Lockdown Blog: Day XXVII

I’ve done it! Last night, just before midnight, I finally finished reading 1Q84. Thirteen hundred and some pages consumed, the story ended. As I have said several times I have really enjoyed the book, and the ending seemed appropriate to me. Not quite what I would have written, but it worked, and did not leave me feeling cheated. Most importantly, it allows me to start my next book (more on this later).

Despite the late finish, we were up relatively early this morning. With the pizza gone, I had to settled for a bowl of fruit and fibre for breakfast, before Sarah and I headed to the garden to finish off the work started yesterday. While Sarah was weeding in the front, I tackled a tangle of ivy roots running down the side of the house. We have cut back the ivy earlier in the year when our house first went on sale, but the roots were too much for us to get up with our limited time. Today I managed, for the most part, to pull up the remaining roots I could find. It was not small task, with the thick mass having well and truly bedded itself into the dirt, but by the end the small patch of soil running down the side of the house looked much neater, as did the front garden after Sarah had finished.

It was around lunchtime when we had finished, and we enjoyed some time sitting in the garden with a drink and a book. I have started reading Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine on the recommendation of Sarah, and so far it is a good read (and thankfully less than 400 pages…). I managed an hour or so in the garden, Sarah a little less.

I went for a walk on my own this afternoon. Just outside our house, some of the children living on the street have created an increasingly complex hopscotch-type game with chalk. Unfortunately it did not photograph well from any particular angle, and this picture gives the best idea of the scale of the operation.

Clearly Sarah and I have not been the only people in the garden today. This collage of images was provided by my Dad, with the flowers having been grown by the talented green fingers of my Mum (I am under strict instructions to make sure they are both mentioned here). My gardening tastes tend to lean more towards trees and bushes rather than flowers, but I can still appreciate there beauty that is present in my parent’s garden at the moment.

Dinner this evening is a beef casserole. It is probably a little too warm outside for a casserole today, but the ingredients was bought during our shopping trip last week and need eating today. With a couple of dumplings on top (frozen I am afraid…) it was delicious.

The plan for this evening is to watch a film. Sarah has been wanting to watch Sliding Doors for some time, but other entertainment options have always seemed to get in the way. So this evening we really are going to watch it (unless of course something else comes along instead). Tomorrow we are both back at work, and for the first time in four weeks I need to go into the office! So that is something exciting to look forward to in tomorrow’s update.