It’s a rather flippant title for this week’s post in what has been another difficult week. We’ve all had to examine our values and our need to empathise with others’ experiences to fully understand #blacklivesmatter. Sadly this has reignited the far right movement and suddenly after the unity of the lockdown parts of our society seem very fragmented.

However, this post is supposed to be about our little family’s week and here are some of our highlights…

I’ve read …

I’m slowly reading The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas, the slowness of my reading is because it is disturbing and uncomfortable reading, it doesn’t feel like fiction in the current climate, with a black teen killed by the police. I’m reading it for a variety of reasons, I want to broaden my daughter’s library to include more black authors and I wanted to check this book out so I could address the content. Its also been on my to read list for a while and if not now, when?

I’ve listened …

After reading Gretchen Ruben’s book Better than Before, I started a daily meditation and have now found a podcast, the Daily Meditation Podcast to support the meditation. I never thought I would last longer than a few days, but I’ve now done 15 days and am enjoying the daily quiet time. I like that as the podcast is released daily it is able to address the issues in our current lives.

I’ve refreshed and refreshed web pages …

I never thought I would be the sort of person to be chasing after the latest craze but for the past month I have been in my quest to find a Nintendo Switch. The children have been amazingly resilient in lockdown and really good, despite so many nice things being cancelled, holidays, cub camps, school residentials, birthday days out so we decided to treat them to something special for their birthdays and replace their old Wii with a new Nintendo Switch. What we hadn’t thought about was the impact of a global lockdown and increased demand so what we thought would be a simple purchase turned into hourly refreshing of web pages, signing up to email alerts etc.. This week, I managed to respond immediately to an email alert and buy a Switch which arrived this week just in time for a lockdown birthday. It was worth all the effort to see the delight on the children’s faces.

I had a takeaway coffee …

This morning, I had to pop to the Post Office and stopped off at my favourite indie café for a takeaway cappuccino. It was my first in 12 weeks and was divine, I bought little man a drink too and we sat on the beach wall to drink, with the sun on our faces, blissful. I’m a regular at the café and it was lovely to catch up with the owner and support one of my favourite local businesses. My friend and I go there every Wednesday for lunch and I can’t wait to resume that little ritual.

When we were in town there were signs for the first time of our little town and its businesses awakening after the lockdown, lots of shops are reopening next week and I’m looking forward to more normality, although I’m becoming more desperate to see my parents and have my hair cut, there’s a strange priority list from the government.