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A strange week. George Floyd was killed on 25th May by a policeman in Minneapolis. He’s not the first, but it was caught on a smartphone by a brave girl. Since then we’ve had riots in the US and internationally, calling for racial justice. Statues of oppression, of slave owners, are being toppled in cities…

The gradual easing continues, but things aren’t much easier for a lot of folks.

Same same but different. I cannot quite believe that the country has been on lockdown, at home as much as possible, for a full 9 weeks. Incredible.

This week feels hard. Going for runs and doing body weight exercises keeps me sane. At the weekend I weeded and cleaned the back patio: arduous work that feels good because you don’t think too much.

Mondays are always a little hard to get into, but wow I’m feeling it today. Sluggish, tired, a little fed up. I realise that this is only natural.

It’s suddenly nearing the end of the second week of the Easter ’break’, we had a gorgeous sunny Easter weekend with temperatures peaking at 24 degrees in the afternoon. Took trips to the local woods with the kids to play on hidden swings by streams, played some frisbee, hung out in the garden just reading…

Slightly gloomy drizzly start to the day, but it then brightened by the afternoon. The kids are on holiday for 2 weeks, so we’re alternating days off. The usual morning standup was less plucky today, you could see on colleagues faces how fed up they were getting. Last two weeks of working on our project…

It was my birthday today. We have spent the past 3 weekends celebrating birthdays with our neighbours, two from our side and one from theirs. During the week we agree a time for meeting up in our back gardens for a glass of Champagne. Usually a Saturday, 5 or 6 O’clock. We pop the cork,…

Spent Friday morning cleaning the house (I work a 4 day week currently). Then in the afternoon I cleared the garage out a little bit, expecting that we must make use of all of our spaces around our property as much as possible in the weeks to come. Ordered a huge Indian take away in…

This week we’ve been blessed with gorgeous sunny skies, as Spring begins to blossom and things start to grow, transforming the immediate landscape around our home. It’s harder to feel gloomy when it’s like this.

So it begins. Yesterday I was folding up the laundry, and there was quite a few of the kids’ school clothes in the mix – jumpers, cardigans, grey trousers…as I was folding I realised that this set might well now not be worn again by the kids. Somehow a little sad.

Woke up at 5.30, then half fell asleep before getting up at 7.30 to get things ready for a nice Mother’s Day breakfast. Went to pick up some beautiful flowers from our local florist. The shop was full of different orders waiting to be picked up, with slightly furtive staff.

So that’s the first working week at home done. So far, being in the software industry, it seems totally manageable to work remotely. People do it all the time! Just requires a little mindset shift and the necessary equipment and broadband. I worry for people that cannot do this, and salute our key workers.

Well that escalated quickly. I am writing this post in the first week of national lockdown in the United Kingdom, due to the emergence of a global coronavirus pandemic called Covid-19 which is spreading throughout the world with devastating consequences.