Catching up: Zooming to Antarctica

 I've been under the weather lately, missed a few blip days. Last week's trip to London was excellent, but the rest was just too much, too full on. On Sunday, sfter a trip to a restaurant with D and his extended family to pre-celebrate his 80th birthday, I went down with a tummy bug. I assume that is what it was, as no one else who ate there, and neither CS nor GG, with whom I also ate with on Sunday, had a bad reaction to food. I stayed in bed on Monday and slept, managed the afternoon childcare shift with the boys on Tuesday, and rested s bit more today. I've caught up at last with all the Mirthy.co.uk   lectures I missed last week, and decided to let the yoga class go... I don't fancy Zoom yoga at the best of times.

I still feel post CoVidy, and the weather is violent and windy. My stomach has recovered, but I just feel tired. Perhaps we all do.  The approaching end of free testing and all restrictions in England doesn't feel like the end of CoVid concerns .

By way of good news, I've discovered The Reader https://www.thereader.org.uk/about-us/ and signed up for two Shared Reading sessions online today, both of which I enjoyed. Partly it's for research.  I will be able to explain more about why I'm doing this, one day soon.

I've also booked a holiday for myself and GG during the second week of my nursery holidays. After dithering and swithering for what feels like centuries, I've settled on a cheap-and-cheerful trip to Madeira. Not too many CoVid restrictions there. GG is going to have full assistance at the airport, there's no way I'm going to wrestle with her suitcases as well as mine: no repeat of our Fighguard shenanigans last June! Besides, she's broken a few more bones since then. I still want to go to Jordan and Dubrovnik, but I've decided that it would be unwise to blow my life savings right now. We all know that, in the words of Noel Coward, https://youtu.be/lCZCv98XKFs, there are bad times just around the corner (I owe my knowledge of Noel Coward songs to my sister TMLHereandThere, whose choices of records to play on the Dansette later influenced mine).

The image is by Sue Ablett, who gave a talk to Mirthy.co.uk about her 2014 trip to the Falkland islands, South Georgia and Antarctica. It shows the passengers from the ship preparing to set foot on Antarctica. An amazing talk! Antarctica is still not top of my list of places to go, but there is so much to be learned from sharing other people's travel experiences and their passion for wildlife.