The Summer Of Lockdown… Did I learn anything?

This has not, needless to say, been a fun summer. Since the idiocy carries on my level of stress and grumpiness will no doubt continue to rise. Eat your heart out Victor Meldrew. I did not become a super baker, the need to lose a load of weight took care of that but did I learn anything?

Well I suppose I learned a few things about my approach to life. And I learned to make the best of a bad job. I doubt I would have lost 35lbs without working from home and being able to cook exactly what I needed to eat to make my diet successful. The temptation to office cakes ( the currency of success in our office ) and the lure of something with chips in the canteen would have been difficult to overcome.

Lockdown also meant that I walked every day. I have now got out of the habit but I should return to it. Admittedly my taking the same routes every day did get a bit monotonous but that was where another learning came in: walking mindfully, actively trying to find new things, to observe and be in the moment, and record them with the nicest possible picture became a means of de-stressing. Of taking back some of the control that the government ripped away from me. I took pictures of weeds, and trees and road signs. Lockdown took me from bud to blown out seed head.

I also learned that there many beautiful, hidden, villages within a long walk from here and most of them seem to have churches that date back to around the conquest. Johnny-come-latelys date back to the fourteenth century…