February at the Duckpond

So now we're into March, officially Spring!

February was a bit wet and windy down here although there were a few sunny days thrown in. Here's what we got up to...

• We had a lovely (if blustery) day trip to Teignmouth in Devon as a "mystery tour" present for my Mum's birthday a couple of weeks earlier. We had blue skies all day and managed to fit in a car picnic, a playground, hot chocolate, ice cream, a stroll along the prom, geocaching and fish & chips for supper.

• My Dad's still waiting for a nursing home place but in the meantime he's staying at the local hospital (which kind of makes it sound like he's choosing to be there when actually it's all paperwork hold-ups!). At least he's closer to our home and we've been able to go in and visit most days. 

• Good film and TV we've watched - wow, the last 2 episodes of 'Call the Midwife' were a bit of a rollercoaster weren't they? Very good though. 'This Is Going to Hurt' was excellent, as I thought it would be (having read all of Adam Kay's books) although it did leave me wondering whether there'd be a second series. A bit like my mamoth 'to be read' list, we also have a long 'to be watched' list - and it doesn't help that Netflix keep releasing things which sound great! I think we're going to watch 'The Lost Daughter' and 'The Responder' (on BBC) next. I also spotted this list from the BFI - 100 Best Films Streaming on Netflix and Amazon Prime - which is brilliant but means we now have even more things to watch :-)

• Lily was ever so excited to be able to get her first COVID vaccination (due to living in the same household as someone immunosuppressed). Once the doctor's surgery had added the neccessary code to her record, we were able to go to a walk-in vaccination centre to have her jab. Our nearest centre doing 5-11 year olds was Exeter so we packed a picnic and had a morning outing down there. The staff were happy to see her; they'd just decorated the floor with chalk pictures for children and she was the first one to see them all! 

• Just because I clearly need another thing on my to-do list {laughs hysterically}, we started an Instagram account for our geocaching adventures - familyduckadventures (which is our geocaching name). Mainly beacause I often take pictures of the caches we've found but don't share them on my own Instagram account as I'm aware that not everyone is interested in it. Feel free to follow if you think it might be your sort of thing :-)

• I've just finishing reading Josh Widdicombe's 'Watching Neighbours Twice a Day' book which is very funny and worth reading if you did any growing up in the 1990's. 

• I noticed the Minack Theatre in Cornwall put their summer shows on sale and managed to book tickets for 'Hetty Feather' in April and 'Calvino Nights' in May. Both look excellent - Hetty Feather I saw a few years ago and Calvino Nights is presented by Mike Shepherd who founded Kneehigh so should be fab. And the theatre has the added bonus of being outside so much safer COVID-wise.

• And speaking of COVID, I can't say I'm that keen on this 'brave new COVID world' (with apologies to Aldous Huxley). Less/no testing plus not having to isolate when positive means that potentially every person you meet *could* be infectious - as there's just no way to tell. So what that means for us is that we do even less than we did pre-COVID (or even back when the COVID rates were low) - ie. we're not spending money on anything indoors like cafes, shops, soft plays, etc. So when journalists and others go on about the economy, well we're another family that won't be contributing to that. Ironically when the rates were low, that's when we did take a chance (in an FFP3 mask) to buy things from indoor places. There's two reasons: 1) there's an immunosuppressed person in our household but more importantly 2) none of us actually want to get COVID. And we've been incredibly lucky so far that none of us have (knowingly) had COVID - and I say knowingly as none of us have ever had a positive test or been told that we've been a contact. And that's with regular lateral flows and regular PCR's for my mum due to her hospital treatment. Although I do completely understand that we're in an incredibly privileged position; I really feel for people who have no choice to be in a place where they may catch COVID. I guess it's the whole 'learning to live with COVID' thing - it kind of implies that some *learning* has actually taken place (ie. putting in place things like HEPA filters, monitoring CO2 levels, maybe implementing masks when needed, etc) but like many things, I'm not so sure the government (and some people in society) have learnt anything. Anyway, grrr. 

• But back to nicer things, there's daffodils, snowdrops and lots of crocuses plus it's lighter past half 5 now - spring (and summer) is hopefully on it's way!