This week was a toughie, no school or work and gorgeous weather. It sounds perfect but this week we should have been in our family’s happy place, Butlins for the week and with such brilliant weather we would have made the most of all the outdoor activities which the children love. I was planning a spa morning too.

Instead we’ve been at home and with the ambiguous guidelines, we’ve avoided the beach as so many day trippers have come down for a beach day and its too busy. I was in town on Monday and it was obvious that visitors don’t feel that social distancing and safety measures put in place apply to them on their day out. Our R rating here is high, 0.9 and its even higher at 1.2 in other neighbouring seaside towns too. I did have another Covid 19 test this week for work, we are having them regularly as we have to contain the virus on our site. It was another negative, I was really surprised how empty the testing site was, its huge and I was the only person being tested.

Whilst we haven’t been on the beach, we’ve had lots of walks in the countryside and on the coastal path which is more rugged and quiet. There have been lots of tree climbing and games of hide and seek to keep us amused. Mr S and his gardening partner, Little Miss have spent the week painting our fences, the garden looks so much better.

Here are a few of the things, I have manged to do this week.

I read

I’m a huge Grethen Rubin fan and her podcast is a must listen each week. I bought Better than Before in January but quite simply wasn’t in the correct frame of mind to read and develop the ideas. I’m ready now and its been an ideal read, I have pages of notes and have already acted on lots of advice. There’s nothing quite like a lockdown to refocus your plans, aspirations and values.

I made ..

With Little Miss and Mr S busy painting, me and Little Man have been play mates. We made lots of rainbows this week, his favourite was the Lego rainbow, I liked finding flowers and plants (and weeds) of all the colours too.

It was Little Man and I baking in the kitchen this week and for one lunch we made cheese and olive scones. They were delicious. An added bonus this week is that we’ve been able to sit outside for meals. We’ve also had a couple of barbecues, if we can’t go on holiday then holiday will just have to come to us!

I splashed ..

Again it wasn’t quite the amazing pool at Butlins complete with slides and wave machine but we got the pool out this week and there was a lot of fun had by everyone. Mr S added a pure comedy moment when he grabbed a t-shirt to go with his red trunks, it was yellow and he was a dead ringer for a lifeguard, it only added to the experience!

I wore

New trainers! I have an injury that needs to be seen properly but having looked at my well worn trainers I decided that new shoes may help contain the injury as well as heavy strapping. The new trainers have arrived and I managed to run 5k today, my Achilles is a little sore now but I also managed a 3 mile walk this afternoon so I’m definitely taking that as a win. I had planned a little parkrun tourism this weekend, doing the Bognor parkrun and again it just made me a little sad that we’ve not been able to have these things to look forward to.

I watched

We started series 3 of the A word this week on catch up and have watched the first three episodes. I like the series, I work with children with autism and I think the show is a fair representation of the condition. It also has a real human element, its not simply about autism but about a family.

And finally

So May is nearly finished and we are near to 10 weeks in lockdown. The children return to home schooling on Monday but I have another week’s holiday (we lose a week in the summer holidays) Normally this is a great week with the children at school, lots of catching up with friends, lunches out, getting ready for summer and getting organised for birthdays and celebrations. Its going to be a little different this year, I suppose I’ll really appreciate my extra week in 2021!