SitRep 2020: Review of the Year

What a strange year was 2020.  It started normally, then was sideswiped by Covid-19.  It feels like we spend a good six months in Lockdown.  We’re back there now, although it’s called “Tier 4” instead.   There were so many things planned that fell by the wayside because of Lockdown: concerts, international cricket matches at Lords and the Oval, a trip to Rome in June, Normandy in April, multiple football matches (including 2 at the Euros), a day at Wimbledon, the Proms...  Some events were postponed; others cancelled completely.  

There were some good things.  We didn’t get sick.  We managed a few days in Gloucester, before going back into Lockdown.  I’m still employed.  Treasured but fleeting visits with friends, when we were allowed to meet up.  I got my sewing machine repaired just before the first Lockdown.  I have plenty of yarn.  My choir started meeting through Zoom - rehearsing is pretty awful but it’s great to see people. Duolingo tells me I’m on a 219 day streak of learning French.  I started running again on 13th July, doing the Couch-to-5K; a week ago, I ran for 18 minutes. 

Regarding my 20-in-2020 Goals, here’s the Sit-Rep.  I reckon I achieved 9 out of the 20:-

1. Knit 20 balls of yarn (that's between 3 & 5 jumpers worth). 41/20 - I finished the jumper I was knitting (5 balls), completed the next one (finished on 13 balls), finished the third (8 balls), fourth (9 balls) and fifth (9 balls).  Also completed are three pairs of socks.   
2. 20 minutes a day learning French (via Duolingo and TinyCards) for 20 weeks. 31/20 weeks.  Absolutely smashed this, thanks to Duolingo.
3. 20 minutes exercise a day for 20 weeks. Walking 30 weeks, weight training 5 weeks, running 20 weeks.
4. Read 20 books. 6/20.  These are listed In the sidebar on the right..
5. Try 20 new dinner recipes.  5/20.  I am a cook!  How can this be so difficult to achieve?  I’ve made Chicken a la King, a chicken tray bake from New Idea and Lidl’s Mediterranean Meatball Bake, Slow-cooker barbecued pork, Lamb Moussaka. 
6. 20 gardening sessions.   14 proper ones plus a couple of minutes mucking around with seeds.
7. Explore 20 new places 7/20 - the cathedral at Bayeux, Gloucester Cathedral, Gloucester city centre, Cheltenham city centre, Great Witcombe Roman Villa, Painswick Rococo Garden, some of the back streets near home.
8. Attend 20 "shows" (concerts/plays/films/BBC recordings/exhibitions) 3/20 - Frank Skinner’s “Showbiz”.  The News Quiz.  The Troy exhibition at the British Museum, Chelsea vs Leeds (after Lockdown).
9. Do the 2020 Fashion On The Ration Challenge and keep within the coupon count. 60/66 coupons used.  These are listed in the sidebar on the right.
10. Phone family/friends to chat 20 times (I'm hopeless on the phone). 20/20.
11. Lose 20lbs.  10/20.  (To be honest, I’m just glad I haven’t put any weight on given the “Covid Calories” everyone is eating.)
12. Mend 20 items of clothing (yes, that includes sewing on buttons and taking up hems) 3/20 - hemmed trousers from a suit purchased in 2018 (I’d only worn the skirt and jacket, not the trousers).  Mended the pockets of a different suit jacket, bringing that suit back into rotation.  Repaired the pockets on DH’s shorts.
13. Declutter 20 items.
14. Run 20 miles (but not all at once) 20 miles (started running again on 13.7.20 - doing couch-to-5K).
15. Save 20 x £20 out of my “allowance”(£400) £400/£400
16. Make 20 site visits for work, earning mileage 20 times (it goes to the car fund).  29/20.  
17. Write 20 blog posts.  25/20 
18. Log 10,000 steps on my Fitbit on 20 or more days (harder to do than it sounds).  37/20:  11.1.20 10505 steps, 22.2.20 10603 steps, 7.3.20 13527 steps, 21.4.20 10524 steps, 3.5.20 11,196 steps, 4.5.20 13,956 steps, 17.5.20 14,066 steps, 18.5.20 15,046 steps, 19.5.20 11,567 steps, 30.5.10 10,079 steps, 31.5.20 11,160 steps, 13.7.20 11.287 steps, 18.7.20 15,001 steps, 20.7.20 10,005 steps,  22.7.20 14,830 steps, 16.8.20 10,954 steps, 17.8.20 10,952 steps, 24.8.20 11,823 steps, 26.8.20 11,402 steps, 2.9.20 10,757 steps,  7.9.20 10,714 steps, 13.9.20 10,604 steps, 18.9.20 10,946 steps, 20/9/20 11,653 steps, 21/9/20 11,374 steps, 23/9/20 10,069 steps, t5.10.20 10,355 steps, 6.10.20 13,074 steps,  9.10.20 11,012 steps, 11.10.20 10,301 steps, 18.10.20 16,786 steps, 20.10.20 16,212 steps, 21.10.20 10,341 steps, 22.10.20 11,729 steps, 23.10.20 10,298 steps, 6.11.20 10,366 steps, 11.11.20 10,100 steps, 12.12.20 11,181 steps, 30.12.20 10,061 steps.
19. Have a party in the summer and invite at least 20 friends.  Do singing exercises for 20 weeks to rebuild my voice. 2/20.
20. Watch at least 20 programs that have been on the DVR since 2018.  14/20.

How about you?  What did you achieve during 2020?

- Pam

Looking for the silver lining

Something I don’t discuss often here is work.  You know I’ve had jobs that I’ve loved and made some fantastic friends in the process.  Well, I was expecting to be out of work right now.  I’m a contractor - not by choice - and I was told in July that my contract wouldn’t be  renewed when it expired at the end of September.  Looking the inevitable firmly in they eye, I polished up my CV, consulted a friend who wrote CV’s for a living, and started applying for jobs.  I even had an interview.

Then the unthinkable happened.  Over the August Bank Holiday Weekend, one of my Finance colleagues had a serious accident and spent three weeks on a ventilator in Intensive Care.  (She’s conscious now, thank God, and breathing on her own, but weak as a kitten with a long recovery ahead.).   When the news broke, I messaged our Financial Controller, “If you need another pair of hands, count me in”.  The rest is history.  I’m now responsible for the cashbook, credit control, cash flow reporting, work-in-progress reporting and trade debtor reporting, together with half-a-dozen balance sheet reconciliations.   With the help of some lovely colleagues, I’ve just survived my first month end. They’re talking about extending my contract to March.

I’m lucky.  I know that.  It doesn’t mean I haven’t faced tough times.  I’ve had to work hard to build a career and a good life.  “Hope for the best but prepare for the worst” has long been my philosophy.  It’s how you face the bad times that define you. You make your own luck.  When I was made redundant in 2016, I gave myself a week to wallow in self-pity - oh how it hurt - and then I deliberately chose to act positively. “Pick yourself up.  Dust yourself off, and start all over again.”    I choose to keep trying and keep seeking ways to do better.  

Everything life throws at you, gives you choices. You can’t control what happens to you but you can control how you react to it. You may be the victim of something horrible, an assault or long term bullying, but you can choose whether you define yourself as a victim or as a survivor.  You control the messages you feed to yourself; that’s what defines your self-worth, not something external.  Sure, people want to be liked and valued by their peers, but if they don’t like themselves then they’ll never be happy.  How many people do you know who are still beating themselves up over something that happened 10, 15, even 25 years ago?  I can name a few.  They haven’t forgiven themselves for an event that everyone else has forgotten.  It’s just another reason to hate themselves.

There are so many people who measure their self worth by Facebook or Instagram, needing the constant affirmation of “likes” to feel whole. The most self-obsessed people are usually the most insecure, too wrapped up in what is happening inside their own head to notice what is happening to the people around them.  A year ago, someone complained to me that their boss never spoke to them and how hurtful it was.  Knowing this person, I wondered how many times they’d actually initiated a conversation with their boss and asked the boss about themself.  (I occasionally give this person a lift to events.  They never ask me about myself or events in my life, and I’ve known them to sulk if they don’t get complimented on their outfit.)

You always have a choice.  You choose how you face the day.  Another thing I choose to do is to treat other people with kindness.  They may be really grumpy, but I’d rather think that they were having a bad day and treat them with civility and kindness.  No, I am not a doormat.   Anger and aggression are defence mechanisms born out of pain.  Sometimes just asking “are you ok?” can diffuse a situation and, if you are prepared to watch and listen, you’d be amazed what you can learn about someone.

- Pam

What did you achieve during Lockdown?

What did you achieved during Lockdown, Pam?  This is a question I’ve asked myself a lot, recently.  We've both worked throughout Lockdown so, at best, have regained a couple of hours a day from our commutes.  As you know, at the start of 2020, I set myself 20 separate challenges (updated below), but what have I actually achieved in the six months since we were all told to go home and put our lives on hold?

Here's what I have achieved during Lockdown:-

• Knitted three jumpers and started my fourth.
• Completed 109 days straight of Duolingo French and learned more in those 108 days than I did in 4 years of high school French.
• Decreased my podcast queue from 357 to under 180, even though between 12 and 15 new podcasts are added each week by the podcasts to which I'm subscribed.
• Become a runner again.  In July, I dusted off the Couch to 5K app and started running most mornings.  I've had to repeat a couple of weeks because I was really unfit, but that's OK.  I'm now running more than I'm walking, and I'm happy with that.
• Published 9 recipes.  At the start of Lockdown, I set myself the goal of putting my cheapest recipes online, so that those struggling financially could find and use them.  While some of my recipes were already on the blog, I've added others that are really cheap to make.  There's also been a couple of cake recipes.
• Finally finished the sock I started knitting in February and am part of the way through it's pair.
• Grown and harvested 8 bulbs of garlic, 3.2kg of potatoes (with more to follow), multiple courgettes, a dozen pak choi, a forest of mutant carrots and a handful of broad beans.  (What can I say?  We planted out 6 broad bean plants but they just didn't deliver.)  There are still 5 heavily laden tomato plants to harvest - the tomatoes are only just starting to turn red - and, maybe, a dozen red or yellow peppers to follow.
• Harvested two huge batches of rose hips and made 10 jars of Rose Hip Jelly.
• Harvested enough sloes - 541g - to make one bottle of sloe gin.  These are from one bush from the tangle of plants at the end of the street, which fell over in August's high winds but has managed to stay alive.  Until it collapsed onto the pavement, I never knew it was there.

Yes, there are things I’ve missed due to Lockdown: choir, meeting friends face to face, attending live sporting matches, the Osterley Park Farm Shop (closed due to Lockdown), the BBC Proms at the Royal Albert Hall, the sheer joy of just driving off into the sunrise and visiting new places...  But we’re healthy and solvent and happy, and that’s the best I can ask for right now.

Regarding my 20-in-2020 Goals, here’s the Sit-Rep:-

1. Knit 20 balls of yarn (that's between 3 & 5 jumpers worth). 28/20 - I finished the jumper I was knitting (5 balls), completed the next one (finished on 13 balls), finished the third (8 balls), commenced the fourth (1 ball) and lined up the fifth.  Sadly, I have still only clocked up one complete pair of socks this year (ending a ball of yarn in the process).   
2. 20 minutes a day learning French (via Duolingo and TinyCards) for 20 weeks. 16/20 weeks.
3. 20 minutes exercise a day for 20 weeks. Walking 22 weeks, weight training 5 weeks, running 8 weeks.
4. Read 20 books. 6/20.  These are listed In the sidebar on the right..
5. Try 20 new dinner recipes.  5/20.  I am a cook!  How can this be so difficult to achieve?  I’ve made Chicken a la King, a chicken tray bake from New Idea and Lidl’s Mediterranean Meatball Bake, Slow-cooker barbecued pork, Lamb Moussaka. 
6. 20 gardening sessions.   10 proper ones so far plus a couple of minutes mucking around with seeds.
7. Explore 20 new places 1/20 - the cathedral at Bayeux.
8. Attend 20 "shows" (concerts/plays/films/BBC recordings/exhibitions) 3/20 - Frank Skinner’s “Showbiz”.  The News Quiz.  The Troy exhibition at the British Museum.
9. Do the 2020 Fashion On The Ration Challenge and keep within the coupon count. 40/66 coupons used.  These are listed in the sidebar on the right.
10. Phone family/friends to chat 20 times (I'm hopeless on the phone). 14/20.
11. Lose 20lbs.  8/20.  (To be honest, I’m just glad I haven’t put any weight on given the “Covid Calories” everyone is eating.)
12. Mend 20 items of clothing (yes, that includes sewing on buttons and taking up hems) 3/20 - hemmed trousers from a suit purchased in 2018 (I’d only worn the skirt and jacket, not the trousers).  Mended the pockets of a different suit jacket, bringing that suit back into rotation.  Repaired the pockets on DH’s shorts.
13. Declutter 20 items.
14. Run 20 miles (but not all at once) 1 mile (started running again on 13.7.20 - doing couch-to-5K).
15. Save 20 x £20 out of my “allowance”(£400) £400/£400
16. Make 20 site visits for work, earning mileage 20 times (it goes to the car fund).  29/20.  
17. Write 20 blog posts.  24/20 
18. Log 10,000 steps on my Fitbit on 20 or more days (harder to do than it sounds).  20/20:  11.1.20 10505 steps, 22.2.20 10603 steps, 7.3.20 13527 steps, 21.4.20 10524 steps, 3.5.20 11,196 steps, 4.5.20 13,956 steps, 17.5.20 14,066 steps, 18.5.20 15,046 steps, 19.5.20 11,567 steps, 30.5.10 10,079 steps, 31.5.20 11,160 steps, 13.7.20 11.287 steps, 18.7.20 15,001 steps, 20.7.20 10,005 steps,  22.7.20 14,830 steps, 16.8.20 10,954 steps, 17.8.20 10,952 steps, 24.8.20 11,823 steps, 26.8.20 11,402 steps, 2.9.20 10,757 steps,  7.9.20 10,714 steps.
19. Have a party in the summer and invite at least 20 friends.  Do singing exercises for 20 weeks to rebuild my voice. 2/20.
20. Watch at least 20 programs that have been on the DVR since 2018.  11/20.

How about you?  What did you achieve during Lockdown?

- Pam

SitRep: June update

How was June for you?  Are you coping with Lockdown?  

I can’t remember where I first heard the sentence:  “Do three impossible things a day before breakfast”.  It may have been on an episode of Mr Ed, when I was a child - that’s what springs to mind.  Anyway, it’s the motto that I spent June trying to live by.  I think the point is to start your day having achieved something, so that the rest of the day doesn’t look like such a mountain to climb.  My 3 impossible things are muscle building exercises, learning French via Duolingo and singing exercises.  

You may notice that I’ve changed challenge 19 from having a party - not going to happen until after the current epidemic has run its course - to singing exercises.  I had a dreadfully sore throat in December and my voice hasn’t really recovered.  It gets hoarse after speaking for a couple of minutes.  A fellow chorister mentioned warm up exercises from Deborah Miles-Johnson, with whom we’ve done workshops.   I’ve downloaded them from Choraline and am working my way through those each morning.

1. Knit 20 balls of yarn (that's between 3 & 5 jumpers worth). 20/20 - I finished the jumper I was knitting (5 balls), completed the next one (finished on 13 balls), started a third (currently 1 ball down)  and have still only clocked up one pair of socks this year (ending a ball of yarn in the process).   
2. 20 minutes a day learning French (via Duolingo and TinyCards) for 20 weeks. 5/20 weeks.
3. 20 minutes exercise a day for 20 weeks. Walking 15 weeks, weight training 4 weeks.
4. Read 20 books. 5/20.  These are listed In the sidebar on the right.  The most recent books: This Golden Fleece, finished while sitting on the patio in the warm June sunshine and Not Quite Mastering the Art of French Living.
5. Try 20 new dinner recipes.  3/20.  I am a cook!  How can this be so difficult to achieve?  I’ve made Chicken a la King, a chicken tray bake from New Idea and Lidl’s Mediterranean Meatball Bake. 
6. 20 gardening sessions.   5 proper ones so far plus a couple of minutes mucking around with seeds.
7. Explore 20 new places 1/20 - the cathedral at Bayeux.
8. Attend 20 "shows" (concerts/plays/films/BBC recordings/exhibitions) 3/20 - Frank Skinner’s “Showbiz”.  The News Quiz.  The Troy exhibition at the British Museum.
9. Do the 2020 Fashion On The Ration Challenge and keep within the coupon count. 33/66 coupons used.  These are listed in the sidebar on the right.
10. Phone family/friends to chat 20 times (I'm hopeless on the phone). 10/20.
11. Lose 20lbs.  8/20.  (To be honest, I’m just glad I haven’t put any weight on given the “Covid Calories” everyone is eating.)
12. Mend 20 items of clothing (yes, that includes sewing on buttons and taking up hems) 3/20 - hemmed trousers from a suit purchased in 2018 (I’d only worn the skirt and jacket, not the trousers).  Mended the pockets of a different suit jacket, bringing that suit back into rotation.  Repaired the pockets on DH’s shorts.
13. Declutter 20 items.
14. Run 20 miles (but not all at once)
15. Save 20 x £20 out of my “allowance”(£400) £240/£400
16. Make 20 site visits for work, earning mileage 20 times (it goes to the car fund).  29/20.  
17. Write 20 blog posts.  20/20 
18. Log 10,000 steps on my Fitbit on 20 or more days (harder to do than it sounds).  11/20:  11.1.20 10505 steps, 22.2.20 10603 steps, 7.3.20 13527 steps, 21.4.20 10524 steps, 3.5.20 11,196 steps, 4.5.20 13,956 steps, 17.5.20 14,066 steps, 18.5.20 15,046 steps, 19.5.20 11,567 steps, 30.5.10 10,079 steps, 31.5.20 11,160 steps.  
19. Have a party in the summer and invite at least 20 friends.  Do singing exercises for 20 weeks to rebuild my voice. 1/20.
20. Watch at least 20 programs that have been on the DVR since 2018.  9/20.

- Pam

SitRep: May update

Hello.  How are you doing in these strange times?  As you will have gathered from a certain car’s post, below, we’ve been on Leave this week.  While I wish we could have travelled, I must say that it has been nice to have a break and a change to the rhythm of our days.  Highlights have been a visit to Costco, a visit to the butcher and walking 2 miles to go to the bank.   Oh, and we ordered a takeaway one evening.  

Prior to the break, it felt like every day was the same!  DH and I are both working from home, so that’s 8 hours of the day taken care of.  It feels like a lot more Worktime is spent in calls and meetings than would normally happen in the office.  Most evenings after work we go for a half-hour walk, cook dinner then watch telly.  I’ll knit and sew, while watching.  (Not much change there.).  

Weekends, we garden a bit, watch more telly, listen to podcasts together... The Kermode & Mayo Film Review podcast is a regular “date”.  It comes out on a Friday evening and we’ll try to listen to it together by Monday.  (Before Lockdown, we’d both listen on our separate drives to work and then discuss it.). I have a lot of podcasts in my queue and will listen when pottering around the kitchen/cooking dinner/doing housework/gardening/doing a very boring, brainless task “at work” (literally something that doesn’t require thought or my ears would shut off). 

One evening on the weekend, DH will play a video game online with his mates and I’ll read or phone my friends.  I love to read and have far more books in my queue than I have time to read them.  In our borough, you can sign up on line to borrow e-books from the “library”, but there’s also the Bookbub mailing list which sends a daily email of free or cheap e-books to match your preferences (Kindles, Apple Books, etc).  The Kindle app is free and I read them on my phone/iPad.  Re the library service, you can also borrow audiobooks for free.

Human contact is important.  We have a couple of regular Skype calls set up, e.g. normally on a Tuesday we’d do a pub quiz, now our quiz team Skype at “quiz time”.  Every couple of weeks, I have a call with the girls from Head Office Finance (where I worked 20 years ago).   My department at work have “Virtual Pub” on a Friday, where we chat and play games.  My project team are now doing the same on a Thursday.   And my choir are having Zoom calls instead of rehearsals.  (You only need to set up a Zoom account if you are hosting the meeting.)

Here is my update on my 20:20’s:-

1. Knit 20 balls of yarn (that's between 3 & 5 jumpers worth). 15/20 - I finished the jumper I was knitting (5 balls), started the next one (currently 9 balls down) and have still only clocked up one pair of socks this year (ending a ball of yarn in the process).   
2. 20 minutes a day learning French (via Duolingo and TinyCards) for 20 weeks. Not started yet.  Modified to 20 weeks.
3. 20 minutes exercise a day for 20 weeks. 5 weeks.
4. Read 20 books. 3/20.  These are listed In the sidebar on the right.  I have two books on the go right now and am 70% through both of them.
5. Try 20 new dinner recipes.  1/20.  I am a cook!  How can this be so difficult to achieve?
6. 20 gardening sessions.   4 proper ones so far plus a couple of minutes mucking around with seeds.
7. Explore 20 new places 1/20 - the cathedral at Bayeux.
8. Attend 20 "shows" (concerts/plays/films/BBC recordings/exhibitions) 3/20 - Frank Skinner’s “Showbiz”.  The News Quiz.  The Troy exhibition at the British Museum.
9. Do the 2020 Fashion On The Ration Challenge and keep within the coupon count. 29/66 coupons used.  These are listed in the sidebar on the right.
10. Phone family/friends to chat 20 times (I'm hopeless on the phone). 8/20.
11. Lose 20lbs.  6/20.  (To be honest, I’m just glad I haven’t put any weight on given the “Covid Calories” everyone is eating.)
12. Mend 20 items of clothing (yes, that includes sewing on buttons and taking up hems) 3/20 - hemmed trousers from a suit purchased in 2018 (I’d only worn the skirt and jacket, not the trousers).  Mended the pockets of a different suit jacket, bringing that suit back into rotation.  Repaired the pockets on DH’s shorts.
13. Declutter 20 items.
14. Run 20 miles (but not all at once)
15. Save 20 x £20 out of my “allowance”(£400) £100/£400
16. Make 20 site visits for work, earning mileage 20 times (it goes to the car fund).  29/20.  
17. Write 20 blog posts.  15/20 
18. Log 10,000 steps on my Fitbit on 20 or more days (harder to do than it sounds).  9/20:  11.1.20 10505 steps, 22.2.20 10603 steps, 7.3.20 13527 steps, 21.4.20 10524 steps, 3.5.20 11,196 steps, 4.5.20 13,956 steps, 17.5.20 14,066 steps, 18.5.20 15,046 steps, 19.5.20 11,567 steps.  
19. Have a party in the summer and invite at least 20 friends
20. Watch at least 20 programs that have been on the DVR since 2018.  9/20.

- Pam

SitRep: April update

Hello.  How are you?  As you can see from the posts with the tag “Lockdown Diary”, I’ve been posting fairly regularly since my last Sit-Rep.  Admittedly, most posts are recipes but that is what I promised to you when I wrote this post on Monday 23rd March, setting out my worries for people’s finances during/after the Covid-19 induced economic crisis.  All the relevant recipes are tagged <£2Dinners.

We’re both still working from home.  I usually start work before 8am and finish around 4.30pm.  Lunch is timed to coincide with the auction stage of Bargain Hunt on BBC1, which DH and I watch together.  Most evenings, we go for a walk around the neighbourhood, before coming home to cook dinner and settle down with my knitting/the TV.  Every Tuesday evening, we have a SKYPE call with the other members of our pub quiz team.  (Tuesday was Quiz Night.).  I try to call friends on the weekend, because I’m spending half of every working day on the phone at present.

So many things that we were planning to do this year have been cancelled or postponed.  Did I tell you that I got lucky in this year’s draw for Wimbledon tickets?  Well, that’s been cancelled.  Rather than rolling the tickets over to 2021, Wimbledon are refunding everyone their ticket money.  < pout >. Hopefully, I’ll get lucky again next year.  We also had tickets for a recording of the Now Show at the BBC but that, too, was cancelled.  (The show was recorded without an audience and is available as a podcast.). 

Here is my update on my 20:20’s:-

1. Knit 20 balls of yarn (that's between 3 & 5 jumpers worth). 7/20 - I finished the jumper I was knitting (5 balls), started the next one (currently 2 balls down) and have still only clocked up one pair of socks this year (ending a ball of yarn in the process).   
2. 20 minutes a day learning French (via Duolingo and TinyCards) for 20 weeks. Not started yet.  Modified to 20 weeks.
3. 20 minutes exercise a day for 20 weeks. 1 week.
4. Read 20 books. 3/20.  These are listed In the sidebar on the right.  
5. Try 20 new dinner recipes
6. 20 gardening sessions.  2 proper ones so far plus a couple of minutes mucking around with seeds.
7. Explore 20 new places 1/20 - the cathedral at Bayeux.
8. Attend 20 "shows" (concerts/plays/films/BBC recordings/exhibitions) 3/20 - Frank Skinner’s “Showbiz”.  The News Quiz.  The Troy exhibition at the British Museum.
9. Do the 2020 Fashion On The Ration Challenge and keep within the coupon count. 27/66 coupons used.  These are listed in the sidebar on the right.
10. Phone family/friends to chat 20 times (I'm hopeless on the phone). 5/20.
11. Lose 20lbs.  2/20.  (To be honest, I’m just glad I haven’t put any weight on.)
12. Mend 20 items of clothing (yes, that includes sewing on buttons and taking up hems) 3/20 - hemmed trousers from a suit purchased in 2018 (I’d only worn the skirt and jacket, not the trousers).  Mended the pockets of a different suit jacket, bringing that suit back into rotation.  Repaired the pockets on DH’s shorts.
13. Declutter 20 items.
14. Run 20 miles (but not all at once)
15. Save 20 x £20 out of my “allowance”(£400)
16. Make 20 site visits for work, earning mileage 20 times (it goes to the car fund).  29/20.  
17. Write 20 blog posts.  11/20 
18. Log 10,000 steps on my Fitbit on 20 or more days (harder to do than it sounds). 4/20:  11.1.20 10505 steps, 22.2.20 10603 steps, 7.3.20 13527 steps, 21.4.20 10524 steps. 
19. Have a party in the summer and invite at least 20 friends
20. Watch at least 20 programs that have been on the DVR since 2018.  6/20.

- Pam

Thirteen plus years in the making

Once upon a time, in 2005-6, I worked in central Reading.  Our office was a short walk from the Reading branch of John Lewis, which is the only major British department store chain to continue selling fabric and yarn*.   My lunchtime “treat” was to wander down Castle Street into John Lewis to browse the knitting yarns.  Sometimes, I’d buy something - the yarn for this jumper, for example - other times I’d just window shop.

At some point, I was drawn to an expensive, shiny, silk yarn, Debbie Bliss Pure Silk DK.  The colours just glowed.  I don’t remember the exact price, although £15/skein springs to mind.  There was a green that just kept catching my eye.  I waited patiently hopefully for it to go on sale.  I was disappointed.  When the John Lewis biannual clearance sale came around, there was none of that green to be seen.  I kicked myself that I didn’t make note of the colourway, while I had had the chance.  They didn’t get any more in stock afterwards, either, and soon after that my office moved out of town.  But still the colour haunted me.  Eventually, I caved in and ordered 10 skeins from, Bunty’s.  It was not something he usually carried, so I had to order out of the catalogue and hope from a tiny sample that I’d picked the right shade of green (there were two).  When it arrived, I paid over my £79.99 and tried to hide my disappointment.  The shade was much more blue than I remembered.  Pride prevented me ordering other green colourway from Bunty, I didn’t want him to feel obliged to take the first order back.  (I couldn’t inflict the loss on Bunty - it wasn’t his regular stock.  He’d only acquired it for me.).   Eventually, I ordered it from John Lewis in Brent Cross and, again, I was disappointed.  This time, it turned out too yellow.  

    

Neither were the exact colour I wanted but, having paid good money, I dutifully put them away in the stash and waited for inspiration to strike.

Fast forward to last year.  I was looking through the stash, wondering what to knit next, when my eye fell on the yarn on the bottom.  In the intervening  years, it seems to have changed colour and is far more like the yarn on the top.  If I couldn’t see the shade number, 27006, in the photo on the bottom, I wouldn’t believe it was the yellow-green one.  Anyway, it “spoke” to me and told me that it would like to be a Blanche Too by Susan Crawford.  I finished it last weekend and wore it for the first time on Wednesday.

See what I mean about the colour?  DH took this photo on our regular afternoon walk, our daily permitted “Lockdown Exercise”.  And this one, in the garden, afterwards.

After so long a wait, what do I think of the yarn?  The comments on Ravelry are full of complaints about the way it was spun:  slubby in places; tightly overspun in others.  I have to agree.  Every hank was an absolute beyotch to wind, having felted against itself in places. After the second skein, I gave up with the ball winder and wound them by hand.  They were unevenly spun, too, so I was surprised that it knitted up as evenly as it did.  

What will I do with the rest of it?  No idea, at this stage.  I may give it to a friend who is allergic to wool and alpaca, but has been bitten by the knitting bug.

- Pip

* In the 1990s, I watched as one-by-one department stores such as House of Fraser, Selfridges and Liberty closed their fabric and yarn departments.  By 1995, John Lewis were the only ones left.

March update

Good morning.  How are you?  How are you coping with the Covid-19 “plague” driven madness?  I am gobsmacked by the things that people are panic buying - why bottled water? (Covid-19 is not a waterborne disease.)  Why toilet paper? (Nor does it cause diarrhoea.)  I have ventured into the supermarket a couple of times over the last month and they are chaos!

We’re well.  Haven’t been struck by a cold since before Christmas.  I’m a little worried about my choir’s concert being called off next weekend, but it’s wait-and-see at the moment.  (The committee sent out an email yesterday.). Oh and having got fed up of chanting “Happy Birthday to Me!” when washing my hands, I’ve swapped to chorus of “I’m Gonna Wash That Man Right Out of my Hair” from South Pacific.

Here is my update on my 20 20’s:-

1. Knit 20 balls of yarn (that's between 3 & 5 jumpers worth). 4/20 - This hasn’t moved much because I had to rip out and reknit the jumper that I’m creating, since I screwed up the above-waist increases.  (Only ripped down to the waist.  Am now, finally, on the shoulders). The fourth ball used up was on a pair of socks.   
2. 20 minutes a day learning French (via Duolingo and TinyCards) for 20 weeks. Not started yet.  Modified to 20 weeks.
3. 20 minutes exercise a day for 20 weeks.
4. Read 20 books. 2/20.  False Value, by Ben Arronovich (the latest in the Rivers of London series).  People Like Us: Margaret Thatcher and Me, by Caroline Slocock (a memoir of Caroline’s time as a civil servant in Downing Street.  Fascinating.).
5. Try 20 new dinner recipes
6. 20 gardening sessions
7. Explore 20 new places 1/20 - the cathedral at Bayeux
8. Attend 20 "shows" (concerts/plays/films/BBC recordings/exhibitions) 3/20 - Frank Skinner’s “Showbiz”.  The News Quiz.  The Troy exhibition at the British Museum.
9. Do the 2020 Fashion On The Ration Challenge and keep within the coupon count. 17/66 coupons used.  (Bought a trouser suit.)
10. Phone family/friends to chat 20 times (I'm hopeless on the phone). 2/20
11. Lose 20lbs
12. Mend 20 items of clothing (yes, that includes sewing on buttons and taking up hems) 2/20 - hemmed trousers from a suit purchased in 2018 (I’d only worn the skirt and jacket, not the trousers).  Mended the pockets of a different suit jacket, bringing that suit back into rotation.
13. Declutter 20 items
14. Run 20 miles (but not all at once)
15. Save 20 x £20 out of my “allowance”(£400)
16. Make 20 site visits for work, earning mileage 20 times (it goes to the car fund).  28/20.  I have one more week of my commitment in the Huntingdon office - I’m handing over the job to the new starter -  then it’s back to normal and no claimable mileage.
17. Write 20 blog posts.  5/20 
18. Log 10,000 steps on my Fitbit on 20 or more days (harder to do than it sounds). 3/20:  11.1.20 10505 steps, 22.2.20 10603 steps, 7.3.20 13527 steps 
19. Have a party in the summer and invite at least 20 friends
20. Watch at least 20 programs that have been on the DVR since 2018.  0/20

- Pam

Update on my goals

Hi!  How are things with you?  I’m working too hard - I’m covering a full time role on one of the Highways contracts we have at work, while still trying to do parts of my real job and live my life.  It’s not fun and it involves a lot of mileage.  Here’s the update on my goals for 2020:-

1. Knit 20 balls of yarn (that's between 3 & 5 jumpers worth). 3/20
2. 20 minutes a day learning French (via Duolingo and TinyCards)
3. 20 minutes exercise a day for 20 weeks.
4. Read 20 books. Still on my first book, “People like us” by Caroline Slocock.
5. Try 20 new dinner recipes
6. 20 gardening sessions
7. Explore 20 new places 1/20 - We were in France over New Year and toured the cathedral at Bayeux
8. Attend 20 "shows" (concerts/plays/films/BBC recordings) 2/20 - Frank Skinner and, yesterday, the recording of BBC’s News Quiz
9. Do the 2020 Fashion On The Ration Challenge and keep within the coupon count 0/60
10. Phone family/friends to chat 20 times (I'm hopeless on the phone)
11. Lose 20lbs
12. Mend 20 items of clothing (yes, that includes sewing on buttons and taking up hems)
13. Declutter 20 items
14. Run 20 miles (but not all at once)
15. Save 20 x £20 out of my “allowance”(£400)
16. Make 20 site visits for work, earning mileage 20 times (it goes to the car fund).  13/20
17. Write 20 blog posts (in 2019, I haven't managed one yet)  4/20 - including this one
18. Log 10,000 steps on my Fitbit on 20 or more days (harder to do than it sounds). 1/20
19. Have a party in the summer and invite at least 20 friends
20. Watch at least 20 programs that have been on the DVR since 2018

21. Post on TMF at least 20 times.  5/20

As you can see, I’ve made a start.  Wonder how I’ll do in February??

- Pam

Fashion on the Ration vs Yarn Addiction

I mentioned in my last post that I’m doing Fashion On The Ration again this year.  My big weakness isn’t clothes, it’s yarn.  I have a stash of humongous proportions, so I don’t need any more yarn, but I still managed to blow 40+ coupons on it last year.  Seriously, I bought so much yarn that I lost count!  Some of it was one-off-specials, the sort of thing you find at shows but don’t see every day:  Tweed Valley Clotted Cream 4-ply; some Poledale sock yarn.  I bought a jumper’s worth of each.  There’s no excuse for the rest:  12 x 100g balls of Regia sock yarn, in three different shades of grey (it was a really good price, though); plus several assorted skeins of sock wool, which has now been turned into socks. 

My plan for this year is to knit up at least 20 balls of yarn from stash AND NOT BUY ANY.  Right now, I’m knitting another Blanche Too, from Susan Crawford Vintage.  The first one was out of Debbie Bliss’ Wool of the Andes; this one is out of Debbie Bliss Pure Silk DK, which I’ve had in the stash since I worked in the centre of Reading in 2006 (I bought it in the sale at John Lewis).  I’m almost up to the armpits and started the year on skein 3.  Now on skein 4; it should take another 4 skeins, so that’ll be 6 off the target by the time I’ve finished.

I’ll update the sidebars in a moment.

- Pam

Goals for 2020

A very clever person on MSE has devised a “20 in 2020 Challenge.  I’m joining in and have set the following goals for 2020:-

1. Knit 20 balls of yarn (that's between 3 & 5 jumpers worth)
2. 20 minutes a day learning French (via Duolingo and TinyCards)
3. 20 minutes exercise a day for 20 weeks
4. Read 20 books
5. Try 20 new dinner recipes
6. 20 gardening sessions
7. Explore 20 new places
8. Attend 20 "shows" (concerts/plays/films/BBC recordings)
9. Do the 2020 Fashion On The Ration Challenge and keep within the coupon count
10. Phone family/friends to chat 20 times (I'm hopeless on the phone)
11. Lose 20lbs
12. Mend 20 items of clothing (yes, that includes sewing on buttons and taking up hems)
13. Declutter 20 items
14. Run 20 miles (but not all at once)
15. Save 20 x £20 out of my “allowance”(£400)
16. Make 20 site visits for work, earning mileage 20 times (it goes to the car fund)
17. Write 20 blog posts (in 2019, I haven't managed one yet)
18. Log 10,000 steps on my Fitbit on 20 or more days (harder to do than it sounds)
19. Have a party in the summer and invite at least 20 friends
20. Watch at least 20 programs that have been on the DVR since 2018

And a special goal, number 21:  Post on TMF 20 times in 2020.  I owe that website a hell of a lot and I’d like to keep it alive.

Care to join me?

- Pam