A Photo Every Hour - Saturday 18th February 2023

Saturday 18th was February's photo an hour date. It was the last weekend before my kidney surgery operation, which took place on Monday 20th. The consultants said it's always a good idea to increase your fitness level before surgery so we decided to pop over to a local town (Frome) and take a wander, finding some geocaches and playgrounds. It was also market day in town so we managed to pick up some yummy chocolate brownies from one of the stalls. 

Here's what the day looked like...

13 lovely others joined in:

Valerie joined in on Instagram

Sarah joined in on Instagram

Naomi joined in on Instagram

Josie joined in on Instagram

Jane joined in on Instagram Stories

Denise joined in on Instagram Stories

Rebecca joined in on Instagram Stories

Lucy joined in on Instagram Stories

Alex joined in on Instagram Stories

Bev from Confuzzledom joined in on Instagram

Christine from Christine Lucas joined in on Instagram

Susie from Second Hand Susie joined in on Instagram

Jennifer from Pastry and Purls joined in on Instagram Stories

And myself on Instagram and on this blog post :-) 

March's photo an hour date is Saturday 18th - see you there!

 

 

  

 

A Photo Every Hour - Saturday 23rd July 2022

July's photo an hour date fell on Saturday 23rd. We didn't do too much - some jobs around the house, a bit of cooking, some sewing and in the evening we went out for a drive to find some geocaches and have a look round a local church. 

Here's what the day looked like...

10 lovely others joined in:

Valerie joined in on Instagram

Sarah joined in on Instagram

Naomi joined in on Instagram

Rebecca joined in on Instagram Stories

Jane joined in on Instagram Stories

Denise joined in on Instagram Stories

Bev from Confuzzledom joined in on Instagram

Hazel from World of Joy joined in on Instagram

Susie from Second Hand Susie joined in on Instagram

Christine from Christine Lucas joined in on Instagram

And myself on Instagram and on this blog post :-) 

August's photo an hour date is Saturday 20th - see you there!

 

 

March and April at the Duckpond

A two month round up this time, mainly because a proportion of 'March and April' were actually spent *not* at the duckpond. 

• At the beginning of April we had a mini weekend break to Cornwall, staying with my sister in law who lives down there. We had great weather and even though it was the first weekend of the school holidays, it wasn't too busy! And the reason we were in Cornwall was to see...

• Hetty Feather at the Minack Theatre - which was a fabulous show with great acting from the whole cast. It was a nice evening, not too cold and we took along blankets anyway. Lily loved the outdoor setting of the theatre I think! 

• We managed to get both my Mum and Lily up to date with their COVID vaccinations. My Mum was due her 5th one (due to being immunosuppressed) and Lily was due her 2nd. We found a walk in clinic open to children whilst on holiday over Easter and they were more than happy to see us. 

• Easter was spent in Anglesey in North Wales, at the same holiday park we've been to every year since 1987 (minus 2020 and 2021 of course). It was a bit different this year with my Dad not being able to come but we still had fun. Lots of ice creams were eaten, beaches were played on and geocaches were found. We did a mini Easter egg hunt in our chalet for Lily too and amazingly, she still has chocolate eggs left even now! 

• Whilst on holiday too, me and Andrew had our 15th wedding anniversary. Not quite sure how it's been so many years; I remember making a card and present for my parent's 15th wedding anniversary back in 1991 so that's a bit surreal. 

• My Dad's finally out of hospital and has been moved to his new home, a nursing home close to where he used to live. Luckily it's not too far for me and my Mum to visit either. 

• Books - I seem to have been reading books on the same theme recently, first 'The Uninhabitable Earth' by David Wallace-Wells and at the moment, 'The Day The World Stops Shopping' by J. B. MacKinnon. Both really interesting books with some thought-provoking observations. 

• TV and film - we haven't managed to watch much TV recently although I did see that Edgar Wright's 'The Sparks Brothers' film is now on Netflix so we're looking forward to seeing that at some point. I did watch a great talk from last year on YouTube by Bellingcat founder, Eliot Higgins all about how they tracked down the Skripal's poisioners. Open source investigation is something that interests me so I found it fascinating. I'm pleased that the Great British Sewing Bee is back on again too!

• Music - I'm looking forward to Arcade Fire's new album, out on May 6th (I've had 'The Lightning' on repeat since it was released) and I spotted Muse also have a new album out later in the year too. 

• Our Geocaching Instagram account seems to be going quite well, lots of people seem to like our photos and I think it encourages us to get out more. Or perhaps it's just because we tend to do more caching whilst on holiday. 

• We had an excellent day trip to Lyme Regis back in March, somewhere Lily's wanted to visit for ages as she loves dinaosaurs and knows all about Mary Anning. We did a bit of fossil hunting but didn't find anything too interesting. We will have to return and have another search sometime!

• April's Photo an Hour took place on Saturday 23rd - we were driving back from Anglesey that day so a few hours of pictures were missed. Just after Easter, I also did a round up of all the lovely people who've taken part in photo an hour over the last year. May's photo an hour date is Saturday 21st - feel free to join in if you want. 

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!

 

A Photo Every Hour - August to December 2021

Even though life since my Dad's stoke last August has been incredibly busy, I still managed to take part in the monthly Photo an Hour challenge over on Instagram. 

So here's a round-up of the last few months of 2021...

August's photo an hour date was spent at home catching up on jobs in the house and garden. Andrew spent a good portion of the day cleaning his lorry ready for the Bath and West Show the following week, which of course he didn't get to go to due to my Dad's stroke. 

September's photo an hour date happened to fall on my Dad's 69th birthday! At that point he was still on an intensive care ward so he wasn't really aware of anything but the staff had decorated his bed with balloons and given him a card. We'd prepared a 'Happy Birthday' photo to stick on the whiteboard next to his hospital bed. 

October's photo an hour date saw us visiting the brain injury rehab unit which my Dad had just moved to. In the evening we also went swimming at our local private hire pool. 

November's photo an hour date fell on one of the few carnival processions which took place in 2021. This time down in Honiton, Devon. We went down to watch the parade and collected some tasty chips on the way home. 

December's photo an hour date fell on the Saturday closest to my birthday. We'd packed a picnic and went on a birthday day trip to the seaside at Weymouth. We walked on the beach, had hot chocolate, saw Christmas lights and ate chips from one of our favourite fish & chip restaurants. 

And if you need a handy picture of 2022's dates, here you go :-) 

 

Our Easter Holiday at Home

I don't really like the word 'staycation'. According to Merriam-Webster the word dates back to the 1940's but I'm sure it always used to mean a holiday spent at home. Nowdays it seems like far too many people, the media, politicians, etc use it as a catch-all for simply having a holiday in the UK. Even the various dictionaries online, Oxford, Cambridge, Collins, all have one definition as holidaying in your own country. Surely if you're leaving your home to go on holiday, regardless of the destination, whether it's Greece or Grimsby, it's still *an actual holiday*. Not a staycation. I don't know, perhaps I'm just remembering wrong. 

Anyway we actually did have a traditional 'staycation' over the Easter holidays - or a 'holiday at home' which I think is a much nicer phrase. 

Normally we'd be in Wales over Easter at a place we've visited every year since 1987. I was only 4 when we first went and the owners of the site we stay at have seen me and my brother grow up, right through to the next generation - Lily- coming along on holiday too. We stay in 2 holiday cottages now though rather than share one with my parents. 

Last year it just felt a bit strange staying home. We weren't yet a month into the first lockdown and we had great weather so just played outside and rebuilt the garden and veg patch. This year for Easter, with the 'stay at home' restrictions lifted, we were able to have some day trips. And although the guidance says 'minimise travel' there's nothing in England's COVID legislation restricting (domestic) travel so we were free to travel wherever we liked for whatever reason, provided we didn't break the 'gathering' bit of the legislation (as an aside, if you're on Twitter, Adam Wagner is an excellent person to follow, he's a human rights barrister who's been keeping track of the changes to COVID legislation since March 2020 (I think over 70 changes so far). He's also brilliant at answering people's questions about law and guidance and explains things in a really easy-to-understand way).

For our holiday at home, we ended up with rather good weather for the whole week really, a bit cold perhaps but at least it wasn't raining. 

We did day trips to:

- Clevedon and Portishead, doing a 2.5 mile walk around the woods in Portishead finishing off with a playground, ice cream and fish & chips.

- the New Forest to see the ponies and tall trees and Southampton to see the huge cruise ships (of course we found a playground there too).

- Teignmouth to meet Andrew's sister, doing a 2.5 mile history walk around the town centre and harbour. We had ice cream, strolled along the prom, visited the playground and had fish & chips for dinner. 

And took picnics:

- to Chew Valley Lake to see the ducks and buy an ice cream. 

- on a 5 mile walk around the local area, crossing fields, going through woods and finding secret footpaths. 

- to Westbury White Horse to see the grandparents where we had ice cream, found geocaches and did a 3.5 mile walk around the hill fort. 

- to Burnham on Sea beach for sandcastle-building and more chips!

- on a 4 mile walk around the local area, following the old railway lines around the area. 

We also had a family Easter lunch outside in the sun complete with Easter egg hunt and a (rather chilly) picnic in the garden later in the week. 

I've written on here before about geocaching (back in 2017); it's quite an interesting and fun thing to do, especially when you're out and about in different places. We found quite a few geocaches while we were out on our day trips. 

I also found an app called ViewRanger which lets you plan walks and see walks other people have created. I'm sure it's one everyone already knows about and I'm late to the party but still, it's quite good. I think the app's possibly going to be retired at some point in the future but it seems to work well at the moment. We used some trails other people had created and also made some of our own. The trail we did in Teignmouth was rather good as it was created by the Royal Geographical Society and had lots of information about the history of the town that you could read or listen to as you followed the route. Anyway, it's an app I'd recommend. 

What did you get up to at Easter? 

 

 

A Photo Every Hour - 2019

Next up in my photo an hour round up, 2019 - the last "normal" year! 

19th January 2019 - Lily had a friend's birthday party to attend north of Bristol so we turned it into a day trip, starting with a Toby Carvery breakfast and taking in the new 'Hey Duggee' movie at the cinema. After the party we did a bit of shopping for Lily's birthday party the following week. 

16th February 2019 - We did some tidying and sorting then went out for a drive to do some geocaching and ended up at a soft play centre for dinner. 

23rd March 2019 - Another day of tidying and sorting out, with a purpose as the next day we were doing a stall at a local baby & children's table top sale. 

27th April 2019 - A day of travelling almost 300 miles home from our Easter holiday break in Anglesey. We stopped off on the way for dinner and a play at Gloucester Servives on the M5 of course. :-) 

19th May 2019 - A Sunday this time and also Andrew's birthday. In the morning I helped at a local baby & children's sale and in the evening, we had birthday pizza before watching a show at the Bath Festival. 

15th June 2019 - Another baby & children's sale, this time the local NCT one where I was volunteering and manning stalls. After the sale me, Lily, my dad and brother headed to the hospital where my mum was (this was the month she was diagnosed with cancer) and then came back to our house for dinner cooked by Andrew. 

20th July 2019 - Was our carnival club's annual fundraising fun day. Andrew took the lorry along as an exhibit, I made lots of cakes and also manned some of the stalls. Lily spent all our money on the stalls winning sweets :-)

24th August 2019 - This day fell on the weekend of Great Dorset Steam Fair and it was a lovely sunny warm day. In the morning me and Lily did our shift in the pay box of a friend's vintage arcade and in the afternoon I did a shift volunteering on the trailer rides around the ring. The evening was spent at the fairground whilst Lily's favourite area of the fair was the freak show (performed by the Circus of Horrors) which was not surprising as we camp directly behind their show and she'd seen all the performers every day. 

21st September 2019 - We went away for the weekend to help run the vintage arcade at Carter's Steam Fair in West Wycombe. It was a lovely autumn day driving there and a mild evening too with fab fireworks to finish. 

12th October 2019 - A day of tidying, cake baking and playing. In the evening we watched a live stream from one of the local carnivals taking place that day. 

16th November 2019 - The last time I performed on a carnival float! (as the processions were cancelled last year for obvious reasons). The morning was spent sorting out my costume and bits from the previous night's procession and then getting ready for that evening's one. 

21st December 2019 - It was our carnival club's Christmas party that day. We had a bit of shopping to do at lunchtime and then I made the cake that'd been requested by a couple of people in the club - a battenberg cake! 

Just one more year - 2020 - to go and then the first few months of 2021 :-) 

 

A Photo Every Hour - 2018

So the last photo an hour post I wrote on here was for February 2018. As I mentioned the other day, for the sake of completeness, I'm going to cram the whole year into one post. 

Here's a whizz through March to December 2018 where in the space of a few seconds of scrolling, you can watch Lily go from just-turned-2 years old to almost-3. Also watch in amazement at all the things we used to be able to do pre-COVID!

24th March 2018 - We had a day trip to the West Somerset Railway for their Spring Steam Gala and managed to find the tallest tree in England!

28th April 2018 - I had a child-free day trip to London to see Kneehigh Theatre's fantastic stage production of 'Brief Encounter' at the Empire Cinema Haymarket. I did a bit of sightseeing too, collecting some geocaches at Paddington Station, Kings Cross Station and the British Library. 

19th May 2018 - Happened to be both the Royal Wedding of Harry & Meghan and also Andrew's 40th birthday. We went along to a local church to watch the ceremony (they were providing free sandwiches and cream teas), Lily did some flag waving (or should it be "fleg" nowdays...?) and in the evening, had a birthday meal at Toby Carvery. 

16th June 2018 - I volunteered at a local NCT sale, helping with the running of the stalls. We were also selling out stuff too and managed to shift quite a bit (as well as bringing home a few purchases of course). 

28th July 2018 - Was the first day of our annual roadtrip around the UK to Edinburgh and back. Our first stop was Leicester for a couple of nights so we drove along the Fosse Way doing some geocaching on the way. We finished our journey with a holiday treat of a meal from Five Guys. 

18th August 2018 - There was another Gromit Unleashed trail that year and we'd spent a large amount of time finding them all. We took a trip out with my dad to tick off a few more Gromits and ended up at a playground in the nice weather. 

22nd September 2018 - Carnival season had rolled around again and it was Frome Carnival that evening. I spent the day doing some tidying and cleaning then we headed out to watch the procession, picking up a McDonald's for dinner on the way. 

27th October 2018 - We started the day at Lily's nature class then did some cleaning before heading out to Warminster carnival. Dinner that evening was a meal from Morrisons Cafe, sheltering from the rain!

17th November 2018 - By this time, we're into proper "big" carnival season and it was my first time back dancing on a carnival float after having had a few years off. We started the day with a big breakfast before getting my costume and clothes ready then heading out to Glastonbury Carnival. It was the last procession of the season so we always try and do a big cast photo and after the show, the float is packed up and driven back to its shed to be taken apart ready for next year. 

15th December 2018 - Me and Lily went out to watch a Christmas music concert then we spent the afternoon making sandwiches and mince pies ready for helping run a Christmas quiz night in the evening. 

Excellent, that's 2018 done. Now to do 2019, 2020 and the first 3 months of 2021 :-)