Day 38 A Guest Blogger

Today’s Isolation Blog is being curated by Dr Tim Higgs, Caroline’s son.

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Over to you Tim…

Today’s edition is a day in the life of Steve/Hippo-like-being’s stepson, Tim.
Here’s a track to get things going as per the format, it’s both heavy and happy.

Today started as most do under the new norm: Me groggily travelling to the office (sofa) on time after leaving myself a bit of a hasty commute consisting of roughly 2 minutes to leave bed, don clothes and navigate the stairs with even less than my usual lack of grace. I do the morning dial-in to catch up with the colleagues, and tell them things like “I’m fine, struggling to find yeast” or “All fine here, I saw a pheasant yesterday” such is the thrilling pace of life in 2020.

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Things get a little more photogenic around lunch time, when the scene morphs from a bleary eyed me sat on a sofa sipping tea gazing at a laptop screen, to both me and Katherine sat in our garden with a sandwich, often a toasted one at that. Decadent. 

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We are lucky, in that our garden is actually a fairly big garden full of apple trees and other flora (minimal fauna since I killed the rat), since its shared with the 7 other flats. But they don’t use their shares, so it’s more of a huge private garden with potential spectators. Hence my tanlines, as I can’t sunbathe naked like everyone else. They (the flora) are looking rather lovely at the moment so I can maintain the tried and tested format of sharing garden photos in the middle of the post, just be sure to have an untuned radio playing next to you to replicate the noise of the M3 in the background, and maybe sit in the middle of the road so your neighbours can watch you for the authentic experience. 

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Then I resume the bleary eyed sitting on a sofa sipping tea gazing at a laptop screen until it is time to leave the office. Neither of us received the text of doom from the man Stewart Lee likes to refer to as Boris Piccaninny Watermelon Letterbox Cake Bumboys Vampires Haircut Wall-Spaffer Spunk-Burster Fuck-Business Fuck-the-Families Get-Off-My-Fucking-Laptop Girly-Swot Big-Girl’s-Blouse Chicken-frit Hulk-Smash Noseringed-Crusties Death-Humbug Technology-Lessons Surrender-Bullshit French-Turds Dog-Whistle Get-Stuffed FactcheckUK@CCHQ 88%-lies Get-Brexit-Done Bung-a-Bob-for-Big-Ben’s-Bongs Cocaine-Event Spiritual-Worth Three-Men-and-a-Dog Whatever-It-Takes I-Shook-Hands-With-Everyone Herd-Immunity Johnson. That means that I will have to deviate from the format somewhat, sorry if that’s a bit of a wilder ride than you were expecting. This is the point of the day where I go for the Daily Exercise.
Option A: The walk, with Katherine+1, where we have been ending our working days with a sub-but-sometimes-slightly-over-2 hour walk, and have explored almost every footpath that seems worth trying now. Fortunately we’re able to pack quite a range of environments into a given walk as shown below in the shots from yesterdays sub-2 hour escape (bonus points for those who manage to spot the stealthy wagtail). Her walking is pretty amazing considering the size of the human she’s carrying inside her and we very much are enjoying this while it lasts!

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Option B: Wearing silly clothes, jumping on a Victorian contraption and eating flies at speed, which I believe is also known as cycling. Being a great lover of the outdoors, I have a couple of evening-friendly routes I like to do regularly so I can stare at my cycle computer and try and make sure I’m an absolute mess when I come home having tried to better my previous self while covering the western end of the south downs in my sweat. 

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Either option (I roughly alternate between the two) is often followed by pouring one of these, a beer from SHawfort ARTisan brewing co (SHART) whose staff of 1 lives in my flat and wears my clothes and stuff. Pictured below is my latest batch, a best bitter I would describe as a “fakespears” as my aim was to brew something similar to my favourite bitter, and I think I managed that but might tone down the dark crystal malts next time. No fish guts or bits of pig in this though, unlike that stuff CAMRA try and tell you is “real”.

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I also put on the album of the day for making dinner to when it’s my turn, which for the past few days has been this beautiful, slightly poppy, uplifting yet melancholic release from Leprous, featuring the stunning vocal talent that is Einar Solberg. It’s not even very heavy!

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Then come the evening’s activities which have no fixed format but can include things like crosswords, board games, video calls, TV, or using the PS4 I bought just before lockdown which is one of the best decisions I have ever made. Then I sleep ready to restart the cycle.
Thanks for making it this far, your work is done now. who knows what Steve/Hippo-like-being has in store for you tomorrow?
Bye!