I am off to see the family today. How nice to be able to say that and know that things are slowly reverting back to normal. I refuse to say “new normal” as it is an expression that drives me potty.
And before I ramble, I may just say that another thing that drives me potty is some of the marketing emails I have been receiving. I have just had one drop in my in box from Marks & Spencer urging me to “shop the staycation edit”
I might just throw up...
OK so what have been doing and the answer is Not a Lot. I make sure, during these times, that I have a structure to my day no matter how relatively uninteresting it may be else I wander around like a tit in a trance. So my routine is to have my morning cuppa, eat a banana or a piece of fruit and then go out for my walk. Now, I loathe exercise in any shape or form. If I was a spy and captured by a foreign power and they wanted to know my secrets, forget pulling my toenails out, just bung me on a treadmill. I would tell all within a minute.
BUT my resolve during lockdown was NOT to regain the weight which I have been working hard at losing. Our WW meetings were on Zoom as there were no workshops and I made the decision that I was not going to allow this virus to make me fat again and resolved just to maintain weight. And I have. I have made myself walk each day so that it is now an ingrained habit and if I don’t do it I feel vaguely guilty. I average a mile a day (there was one day when I managed four but that just about finished me off so has not been repeated) and I have managed to keep to this. On checking my health app since 1 April and taking note of my daily walk it now seems that I have walked over 100 miles since the beginning of lockdown. This stunned me so much I had to have a lie down.
I am wittering so back to the routine. I get back indoors, have a shower, a drink and then my breakfast.
Then I do chores or anything that needs doing. The other day I was looking at my carpet and thinking Elaine you really need to get the hoover out. So I did. Cleaned the flat and then I went outside into our flat entry hall and hoovered that as well. We do our own cleaning as the company that did it was dire. I then got the spray polish out and did the windowsills etc. By this stage I was getting a bit fanatical and when I started cleaning the windows called a halt. Enough Elaine.
I have lunch, sometimes a bijou napette, well quite often actually and then full of virtue I decide to do nothing. Wimbers cancelled this year so the BBC have been delving into the archives and have been showing all sorts of fantastic matches over the last thirty years. It was wonderful to see the Ivanisevic/Rafter mens final again, great to see Andy creaming it, and of course St Rog of Fed was showcased in order to allow Sue Barker to go into full gush and drool mode.
Some of the older matches now seem a tad slow even the fabled Borg McEnroe finals. I watched a bit of one of them but the sight of McEnroe with frizzy hair, headband and permanent scowl was even less endearing than when I first watched and so I switched off.
And the Ladies!! OMG how dire and slow and pat a cake the early ones were. The 1977 final when Virginia Wade beat Betty Stove. Excruciating. Simple shots that todays ladies would sprint for just left, no effort made. No attempt to return difficult serves. It was so boring.
They showed a few of Steffi Graf and boy she was simply terrific. But on the whole dreary.
And the interesting thing to note was the commentary. In the vintage matches we had Dan Maskell and Mark Cox. Most of the time we watched in total silence with Dan or Mark interjecting an incisive and to the point comment. Ten years later, still pretty quiet but a bit more chat. Ten years later Henman and McEnroe, but still not too much chat. Then present day and we have Castle, Lloyd, Henman, McEnroe, Boris et all in full twitter non stop drivel mode. It was most marked.
I have done some reading. One excellent history and one biography that enraged me so much with its ponciness, no other word will do, that I threw it across the room.
More on that later.
Au reservoir
