This week, I have been mostly dodging the rain. Last Tuesday it was nice, and I quickly hung laundry from the rigging, this week Tuesday was nice too, but all the days in between have been wet and cold. Sunday night, I even put the heating on for an hour before bed. Chilly!

Homelife has been noisy. The house at the top of the street has scaffolding on the front. The next house down has scaffolding at the back. The immediate neighbour is clearly doing some DIY, and the house at the other end of the street has had workmen in on their roof. I genuinely can’t remember when we last had a quiet day here. All this building and repairing in the area, and still no movement on them fixing our bathroom. Agents; I hate them.

Work has been fine. Sundays are not very busy, and we invariably end up shelf tidying. One day we had a very busy day and I noted when it was time to leave, that there were still loads of trolleys waiting to be filled so I asked if they’d like me to stay on. The guy in charge was relieved and asked me to work another hour, though in the end I worked 2 hours extra. He thanked me, and of course I’ll get paid for the extra time. It also looks good, being flexible in case they decide to keep any of us on. Another day was quite busy again, though the person in charge that day had already chastised me twice, so I didn’t offer to stay on. You catch more flies with honey than you do with vinegar…

Locally, our council have made some changes to our recycling in that we now have a wheelie bin instead of 3 crates and a food bin. We put all the recycling except paper in the wheelie bin and paper in a cloth bag that we can leave in the top of said bin. We had theses bags in a previous house and the wind doesn’t blow them all around the street once they’re empty. Sarcasm by the way. They won’t take food waste for now though I don’t know why, and they no longer take tetra paks, small electrical appliances, nor textiles. Seems like a move backwards to me, as all this stuff ends up in landfill. Go figure.

Friday is my son’s final day of uni though in reality he hasn’t had classes, except online ones, since mid-March. I think he’s missing the social interaction and stated recently that face to face, I’m the only person he’s spoken to since then. He’s going a little stir-crazy.

Efforts from the galley have been hit and miss. I made a lentil quiche that I’ve made many times before though my son wanted to mix it up using red and green lentils as opposed to just red. The green ones hold their shape and make for a very nice lentil cottage pie; however, they do not work well in a quiche for that same reason. I ate half my portion, then supplemented dinner with a Weetabix lol. Another meal of chicken tray bake was delicious – chicken portions cooked in the oven, on a tray, along with peppers, fresh baby tomatoes, mushrooms and so on. Very nice. Another meal of sweet potato and kidney bean ‘burgers’ was also very good served with salad in flatbreads, along with salsa and soured cream. So, more hits than misses, and Sunday we have roast chicken dinner to look forward to – one of my favourites.

Lastly, fantastic news: I’ve had an email, and they’ll follow it up with a confirmation letter, that due to the virus all jury trials have been suspended and that I’m no longer required. It’s not a case of not wanting to do my ‘civic duty’ it’s the fact that I’ve done it once already, and I was genuinely concerned that once my employer found out, that they’d let me go. They don’t state if I’ll be needed at some future date or not, though in the meantime, this is a huge weight off my shoulders. As well as potentially losing my job, I was a tad anxious at having to use public transport so I’m very relieved.

The weekend is almost upon us, have a good one, be safe, and hopefully the sunshine will return soon.