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satyricaSelf-isolation went by fairly quickly: we had our usual family zoom on the Sunday, if I was allowed out I would probably have watched the Euros Final but no-one in the house cared about it, so I just sneaked on for the inevitable extra time and penalties. The week was just a routine of work then food and crosswording with N in the evening (even D&D got cancelled!), on the Thursday I watched a livestream King No-One had done and chatted to R on the phone, on Friday J came to our doorstep, having baked us a plum clafoutis (we did very well for care packages, mostly sugar based, and had plenty of food in the house to use up otherwise) and we celebrated out final evening by getting pizza from San Marco down the road and I also caught up with Gaz B's livestream.
Saturday was our 'Freedom Day', two days prior to the unwise relaxation of rules being touted as such in the press. I headed off out of London: K has moved again and we gathered at hers with all the kids to celebrate with a BBQ and the usual shenanigans (lots of footballs were kicked over fences and Monopoly ended up being abandoned). I headed home for a bit then out again in the evening to Camden for some food with L.
D&D did happen on the Monday then Tuesday I headed out to my first standing 'back to normal' gig: first up was solo artist Emilia Tarrant, who had an amazing voice; Harvey Jay Dodgson, who was playing with a band that included the drummer from Flowvers, had an enjoyably funky vibe, but I was mostly there for Flowvers themselves, who sounded really good. I had been due to collect one of my guest's from hospital at some point during the day, so had been keeping an eye on my phone throughout the gig and was just about to give up and go home when they called just after it finished, so I headed down to St. Thomas's, but after some further discussion they decided to keep him in for another night. I continued to wait for the call throughout Wednesday and eventually ended up going back down at the end of the working day but it all started falling apart and I had to cancel my evening plans to have dinner with Cousin A etc. to manage the situation.
N & I did manage to meet up with M and F for one of our London school-friend meet-ups at The George coaching inn in London Bridge the next evening: it was one of those lovely flowing evenings where you are too busy chatting to even really talk about how people have been: we had the gallery restaurant all to ourselves, which was a blessing as it sounded like a festival down in the courtyard, as people full-throatedly embraced the chance of cathartic release. I went to another gig on Friday, down at the Windmill: I'd seen Pink Eye Club before, a guy with an uncanny sense of a young David Mitchell about him, spitting clever lyrics over laptop dance music, he was followed up by a german synth duo called Project Concubine [one of whom I think I'd seen playing solo recently]; sample songs included repeated declamations of "fuck Daddy" and "this is propaganda", accompanied by waving an enormous black flag on stage and going round the audience drawing circles on people's hands- it was simultaneously both awful and glorious. I was there for The Queen's Head and for the first time in almost 18 months I danced to live music and remembered why I used to do this so much. More annoyingly, they had embraced weekend set times before the Night Tube has started running again, so I had to bus it back from Brixton to Tottenham afterwards.
The weather is keeping us all on our toes: T was planing to have a birthday picnic on Saturday, which shifted to her house in Dalston as rain threatened but it ended up being lovely and we all crowded into her garden; N&I headed home as afternoon turned to evening as we were having C up from Peckham for dinner: we did a vaguely Mexican thing, and there ended up being 6 of us with various housemates and partners- N had erected a gazebo in the garden so we could eat out there. On Sunday I headed out to the Nero exhibition at the British Museum with Ketch and Cousin A, which was much better laid out than Beckett had been and mostly excited for some of the wall paintings from Pompeii that were there, then we joined N for lunch in Covent Garden afterwards. That's when the rain did come down and we had a moat outside the house by the time I got in: I caught up with Gaz B's livestream and family zoomtime in the evening.
I had a week off and on Monday caught a train up to Banbury: Great Uncle Geoff's widow had sadly only survived him by a month or so, so we gathered for a memorial service for both of them in Bloxham, which was really nice and gathered all of Dad's side of the family together. Mum & Dad had had Covid the week I was self-isolating, probably caught while they were on a holiday in Wales, they had had fluey symptoms but, fully vaccinated, seemed to have bounced back without too much trouble. By coincidence, I was due to start camping with some school friends the same day, only half an hour's drive away, near Charlbury in the Cotswolds, so I had struggled up to Banbury with all of my camping gear, while dressed for a funeral, and Dad drove me to the campsite to join the others as they were setting up.
We had our own little field to ourselves, with a cabin that had a kitchen, toilet and shower, so there was plenty of space for the kids to play, and it was lovely just to see and spend time with friends I hadn't seen in person for the whole of the pandemic. We didn't do too much: Tuesday we walked to a local cafe for an interminable lunch, Wednesday we visited the remains of North Leigh Roman villa (complete with Roman snails) and an impressive adventure playground tucked away in a tiny rural village, Thursday we didn't leave the campsite, although A ran an exercise class for us all, that we mostly spent the rest of the day recovering from. Other than that we all ate together and sat around a fire in the evenings (Nicol turned up out of the blue on Thursday) and read or played badminton, chess or card games with the kids, who all seemed to mix and play together without too much drama. We had a few showers but were generally really lucky with the weather, it only started to rain in a persistent, unpleasant way when we were packing everything up on Friday.
The train took me swiftly back to London from Charlbury and I got home in time to spend the afternoon napping and generally recovering (as always, I'd been waking very early in a tent, although I suspect my aches were probably more from the exercise class than the camping). In the evening I headed down to Colliers Wood for work-friend L's birthday, which was really fun and a few other colleagues past and present were there, although I learned my lesson from the weekend before and bailed before the tube stopped running. Yesterday, N & I headed back to my old flat, where M&D have already made lots of alterations, and we went out for brunch with them plus baby locally. I headed home after an excursion to Rough Trade East, I had caught up on Gaz B's livestream and some other viewing, before heading back to Shoreditch in the evening for a gig at Dream Bags Jaguar Shoes: first up were Hallan, another Portsmouth band: it seems like there's quite a scene there at the mo, who I enjoyed; headlining were Deadletter, who'd formed from Mice on Mars, a band I'd seen a couple of times, and there was great energy and buzz to the set; it was very much a sweaty basement gig and, whereas the last couple I'd been to people were more or less standing in their own space, this was the first where it felt like there was no longer any concept of caution.
Saturday was our 'Freedom Day', two days prior to the unwise relaxation of rules being touted as such in the press. I headed off out of London: K has moved again and we gathered at hers with all the kids to celebrate with a BBQ and the usual shenanigans (lots of footballs were kicked over fences and Monopoly ended up being abandoned). I headed home for a bit then out again in the evening to Camden for some food with L.
D&D did happen on the Monday then Tuesday I headed out to my first standing 'back to normal' gig: first up was solo artist Emilia Tarrant, who had an amazing voice; Harvey Jay Dodgson, who was playing with a band that included the drummer from Flowvers, had an enjoyably funky vibe, but I was mostly there for Flowvers themselves, who sounded really good. I had been due to collect one of my guest's from hospital at some point during the day, so had been keeping an eye on my phone throughout the gig and was just about to give up and go home when they called just after it finished, so I headed down to St. Thomas's, but after some further discussion they decided to keep him in for another night. I continued to wait for the call throughout Wednesday and eventually ended up going back down at the end of the working day but it all started falling apart and I had to cancel my evening plans to have dinner with Cousin A etc. to manage the situation.
N & I did manage to meet up with M and F for one of our London school-friend meet-ups at The George coaching inn in London Bridge the next evening: it was one of those lovely flowing evenings where you are too busy chatting to even really talk about how people have been: we had the gallery restaurant all to ourselves, which was a blessing as it sounded like a festival down in the courtyard, as people full-throatedly embraced the chance of cathartic release. I went to another gig on Friday, down at the Windmill: I'd seen Pink Eye Club before, a guy with an uncanny sense of a young David Mitchell about him, spitting clever lyrics over laptop dance music, he was followed up by a german synth duo called Project Concubine [one of whom I think I'd seen playing solo recently]; sample songs included repeated declamations of "fuck Daddy" and "this is propaganda", accompanied by waving an enormous black flag on stage and going round the audience drawing circles on people's hands- it was simultaneously both awful and glorious. I was there for The Queen's Head and for the first time in almost 18 months I danced to live music and remembered why I used to do this so much. More annoyingly, they had embraced weekend set times before the Night Tube has started running again, so I had to bus it back from Brixton to Tottenham afterwards.
The weather is keeping us all on our toes: T was planing to have a birthday picnic on Saturday, which shifted to her house in Dalston as rain threatened but it ended up being lovely and we all crowded into her garden; N&I headed home as afternoon turned to evening as we were having C up from Peckham for dinner: we did a vaguely Mexican thing, and there ended up being 6 of us with various housemates and partners- N had erected a gazebo in the garden so we could eat out there. On Sunday I headed out to the Nero exhibition at the British Museum with Ketch and Cousin A, which was much better laid out than Beckett had been and mostly excited for some of the wall paintings from Pompeii that were there, then we joined N for lunch in Covent Garden afterwards. That's when the rain did come down and we had a moat outside the house by the time I got in: I caught up with Gaz B's livestream and family zoomtime in the evening.
I had a week off and on Monday caught a train up to Banbury: Great Uncle Geoff's widow had sadly only survived him by a month or so, so we gathered for a memorial service for both of them in Bloxham, which was really nice and gathered all of Dad's side of the family together. Mum & Dad had had Covid the week I was self-isolating, probably caught while they were on a holiday in Wales, they had had fluey symptoms but, fully vaccinated, seemed to have bounced back without too much trouble. By coincidence, I was due to start camping with some school friends the same day, only half an hour's drive away, near Charlbury in the Cotswolds, so I had struggled up to Banbury with all of my camping gear, while dressed for a funeral, and Dad drove me to the campsite to join the others as they were setting up.
We had our own little field to ourselves, with a cabin that had a kitchen, toilet and shower, so there was plenty of space for the kids to play, and it was lovely just to see and spend time with friends I hadn't seen in person for the whole of the pandemic. We didn't do too much: Tuesday we walked to a local cafe for an interminable lunch, Wednesday we visited the remains of North Leigh Roman villa (complete with Roman snails) and an impressive adventure playground tucked away in a tiny rural village, Thursday we didn't leave the campsite, although A ran an exercise class for us all, that we mostly spent the rest of the day recovering from. Other than that we all ate together and sat around a fire in the evenings (Nicol turned up out of the blue on Thursday) and read or played badminton, chess or card games with the kids, who all seemed to mix and play together without too much drama. We had a few showers but were generally really lucky with the weather, it only started to rain in a persistent, unpleasant way when we were packing everything up on Friday.
The train took me swiftly back to London from Charlbury and I got home in time to spend the afternoon napping and generally recovering (as always, I'd been waking very early in a tent, although I suspect my aches were probably more from the exercise class than the camping). In the evening I headed down to Colliers Wood for work-friend L's birthday, which was really fun and a few other colleagues past and present were there, although I learned my lesson from the weekend before and bailed before the tube stopped running. Yesterday, N & I headed back to my old flat, where M&D have already made lots of alterations, and we went out for brunch with them plus baby locally. I headed home after an excursion to Rough Trade East, I had caught up on Gaz B's livestream and some other viewing, before heading back to Shoreditch in the evening for a gig at Dream Bags Jaguar Shoes: first up were Hallan, another Portsmouth band: it seems like there's quite a scene there at the mo, who I enjoyed; headlining were Deadletter, who'd formed from Mice on Mars, a band I'd seen a couple of times, and there was great energy and buzz to the set; it was very much a sweaty basement gig and, whereas the last couple I'd been to people were more or less standing in their own space, this was the first where it felt like there was no longer any concept of caution.
