It’s Lucy’s birthday and she was so excited that she woke us all up at 0530, not quite dawn because it was fully daylight. We had a pretty full on day, and there were an awful lot of pictures.
Day 51 – Dawn until Dusk
Days 46 & 47 – Weekend
I didn’t write yesterday evening because I was trying to write a short story for the Merstham Write Club. The . challenge was to write a short story of up to 2,000 words based on a picture. I wrote 3,128 words last night and didn’t quite finish the story.
We’ve had a fairly relaxed weekend. Lots of TV and a movie and also a trip out for essential items, including posting some things.
I also spent most of Saturday in the front garden, weeding the border, planting some plants and cutting the grass.
On Saturday afternoon we had a zoom session with our friends, the Lows, and played a picture quiz of our joint family photos in Kahoots. It was a lot of fun and we’re planning to repeat it next week.
We also tidied up bedrooms, took down the blanket fort, washed all the sheets, and put clothes away. In short getting the laundry done and tidying up. It was all done in short bursts and between episodes of Doctor Who. We started with the Impossible Astronaut and we’re working through that season.
Lego House
Lucy built an awesome Lego house, which is her best one yet. So I took a series of photos.
It has a tall front door because it is supposed to be in a desert, and according to Lucy it needs to let the wind through to cool it down.
The kitchen was one of the most awesome parts. It had drawers with utensils in. The cupboard had a cup and teapot inside, and the oven a cupcake.
There was also a coffee machine on the counter, a smoothy maker and a box of food. Best of all was the large picture window above the sink, so you could see out when doing the dishes!
Downstairs also had a living room area with a TV, sofa and a hamster cage.
In between the kitchen and the living room was a waterfall, which doubled as the shower.
Upstairs was the bedroom, complete with bed, dressing table and storage for accessories.
Along the corridor was the toilet.
Experimental Food
On Sunday morning we encouraged Lucy to microwave some marshmallows so she could see what happened.
Repairing my bergen
Part of the tidying up included a repair to my Berghaus Roc. It was moved out of the way for the blanket fort into the hallway. During the night I stood on one of the quick release buckles and there was an ominous crunching sound. To be fair the bergen is over thirty years old, I bought it in 1989 when I joined the TA. It’s seen a lot of action over the years.
Given its age it was impossible to acquire replacement buckles of the same style. They haven’t made them for over a decade. However there were a couple of helpful suggestions on the web. It seems that the Berghaus Roc is a very durable bergen and many people are still using them 30 years on. A few have even had the same issue as me.
So there was a no sewing solution. I took a spare 25mm quick release buckle from a repair kit I had in the cupboard. I then used a hacksaw to cut a slot in the middle of the bar that went onto the lid. It needed two cuts to get a wide enough slot. The plastic was easy to cut. I then filed the edges to make sure they weren’t sharp.
I then prized off the old clip, which was already cracked. It took some brute force, but it came off clean. I then pushed the loop of webbing through the slot I’d cut and worked it all through. This was the trickiest bit of the repair. I ended up folding it by rolling it after it was through the slot. Once I’d got it in I just straightened it out.
The other end was much easier, although I needed to remove the stitching on the very end of the webbing that stopped it rolling off. It was triple folded, and I left it double folded, so there’s still some protection from the webbing sliding through accidentally.
Day 35 – Working and Walking
Being Tuesday I spent most of the day working while Tracy was off. Apart from me everyone else slept in until after eight o’clock. I was a bit slow to rise too, but was first up and made coffee and wrote in my work notebook about yesterday.
Work
Work was slightly fragmented, but more broken up with meetings than anything else. I did manage to spend some time thinking about our roadmap to the end of the current emergency and being ready for whatever comes next.
Scouts
In my lunch break I managed to email the parents of the ten new scouts that will be joining Woodhouse Troop of 5th Reigate Scouts. We were originally supposed to be starting on Thursday, which is St George’s Day. However we’re not allowed to meet face to face.
Our other scout troop has been using zoom to meet weekly for the last few weeks. So I had a couple of chats with Graham, the other scout leader, and we’re going to run some joint zoom sessions, starting tomorrow evening.
I’ve got an outline plan for face to face sessions. So if the lockdown lifts we can meet up face to face and do some traditional scout things, like having a campfire. I’m also thinking about planning a weekend so that if there’s an opportunity we can camp too.
Lego Wedding
I’m not entirely convinced that Lucy did much school work today. Her project seems to have been all about looking after people, she helped Tracy with some food bank collection.
As well as that Lucy built a fab wedding scene for her Lego people, including making a dress for one of her Lego mini-dolls with scraps of fabric. She also spent some time negotiating with Alexander to borrow some specific lego minifigures to play the parts at the wedding. These weren’t randomly assigned people, they were all carefully chosen!
As you can see from the pictures there’s an aisle, a celebrant and a congregation. There are some fab details in there!
Food
Tracy made a fantastic gingerbread with lemon icing on it. I tried some of the plain gingerbread for my dessert after dinner.
We also had a fab dinner of Chicken kebabs with feta, Greek salad, piri piri rice, and couscous. There were also some wholemeal pitta breads.
Walking
We followed a usual pattern this evening. We all walked round the green in front of the house three times. Then Lucy went indoors to tidy away some of her Lego before starting her wind down for bed.
While we were out our neighbour spotted us and came to ask if we knew what the rules were about garden fires. Like us he’s got a huge pile of garden waste than won’t compost. We decided that if it’s done late enough that people won’t be sitting out in the garden and will likely have the house windows closed then it ought to be okay.
After our chat Alexander and I went for a longer walk round Merstham to get our ten thousand steps in. We managed 6km.