Rainy Days & Mondays - Lockdown Days 38 & 39

After my Wii Fit session on Monday morning (day 38), I logged on to my PC and placed another order with the garden centre for delivery later this week. Over breakfast Jon & I compiled a shopping list and, once he was dressed, he drove down to the Co-op and swung by Johal's on the way back for a couple of missing items.

I left Jon in the kitchen disinfecting the shopping and dusted our bedroom, brushed the floor and scrubbed the tea stains off the bedside tables.

 I went into the spare room and pulled everything sparkly, feather-trimmed or overly flamboyant out of the wardrobe. I emptied my Summer suitcase, hung up my wraparound block print skirts, ethnic blouses and a handful of lightweight cotton maxi dresses with sleeves. Not so much a seasonal changeover as a lockdown lifestyle changeover.

I moved a couple of carexes that had grown too big for their pots and then gave the patio plants a watering. Jon popped out to inspect the seedlings, coming back with a handful of rocket and lettuce leaves to have on our lunchtime sandwich.

After lunch I searched eBay for cottage garden type flower seeds, finding a seller with a huge variety and treated myself to black-eyed Susans, cornflowers, candytuft, calendula, evening primrose and columbine which came to just over £8 including postage.

Jon pottered around the greenhouse, replanting the lemon cucumber that had become waterlogged along with more aubergine, French beans and courgettes and potted up a few peppers.

Then he finished off building his black box to house the electrics for the outdoor lighting. Who needs DIY shops? Jon's got most of it stashed away somewhere.

I repositioned a passionflower as it wasn't happy on the wall outside Jon's music room. I removed the supports it had previously climbed up and touched up the wall with some masonry paint.

We locked everything up and went for a walk around the block, bumping into a friend on the way and chatting - at a safe distance - for a while.

 Despite the forecast being for a much cooler day, it was still pleasantly warm. I wore a 1970s embroidered cheesecloth blouse bought from eBay last year and the reclaimed patchwork maxi skirt again.

Tea was jacket potatoes with coleslaw and cheese (I'll start looking like a potato soon!) After a blog comment catch-up, we watched BBC4's Museums in Quarantine featuring the Andy Warhol exhibition at the Tate and Grayson Perry's Art Club.

At bedtime, I read another chapter of the book I'd started on Sunday. It's been years since I read anything by Margaret Forster, I'd forgotten how much I love her writing.

This morning (day 39), for the first time in weeks, we woke to torrential rain. After my Wii Fit & our fruit and yoghurt breakfast, I had an epic blog catch-up over a mug of coffee. Jon braved the rain to wire a solar-powered control panel to Gilbert while I went upstairs to clean the spare bedroom. With the temperature plummeting to 8°C there was little to tempt me into the garden.

Recently Vronni, Beate, Monica, Ann, Sheila & Fig have shared photos of their dressing tables so here's mine. If you've been following me for a while you'll no doubt already be acquainted with it, an Edwardian scumble-glazed piece I picked up in a charity shop about 15 years ago.

Using a car boot sale picture frame, a piece of plywood, a posh wallpaper sample and some cup hooks, Jon made me the necklace holder.

It's sturdy enough to accommodate my big tribal pieces.

My earrings live on this wired mannequin, another chazza shop find.

I used to have three times this amount of earrings but came to my senses last year when I realised I only ever wore the same few and donated the rest to the charity shop.

These small banks of drawers lived on my Mum's dressing table. I decoupaged them with vintage Bollywood film posters when I inherited them.  The smaller set contains my makeup, false eyelashes, bindis and eyelash dyeing kit. The larger ones house my bangles.

The 1920s train case came from a car boot sale, I store all my hair accessories in there (combs, brushes, hair & headbands, hair sticks, clips, grips and slides.

This monogrammed silver dressing table set is dated 1929 and was my Great-Auntie Maud (her first name was Alice but she went by her middle name) 21st birthday present. The boar bristle hairbrush is the best thing ever, I use it every day.

Ann has the same piece of 1970s plastic partyware on her dressing table. Hers contains her perspex rings, mine holds my nail stuff - Barry M nail paint, nail varnish remover, toe spacers, nail files and a couple of orange sticks.

The hands were both charity shop buys. My Mum wore the orange ring when she was expecting me in 1966 and the two clear perspex rings were also hers. The silver bags (one containing a miniature prayer book) were my great grandma's. Like my earrings I've given away most of my rings in recent years, I nearly always wear the same ones anyway. The three biggest are Lamani tribal toe rings, the gilt coloured ones are Afghan, I bought the silver & aquamarine ring for my 30th birthday and the silver thumb ring was a souvenir from Morroco in the 1990s.

The amber ring was a 50p charity shop find in the 1990s and is marked Denmark. Several years ago I came across a photo of George Best taken in 1969 with his Danish girlfriend, Eva Haraldstad, and noticed she was wearing the same ring.

I do love an old set of drawers! This is not so much an apprentice piece as something a grandad might have knocked up in his shed but at £1.50 it's ideal for storing the earrings that won't hang off my mannequin. The hand was a present from my brother and the solid silver tribal bangle was bought in Jodhpur back in January (a lifetime ago!)

My handsome maharajah contains my brooches, not something I normally wear as I've got enough going on with my long hair, pendants, bangles, earrings and rings. I used to collect Victorian jet jewellery as a teenager - it was easy to come by at jumble sales back in the 1980s. The chap in the middle is my great-grandfather, it was my great-grandmother's mourning brooch (there's a piece of cloth cut from his suit at the back), the silver monogrammed brooch was another inherited piece as was the Victorian heart-shaped brooch, the enamel bluebird and the silver butterfly wing brooch. The Victorian ammonite and both banded agate brooches were all charity shop finds. The turquoise brooch is by Ruskin and came from a jumble sale.

My dressing table has small drawers beneath each side mirror, the perfect place for storing the stuff that rarely sees the light of day, like Alice Chapman (Grandpa's mother's maiden name) monogrammed silver locket.

Here are two Victorian bog oak mourning lockets, each containing a lock of hair from a deceased sweetheart.

Mum's engagement ring, a few nick-nacks I collected from junk shops as a child and a hallmarked silver button from an ancestor's dress made into a pendant (and in dire need of a polish).

Great-great grandmother's enamel fob watch, a Victorian silver vesta case and mirror from a chatelaine, a gold, diamond and turquoise ring I inherited as a child, a jet locket and a butterfly wing pendant. I found the Italian micro-mosaic bar brooch wedged under the carpet when I cleared the parental home, it must have belonged to the original owner of the house (the only other person to have lived there) as girly, dainty and pretty certainly wasn't to my Mum's taste.

What with cleaning, sweeping, dusting and taking photos, other than a break for noodles, that was how I spent the best part of the day. We do have some growing news to report, however, namely the Ruby Red Swiss chard, purple cauliflower, lemon cucumber I planted last week have sprung up overnight.

Jon has also taken delivery of a couple of packs of paintbrushes he ordered last week. If the weather continues to keep us housebound maybe we'll start decorating.

We're having curried chickpeas and salad filled pitta bread tonight, I haven't checked if there's anything decent to watch on TV but I'll let you know if I find anything.

Stay safe, sane and positive!