Lockdown Living

 If you’re reading this, I hope you’re doing ok and coping well in your country’s lockdown situation wherever you may be.

This is my first time checking in on here since we entered lockdown about 49 days ago. We’ve had our own personal life changing moments during this time which has kept my partner and I both off the radar. We’re slowly getting into our ‘new normal’ but safe to say I think it’s taken about 35 days of lockdown for me to reach this point.

Both my partner and I are still students so we’ve been relatively lucky because other than our timetables moving to working exclusively from home, our studies haven’t changed all that much. The setting has proved difficult motivation it has to be said – snoozing the alarm umpteen times and watching just one more episode in that new box set you’ve got into has been quite the order of the day! Who’s with me?

I thought I might share what our ‘new normal’ is starting to look like…

Work/ Studies

As of last week I started to get into more of a routine. I’d already set up my dining room table as my desk (our house is dinky so there’s no study space) so I’m able to focus for small parts of the day on work and my partner is revising and taking part in online lectures so that keeps him busy too.

Focusing up till now has been hard and my mind has been focused more on our little furry baby (I’ll be uploading a blog post about her tomorrow so watch this space) so I have found working for more than an hour at a time difficult. The last few weeks, thanks to a deadline I had last Monday, I flicked a switch and I’ve been more productive.

Socialising

Socialising is difficult – what with social distancing! But, we’ve managed to cope, video chat quizzes being a big hit among my friends and family too! We wrote our own where we actually cut my partner’s hair so it resembled an iconic rugby player’s hairdo in the nineties for the sports round – dedication right?!

Being in lockdown has appealed to my hermit side. There’s nothing I love more than hunkering down in my little home with my family, cooking, watching movies and sitting in the sun. I’m having to get myself out and about just so I remember what it’s like outside! I do love my friends – remember to call them!

I’m not someone who likes to make phone calls, it freaks me out, does it for anyone else? So lockdown has definitely improved my ability to pick up the phone, albeit a little. I remember sitting for hours on the phone to my friends at the bottom of the stairs (the phone was corded and that was as far as I could get from my Dad’s office), where did that ability go?

Food

I always enjoy hiding myself away in the kitchen and cooking something for me and my partner, even if it is the occasional disaster!

I’d say comfort foods are the staples. Our favourite bolognese has surfaced a lot, we enjoy turning the leftovers into a Mexican style chilli the next day. I’ve had a go at pasta bakes and we’ve even managed a BBQ! I have also tried cooking flat breads (I learned a lot of lessons for next time) the recipe I used is here and baking a chocolate cake which I struggled to savour as it was so yummy! Have you tried anything new?

Something that we’ve continued to do and improved on in lockdown is sourcing produce locally. We buy cheese and butter which is made on a farm nearby, we buy local meat from our butchers and local store and we’ve started to buy our milk from a refillable machine in the local Zero Waste Pantry where we use our own glass bottles.

What we’re watching

We’re actually binge watching a lot of South Park. I think a mix of the political satire and silliness is needed right now and it kind of reminds me to not take everything in life so seriously!

For the serious though, we are getting stuck into Naughts and Crosses on the BBC. This is based on a novel series by Malorie Blackman, where Malorie Blackman writes of a sort of parallel world to our own where African people have colonised European people. I may have to start reading them after this because the TV series is poignant and thought provoking. We’d really recommend this as a series. A slow watcher though as each episode is an hour long so we’re taking it one at a time rather than rushing it.

Lastly, a series me and a couple of my friends really love is The Last Kingdom. It’s a series for those of you who like anything viking-like or period drama (circa. the Saxons). The latest series is the third and it continues to follow Uhtred who is trying to reclaim his land but gets pulled into everyone else’s lives in the meantime. If you enjoy getting lost in something I’d recommend this.

L xx