Home Schooling In The Flat

Hi love,

I have been quarantined at home this week, not with the virus but with the secondary virus which is 'home-schooling' Erbie, having done a sterling job of it before the Easter holidays, has gone into fully blown head in the hands - 'I can't take it' crisis mode, which I am gently trying to coax him from. The only way he will do anything school related is if I sit beside him - all day. 

Yesterday, I learnt the historical beginnings of the Muslim religion, the word for 'snow shoes' in French - (raquettes de neige) at least I hope that's what the translation is! I also spent a painful hour hindering the multiplication of negative numbers. As I mentioned before, me and numbers do not fit together well. Science involved learning about salts, this was interesting, did you know that a metal and an acid make a salt? Sodium chloride being table salt, although how anyone is supposed to learn the spelling of phenolphthalein and a simpler explanation of tritiation might need a little more time. The day ended with Dickens.

His bigotry surrounding the Jewish faith and his usage of slang in his work 'Oliver'. 

By 4pm Erbie and I were done, figuratively, mentally and physically. Obviously we didn't go out for a long walk to stretch our legs and stare longingly at other peoples gardens, which would have been sensible, good parenting and self-care, oh no, I had a large glass of wine and Erbie got on. the PS4 with his friends.

It's times like these that really bring home the insecurities around parenting. at least if they are at school for some of the time, someone else is responsible for their learning, you don't have to take all the flak. In lockdown I imagine thousands, if not millions of parents everywhere are rapidly becoming reliant on their alcohol fix at 6pm and trying to scream louder than the voices in their heads shouting: 'your'e no good at this.' All hail the teaching professionals.

The truth is none of us know what we're doing, we were just better at covering it up with our busy ness. 

Things I thought I'd miss but haven't: 

1.) Clothes shopping, probably because there is nowhere to wear them, and the ever expanding waistline.

Yup, that's it, I miss everything else.

Things I thought I'd get done but haven't:

That list is way too long. 

The kids are all desperate to go back to school and that's something none of us thought we'd hear. 

Anyway time to start another day, the school bell would have gone half and hour ago, must have more coffee.

Fake Butterfly In A Jar

Shopping For The Vulnerable

Hey babes,

It's Monday which means, I will be talking to my ladies who lunch on Zoom this evening - it’s Bingo tonight. I’ve not played Bingo before -there’s no way I’d choose to go out and spend a night with numbers. Me and numbers have never really got on.

I’ve just received the latest shopping list from the Belle Mere:

Top of the list is

GIN (large bottle) I like Dry Gin so Bombay (London) Dry Gin. (if they have it). If not, anything except that Green Bottle that I think is Sainsbury's own)

Tonic x 2 large bottles if they have it).

Milk x 2 green top semi each 2x2 lites 4 pints)

cheese ( only Lancashire will do!) It's in a special packet usually on the top shelf)

pan scrubs (packet of 4, six or 8?)

Pasta (tortellone with spinach & cheese).

Bread- more Vogel if they have it.

2 x tins of tomatoes.

2 x bottles of dry white wine (can be Sainsbury's).

VEG

Carrots

Onions 

Celery

How the hell am I supposed to carry all of that! Seriously, my arms are going to be on the floor by the time I get to her house! We have stopped using public transport and I don’t drive.

Erbie had his first day back to home-schooling today after the Easter break. He was not his usual cheery self, in fact the only way I could parent that situation was by literally sitting beside him for most of the day. 

I now have serious lockdown loco fever. An hour a day does not keep the head doctor away especially as my only trip out today was to queue briefly (not even a long queue when I really needed it to be) for Sainsbury just up the road. 

I actually look pregnant, my wine belly is so big, today I was going to start the exercise regime, healthy eating, getting out, time management thing - yeah we’ve all heard it before. It started badly with left over Easter egg for breakfast and went consistently downhill from there.

Perhaps I should just embrace the wine baby.

How the hell are you doing?

Lockdown Recipe - Stifado - Week 4

As with everyone in lockdown, mood levels vary from day to day.

I am able to measure mine by bra wearing, there are bra-days and no-bra-days. A no-bra-day is not so good, clothes have probably not been put on, hair not washed, sensible food surpassed for chocolate and way too much coffee. Exercise has almost definitely not been taken. No-bra-days are especially bad if they consist of actually leaving the house ‘sans brassiere’, much like today, which involved queuing at the local supermarket to buy wine with the sole purpose of returning home to drink it.

This is throwing in the towel (or bra) not as it once was seen, as a caution to the wind type thing,  but more as a ‘fuck it I cannot go on with out alcohol’ type way. My online health guru, Kris Carr, would call this: ‘numbing’ the senses with wine rather than ‘self care’ chillin’ with a nice glass and something to eat.

I have also decided to make the hearty flavoursome dish: Beef Stifado. I loosely follow Tonia Buxton’s (The Greek Kitchen) recipe. Tonia’s recipes are really authentic and I also have a slight girl crush, check out: ‘Eat Greek For A Week’, yup, okay, not a problem.

Tonia Buxton - all woman

Stifado, according to Tonia, means ‘stuffed’ as in ‘stuffed full of flavour’.

A ladleful of the unctuous broth, full with Greek flavours of fennel, bay and cinnamon is enough to transport me to a tiny harbour taverna, a cold bright sunny afternoon, the blue Aegean lapping at the shore with brightly painted fishing boats bobbing on its surface. Ah...

For a properly authentic recipe, search up Tonia Buxton’s - Beef Stifado.

Here is mine:

W1MUM LOCKDOWN STIFADO

Ingredients
400g shin beef diced
2 red onions chopped
1 tbsp olive oil
2 cloves garlic crushed
3 tbsp red wine vinegar
2 bay leaves
1 piece of cinnamon bark
1 tsp cloves
1.5 tsp fennel seeds
2 x 400g cans chopped tomatoes
1 tbsp tomato paste
Salt and pepper

Method
I use a heavy based cast iron casserole dish, it’s not Le Creuset, but it works perfectly well. Put on hob and turn up high. Brown the meat in olive oil and add the onions, gently cook until caramelised.

Brown the beef with onions in olive oil

Add the crushed garlic, I like to use a microplane grater.

Add crushed 2 cloves crushed garlic

Followed by the red wine vinegar.

Add 3 tbsps red wine vinegar

Stir and add the cans of chopped tomatoes, plus one can of water. Rinse the empty cans and recycle!

Add I tsp cloves

Add cloves, bay leaves, cinnamon bark, fennel seeds, tommy paste and season with salt and pepper.

Add 1 tsp fennel seeds, bay leaves and cinnamon bark

Add 1 tbsp tomato paste

Turn down heat and simmer with a tightly fitting lid for at least 1 hour this is not a dish to rush.

Simmer for at least 1 hour with the lid on.

It is the kind of dish you can happily leave bubbling away in the kitchen, while you have your lockdown-text-off with friends, and it won’t spoil if you drink an extra glass of wine before you bring it to the table.  

Serve with a green salad and toasted pitta bread or mashed potatoes and steamed kale... whatever you fancy really.

Red wine and ouzo optional.

Cheers!

Stay safe. Stay home.
xxx

Lockdown Week 4

TheGR apologises for being an arse and decides drinking lager is not the way forward. Having the favourite pub shut means real ale is now only available in cans, we all have to make sacrifices!

Maybe his whole family dynamic ran on ‘fight or flight’. Why do we tap in to that when the stress trigger is activated rather than zen calm. I guess Buddhist monks spend years teaching themselves how to tune in to inner calm when triggered rather than the ‘fight or flight’ response, so I shouldn’t be too surprised.

Day 23 of lockdown, we are all feeling the pinch, the kids really want to go swimming, the joggers don’t want to be puffing past, they want to be on a treadmill at the gym, which was once part of their morning routine, on the way to work., now they’re working from home. Everyone knows the acronym WFH.

7 of us got together last night online, it was daylight when we went on and dark when we got offl. We did a quiz, I had a cup of tea, some had wine, one an Easter egg, another a beer. The quiz was light-hearted, it was lovely to see everyone. We all found the filter button, backgrounds were changed, suddenly the Easter egg eater was in the jungle, my Spanish friend didn’t really say much at all, thinking back, I should call her. Katherine, the GP said there were no babies in her surgery, which isn’t good as it means no one is coming in for vaccinations.

The Easter holidays are over. The sun is out. 

cherry blossom 2020

Erbie and I walk down the railway path, cow parsley, dock, hawthorn buds about to burst, bee-flies and honeybees buzz past. The pink cherry blossom is already fading and clumps of it litter the gutters. No bunches of lilac from the florist this year. I wonder where Kate Moss is? Highgate or the Cotswolds.. Where is Mick Jagger, where are all the famous people? I heard Marianne Faithfull went into hospital with coronavirus but that was 2 weeks ago.

I have lockdown belly. My shoulders ache with stress, yet I’m not really under any stress, I’m obviously under stress, we are all under stress.

I called my auntie yesterday, it would have been mums birthday, she was on a ladder in the garden talking to the neighbours saying: ‘it would have been my sister’s birthday today’. They haven’t been out for 4 weeks. My cousin shops for them and drops it off.

We’ve been shopping for the Belle Mere, the shopping lists are obtuse. TheGR was instructed and duly got a pineapple and green and blacks organic cocoa powder, plus 4 pints of semi skimmed milk. I did the next round, 4 pints of semi skimmed milk , 2 bottles of tonic water, a double pack of Lavazza coffee and a melon. We don’t question it.

It transpires, of course, the BelleMere hasn’t been obeying lockdown rules. She’s been popping out daily for her paper and fags and probably got a few trips to the supermarket in as well, judging by her insider knowledge on the queues and shelf stock situation. We’ve just been getting the heavy stuff for her!  She goes very quiet.

The BelleMere is convinced she has ‘the virus’, ‘I know I have it’, she calls 3 times in the middle of the night, my phone is on silent. I email to say I will call at 11.30am, I know she’ll be asleep before and I will panic if she doesn’t answer the phone.

I call at 11.30, she has the poorly voice, I tell her there is nothing to do but stay in, look after yourself, stay hydrated, take paracetamol, eat well, watch telly, sleep, don’t go out to get the paper or fags. Call 111 if you can’t breathe.

She calls the next day to apologise, she’s fine, false alarm, the threat of no paper was too much. Actually that’s unfair, we are all ‘the worried well’ and slightly hysterical, have I got it, what’s this cough?

I’m doing a 1000 piece jigsaw swap with friends.

Lockdown Fever

TheGR shouts at the top of his voice, at the television, but not really at the television. The ticker tape at the bottom of the news bulletin reads, daily exercise may be removed if people continue to flout social distancing rules. 

The downstairs neighbours never did move out, their sale got shunted at the last minute for all sorts of reasons, mainly them. The lovely Spanish couple that were due to move in and expecting a baby bought a flat around the corner. 

TheGR is besides himself with rage, but also drunk having not had alcohol for 10 days due to illness, have we all been sick with coronavirus, we don’t know, we didn’t lose our sense of taste or smell, but we did have aches, temperatures and coughs and extreme fatigue and weird chest and back pains.  Today is the first day we’ve both felt well enough to eat and drink and be merry, it’s obviously gone straight to his head.

'I feel like smashing something, why don't I get any thanks, how can they not understand the terms and conditions of the lease, he stares out of the window at the offending downstairs neighbour, yeah that's right... he says menacingly, I'm talking to you.'

He’s passed out on the sofa now, I’m at my makeshift desk, especially for lockdown, half of mum’s antique table top balanced on the piano stand, a jigsaw of butterflies 3/4s finished underneath my laptop.

I took Erbie out for a walk around the block at 7.30am this morning, it was sunny, the first time he’s been outside for 20 days. The skin at the parting on the top of his head looks blue like a polar bears, from lack of sunlight.

A family three doors down are all doing Thai Chi in their back garden and have put up a swing. They’ve been hanging their bedlinen out on the washing line, I’ve not seen any washing hung out on a line since we’ve lived here, now it’s daily occurrence in clement weather.

TheGR wakes up stomps through to the bathroom and pulls the bedroom door shut, I take it he’s angry with me too then. Why do I stay? Why do I stay? Bathroom door closes, front room door shuts with a loud click. 

The downstairs neighbours have been in their garden all day in the Spring sunshine, he has turned pink, he’s talking at his mobile in Dutch. They are drinking champagne from flutes and wearing flip-flops. 

The beautiful lady renting the house adjacent to ours, I’ve not seen in the street with a single hair out of place – obviously very high maintenance, hasn’t been dressed for over a week. She’s been in the garden in slippers, a fluffy dressing gown, all kinds of leisurewear in fact, hair pulled back in a pony or sort of non-descript fuzzy.

It’s the first week of April 2020, everyone has been shut in at home for three weeks, some people are coping better than others. We are stressed, having bad dreams, drinking too much, eating too much, not exercising enough if at all. We’ve been sick and our energy levels are low. We’ve got lockdown fever.