The Distancing Diaries - 16th & 17th October, 2020

 

On Friday I was up just after 6am so I could book next week's National Trust excursion. After my Wii Fit session, I gave the lounge a deep clean, washing my collection of vintage glass, dusting the chandelier and the picture frames, polishing the surfaces, brushing the rugs and mopping the wood floor. 

After breakfast I changed out of my workout out gear (charity shopped leggings and vest), emptied the laundry basket, loaded the washing machine and hung everything up to dry in the utility room.  While I got to work on turning the green tomatoes I'd left covered in salt the previous day into chutney,  Jon cracked on with removing the bamboo, managing a couple of hours hard graft before the torrential rain - which hadn't been forecast - sent him scuttling back inside. 

I've set myself the task of photographing and measuring every garment in the Kinky Shed, ready to upload to eBay every month for the foreseeable future, which should keep me out of trouble until next year. I don't want to sound like a pessimist but I really can't see the festivals restarting in 2021 and, with no vintage fairs happening, online selling is going to have to sustain us until life returns to some kind of normality.

WEARING: Vintage Interlinks Indian cotton midi dress and Frye Campus boots (both eBay), 1970s Phool Indian block print waistcoat (Eyewood Vintage) 

Leaving Jon to organise a skip for delivery for tomorrow, I continued with my photos in the rain, grateful for the shelter of the bastard massive lime tree.After a break for noodles, Jon went outside to work on Gilbert with some success, he's running again! Meanwhile I cropped my photos & created twenty five eBay listings which I saved as drafts before watching BoJo address the nation.

Tea was Jon's homemade pasta sauce with vegan meatballs, pasta and grated cheese. 

We decided to watch Gardener's World on catch-up another day, having a Spooks extravaganza instead. Adam joined the team. Needless to say, as it was Friday, we consumed one or two rum & colas. Before I went to bed I left the bathroom plants (all twelve of them) soaking in the bath.

On Saturday Jon was up first, seeing to the lads and bringing mugs of tea back to bed where we read until 8.30am. Jon went downstairs to start on the sausages whilst I stripped and changed the bed and put the houseplants back. After our sausage sandwich breakfast I put yesterday's washing away, watered the rest of the houseplants and Jon supervised the delivery of the skip.

WEARING: Vintage psychedelic maxi (very tatty, hence the reason it's been relegated to gardening attire)

Can you make out that thing in my hair? It's a Tibetan sterling silver hair stick, bought from Goa's infamous Anjuna Flea Market, which I often use to skewer my hair in place although, despite owning it for the best part of twenty years, it rarely pops up on my blog. When we were in Kerala in 2012 (we've been three times) Jon & I were roaming the backwaters when I realised I'd mislaid it, a few days later and I found it hanging from a creeper, it must have become entangled when we were walking.

The next three hours were spent in the garden, clearing the area by the pond where we'd piled up all the debris we'd removed from the border at the end of August as well as the contents of the rubbish pile from Jon's shed clear-outs during lockdown. After a break for homemade apple & strawberry crumble we raked up the leaves and weeded outside the front of the house and, garden waste bin full, added it to the skip. The company told us we could keep the skip for a fortnight but it's ready for collection now.

The postman arrived with a parcel! My lovely friend Sarah sent me this incredible Moghul-inspired shelf she'd made herself. Isn't it gorgeous? She also included some seeds packed in an envelope she'd made from a vintage gardening book. 

Jon spent the remainder of the afternoon spark out on the settee watching some ancient black and white war film. Me, I'm like that annoying rabbit on the battery advert and never gets tired, so I carried on with photographing the stock. Now every skirt in the stockroom has been catalogued. 

Tea was a salad with cheese, olives, grated carrot, lollo rosso (homegrown), tomatoes (also homegrown), Jon's pickled cucumber and Poor Man's Capers (made by me).

According to the TV guide Inspector Montalbano is on BBC4 later, I'm not sure if it's a new series or one we've watched before but I don't mind watching Luca Zingaretti again, and again and again...

Cheers!

We've got a huge bag of donations to take to the charity shop tomorrow, the manager told us that they're absolutely desperate and it would be rude not to have a look round while we're dropping them off, wouldn't it? Chazzing used to be such a commonplace activity, something we did almost daily. Now I'm so excited about going I find myself planning what I'll be wearing the night before...how life has changed!

Stay safe and see you soon!