I obviously ain't capable of doing it on my own. So with a view to hopefully getting off to a good start I've decided to see if I can go "wine free" until Christmas. Admittedly the wine has been flowing rather ... ehhmmm freely these last few days, so here's hoping!

I think they may have got it right!

We've just completed our second week of a four-week lockdown and I see in the news that France's R number is below one - which means the virus is in recession. From what I've heard we're still going to be obliged to stick with the lockdown for another two weeks but if that's all it takes, I'm on board. Oh I'm under no illusion that this damn virus won't come back roaring once we're all allowed out again, and I definitely get the pushback from smaller businesses that have been obliged to close. To my mind though, that is where the government steps in and helps them out. As for the rest, wear a damn mask. It's not much to ask to kill this damn thing off!