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Day 49 – Evening Gardening

It being Tuesday I spent most of the day at the desk in out bedroom while Tracy did things downstairs with Lucy. Alexander mostly just did his schoolwork without input.

Probably the most interesting thing that happened all day was that when Tracy got up there was a police officer speaking to two young women on the green outside. They wandered off down the side of the street about half eight. The police care stayed there for about another two hours or so. No idea what was going on.

Work

Work was lot of reading about international comparisons on coming out of lockdown and analysing the UK stats to work out how long it might last given the tests announced. It took almost all day, and a handful of meetings and a tidy up of my inbox before my five day weekend kept me busy until six.

Evening Gardening

Today’s exercise was working in the garden after dinner. Alexander came out with me and between us we planted half a dozen plants in the front garden. Alexander dug the holes and I put the plants in.

When we finished that we went round the back garden. Alexander used the loppers and a rather blunt handsaw to make some stakes from a tree we cut down a couple of months ago.

While he did that I moved some bricks and some very clay heavy soil. I also walked a couple of concrete slabs to the very back corner of the garden.

Once I got them up there I put the slabs against the fence to protect it from the composting vegetation. I used some of the lumps of clay to make a level line for the bricks. There was a noticeable slope over the couple of metres from the fence to the front of the area selected.

The old shed door was repurposed as the side wall for the new compost heap. I used the two slabs to determine the width, and the door for the depth. The door rested on a line of bricks just to make it a bit taller and relatively horizontal.

Once I got it all in place the stakes that Alexander made were driven in using a 3lb hammer. They’re all about a foot into the ground. I doubt they’ll last a long time, being green wood. But all I need is a couple of years.

Last step was to put the remaining clay on the floor of the compost heap and flatten it down.

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Day 37 – St George’s Day

I was working from home again while encouraging the children to do their schoolwork. Alexander seems to have done a fair amount. Lucy less so, but she has done quite a lot of computer skills, specifically finding images and saving them. Also the importance of file extensions, what they tell you about the type of file, and also how to attach files to email. Learning a lot, but I’m not sure how much of it is on the national curriculum!

Car Problems

The car is unwell. The electronics have been cutting out intermittently. When Tracy came home from the hospital yesterday the electrics failed while she was driving down the hill from Caterham, even though the engine kept going. It cut out again when she pulled up on the drive.

So at lunchtime the recovery truck came to take it to the garage. Before that though I persuaded the kids to help me empty the car of all our stuff, and to put the rubbish in the bin. The crate in the boot went into the garage, and a load of Lucy’s books and toys came into the house.

Breadmaker

While we were stashing things from the back of the car in the garage I spotted our breadmaker. We thought we’d given it away, because we’d stopped using it. It was in the part of the garage where we stage things before they go to the tip or a charity shop. There were other things on top of it, which I moved to make space. So I brought it back into the kitchen and cleaned it up.

The instructions were tucked inside it, with the specific recipes optimised for it. In my lunch break I decided to make some bread with the wholemeal bread flour we got at the weekend. I couldn’t find the measuring cup that came with it, so I extemporised with scales and a rough approximation of a cup being 8 ounces, a tablespoon one ounce and doing teaspoons as 5 grams.

As you can see it sort of worked. I think I might have got too much fluid in it because I used milk in place of dried milk powder. I also measured everything by weight rather than volume, and that’s likely to have skewed it a bit. It tastes fine though and has a good crumb, even if it has sunk on top.

Food

With us both working, and Alexander catching up on a heavy day of school work, I went freezer diving to see what would go with fresh bread. We’ve got a lot of meat still in the freezer, but it’s a lot emptier looking than it usually is.

The cancelled Easter trip to see Tracy’s parents meant that it didn’t get filled with fish and farm meat. Trips to Lincolnshire always have a full coolbox on the return leg because the market in Cleethorpes is close to both the fishing industry and the food preparation factories that get it direct from the farm. Everything is both fresher and cheaper than Surrey.

I eventually pulled out some bacon and tomato based pasta sauce we’d prepared some time ago. There was also some ham and cheese tortellini in the freezer. I thought that might supplement the dried penne and go well with some fresh bread.

Scouts Promise Renewal

This year’s St George’s Day event was online rather than in person. We got 47 families connected on our zoom account, many with more than one beaver, cub, or scout. We renewed our promise and then we watched a video from the Surrey Scouts County Commissioner. Lucy thought it was a very nice video. She also enjoyed the opportunity to wear her cub uniform for the first time at an official event.

After the event we went out for the Thursday evening clap for carers and essential workers. We took a couple of photos because it was suggested as a good idea by the scout association.

When the clap was over Alexander and I went out for a walk to get some exercise. We stopped and had a chat with a couple of neighbours, maintaining a safe distance. One of our neighbours thought he has had the virus. He’d just got up from ten days mostly in bed. At one point he was coughing up blood and was seriously considering dialling for an ambulance.

Car postscript

Tracy was a bit late home, which is getting pretty normal lately. However she came home in the car. The garage ran a load of tests, cleaned some bits and took it for a test drive. It seems to be okay, for now. If it goes again we’ll need to get a specialist mechanic to look at the electrical systems in it.

Or maybe we’ll just trade in for a newer car.

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Day 28 – Back to Work Tuesday

The four day weekend is over, although the kids are still off school. Tracy was back on the ward, and I rolled out of bed and logged into my work laptop to catch up on what happened over the weekend before Lucy woke up.

Last night Lucy had decided to sleep under her bed, which I only realised this morning when she told me. She wanted a change and built herself a nest in the area under the bed. If you look closely you can see her bedtime reading, Bedtime Stories for Rebel Girls. She’s gone to sleep in there again this evening.

Working

My work was in three distinct phases. From 0700 until just after ten, and then from 11 until after half two, and then three until just before five. Lucy had a martial arts grading by zoom and a birthday party. In between those I read a lot of emails, and spent some time on the phone and video. Over the weekend I found an attachment to hold a mobile phone on a camera tripod. I fitted that to my mini gorilla tripod and am now using that for video conferencing.

Birthday party

Lucy’s friend Amalie, who lives round the corner, turned 8 today. Because of the lockdown she couldn’t have a proper party, so her mum organised one on houseparty. Lucy wrote the card out, and wrapped the present (Lego dots – a flexible wrist band with Lego studs on it that you can decorate with Lego pieces). Then we decided to go and deliver it in person just before the party.

We met another of Lucy’s friends on the way out. Lola and her mum had the same idea as us, and their car was parked in front of our house. So we waved and said hello for a minute. Then Lucy and I went round to Amalie’s house and left the present and card by the door. We waited at the end of the drive and had a chat with Amalie and her mum for a few minutes before going back home.

Once I’d got Lucy logged into the houseparty app on Tracy’s phone I hid in my bedroom so that I could carry on working. From the excited shouting coming from downstairs I’m pretty certain Lucy enjoyed the party. I only had to intervene once!

Shopping

It’s Lucy’s birthday in a few weeks, and I needed to go to the Argos at the back of Sainsbury’s in Redhill to collect the present I’d ordered. We also needed a few things, including cheese, diet cola, pasta, flour, cotton buds and any cheap Easter Eggs that might be left over. Immediately after dinner I took Alexander with me to help carry it all.

We did OK on the Easter egg front, scoring four medium and one large egg for £5. I also found the pasta aisle had been restocked, although only with penne and fusilli. There still wasn’t any flour, but I found the paprika that we hadn’t been able to get last time, and everything else that was on our list, plus half price grass seed for outside my hut. We also got a video that Tracy said she wanted to watch and some sweets as small treats.

With the shopping done we collected Lucy’s present. It was rather larger than I’d expected!

Exercise

Having spent most of the day behind my work laptop I needed some exercise. So I took the kids on four laps of the green in front of the house, and we had some fun with a ‘magic’ stick. Alexander pretended to be Boblin the Goblin and did a character voice and walk. Lucy turned herself into Vikki the Fighter from Carmena. I was Dad the Bad, and we each took a turn wielding the stick to chase the other two round the green. There was an extended roleplay story going on as we raced round at a fast walk.

Once Lucy had done four laps I took Alexander on a longer walk over the railway and back down through the rec to home. We got in about three miles. That gave Lucy enough time to be in bed so that we could stash her present in the garage.

Technology

The last thing I did, before writing this and going to bed, was to try to fix a couple of issues Alexander has been having with his laptop. His school uses Microsoft office 365 for the schoolwork, and go4schools to allocate homework. Alexander hasn’t been able to print to our printer and couldn’t open PDF files or PowerPoints from the browser. Each time he tries to open one (from a link in Firefox) it causes a cascade of new tabs. You need to kill Firefox to make it stop.

I installed a PDF reader to solve that issue and it was straightforward. I tried the same with a PowerPoint viewer but that didn’t work. It garbled the presentation. But I did discover that saving the file locally and then uploading to open in the PowerPoint web all worked fine.

Alexander’s printing issue from Office 365 is a feature, not a bug. The web versions are not as good at layout as the native apps. So they produce a pdf instead. You are then supposed to print the PDF from your preferred PDF viewer app.

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Day 10 – Friday 27th March 2020

Milk, bread and orange juice in a box
Key supplies from Fresh Connect, a local wholesaler, about four days worth of milk, and a week of bread. (Photo: James Kemp)
Two boxes of really great quality fresh fruit and vegetables from Fresh Connect (also butter and cheese). (Photo: James Kemp)

First thing in the morning, about 7am, we got a good delivery from Fresh Connect, a local food wholesaler. It was a real boost to morale, we now have bread, milk and cucumber, all of which we’d run out of. We also have some really fab quality fresh fruit and vegetables. It was a pretty awesome start to the day.

Alexander making a cake, and cleaning up some of the mess he’s making! (Photo: James Kemp)

We all had some fresh orange and toast with butter for breakfast. It’s comfort food. Alexander also got on with making a layered chocolate cake with the flour that arrived in the degusta box the other day. The pulled pork turned out okay, but has gone into the fridge for Saturday. Tonight we’re having fish cakes, freshly made.

Work

Alexander completed all the assigned homework, and Lucy was really good at doing her work too. For most of the afternoon they went upstairs together and built a Lego rock concert. Pictures to follow when they’ve finished making it.

So Tracy and I were able to get through quite a bit unmolested. I managed to write some weeknotes as well as deal with all of the days emails and write notes from the meetings I dialled into. I also checked my DWP laptop and forwarded over the essays that I need to write as part of the Project Leadership Programme. If next week is the same as this week then I might just manage to finish them both.

Ending the working week

What I did do was tell my team to make sure that they put all the work laptops and phones away for the weekend. It’s important that we have a break and a clear separation between work and home. Usually we manage that through our commute, but when working at home, especially for the prolonged period that is likely we need to act deliberately to get that separation.

At half past five, after sending a message to the team that I hoped they were already logged off Nf enjoying the weekend, I put all my work stuff away. I closed the laptop lid and out it in my work bag, along with my headset, charger and notebook. I switched the work phone off, and zipped up my bag with it all inside. Then I hid the bag under the table where I wouldn’t see it.

After doing that I put my shoes and coat on and took a short walk round the green in front of my house. I walked round it for ten minutes taking care to stay well away from the few other people that I saw. Then I came in and started my weekend.

I recommend it to you all. Put some space between work and home.

Have a great weekend!

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Day 6 – Monday 23rd March 2020

My space for working at home, definitely not adhering to the clear desk policy! (photo: James Kemp)

Today was my first day back at work after almost a fortnight off sick. One of the things I read this morning was the NwSpk guide to remote working. Someone had suggested that we run a virtual workshop. While I’ve lost count of the number of workshops I’ve run over the decades I’ve always shied away from online workshops. They’re much harder to get engagement from people and need a lot more preparation than face to face ones. As a result of that guide, and a medium article, I’m more confident that I could probably pull it off.

School at Home

The other feature of the day was helping Lucy do some schoolwork from home. Alexander has already been at it for almost a week, but he’s in Y9 and is used to just getting on with it. Lucy is only in Y3 and isn’t really used to homework. The first hurdle was that her tablet seems to have disappeared, she used it yesterday morning but it was nowhere to be seen this morning. It has to be somewhere in the house, we haven’t been anywhere because of the self isolation we’ve been following.

So after we’d looked on and under both sofas, in and under the beds and on all the likely surfaces I gave up and set up reading eggs on my personal laptop. A big chunk of this was done while I was in hold to the department IT help desk, because my password change hadn’t properly synced and I couldn’t login initially.

Lucy spent a couple of hours happily doing Reading Eggs and made it to level 120, although I’m not sure what level she started at. After lunch (packet pasta, which she complained about sharing it with Tracy) Lucy switched to Mathletics. When I checked in with her she was competing in live arithmetic with kids from around the world (mostly UK, but also Canadian, UAE and Irish kids). Her class had a scoreboard on the home page, and she was on 1,138 points, a mere 8 points ahead of the second ranked kid. So I guess she’ll need to do some tomorrow!

At twenty past three Lucy called me down from where I’d been hiding so that I could work. When I got there she asked me if I knew what time it was. When I told her that it was twenty past three she then informed me that she thought school hours were over.

Games

The basic concept of Celestia is moving your pawn in a cardboard airship between the cities, and surviving the hazards to get to the end. (photo: James Kemp)

After a very lovely dinner of Chicken Parmigiana courtesy of the Pinch of Nom cookbook we played Celestia. It’s a 2-6 player game we got for Christmas in 2018. It works really nicely as a collective push your luck mechanism with individual scoring. The aim is to get as far along the path as possible without going down with the airship. If you land it as the last player inside you get treasure. All the treasure cards are slightly different values, and the average value goes up the further along the track you get.

Technology

The various updates must have broken something in my Apache web server configuration. Most of my websites were showing an internal server error (500). I needed to edit the site config files to make them work, despite them working fine until a couple of days ago without any changes.

The edit I made was in the Directory section, where instead of the full file path on the server I replaced it with the relative path from the domain root. No idea why that was necessary, but it seems to have fixed the problems.

The other technology fix I was at was trying to work out why my wife’s Lenovo Yoga 300 is so glacially slow. It’s been disappointing since we got it. So this evening I made a live USB for Ubuntu 18.04.4 and fired it up. Not surprisingly it was pretty responsive and the touch screen also worked fine. So I think the machine might be getting reformated shortly from Windows 10 to Ubuntu.

The next fix is to get Alexander’s laptop to open PDF and PowerPoint files from his school OneDrive. At the moment if he tries to open one it spawns hundreds of tabs in his browser.

Cancelling Holidays

The most depressing thing this evening though was not Boris Johnson announcing that we’re all on lockdown, everything is closed and we can only go out in dire need, or to exercise once a day. It was cancelling our planned family holiday to Denmark and Sweden in May. I cancelled the Airbnb I’d booked and Tracy moved the easyJet flights to October in the hope that we will still be able to go then. We also cancelled the hotel. Hopefully we’ll get a refund on it all, but we won’t know for sure for a few days. It was all booked a few months back, before Christmas for most of it. So we should be okay.