Time off

When we first went into lockdown I thought I may as well cancel my holiday dates we won't be going anywhere, which indeed is the case. However as I've been lucky enough to be kept going on full pay and not furloughed I really feel I need a break. Every day I have to log onto the laptop & do work stuff all day, that's fair enough but I feel chained to the bloody thing, so I haven't cancelled my holiday already booked and I'm off this week!

   It feels like a real break. For instance generally speaking we limit alcohol to Fridays and Saturdays, but I'm on holiday, so can imbibe guilt free if I want. Not setting the alarm is of course brilliant and we've even managed a couple of days out as restrictions have been lifted alittle.

 Some years ago T bought me a guided walk of a local town ( Harpenden), we'd never got round to doing this walk so after about 5 years we went for it. First instruction was abit strange. 'Go to the war memorial and see how many Swans are on it.' Well I can tell you there's two. Next instruction 'Carefully cross the road to the statue on the Green, who sculpted it?'   Hang on...'carefully cross the road?' 'How many Swans?' Not exactly historic or very grown up sounding is it. On further reading it can only be a childrens treasure type trail & we've been meaning to do this for five years! What a couple of prize plums!

Anyway, Harpenden is quite a nice place, a shame there's no pubs or cafes open of course but there you are. We did have a walk around the local church, I'd known that the comic Eric Morecombe had lived locally and his ashes were scattered in the graveyard, we were able to find the plaque commemorating him on the wall but in his real name of John Eric Bartholomew. He died in 1984 (didn't realise it was so long ago!) and I think it's quite telling that Morecombe and Wise Xmas specials are still aired and are still funny. Just a shame there's been nothing since to replace them.

      The weather has been so nice that we took a picnic up to Golden Valley , just walked and talked. Ida got somewhere abit different to explore. It was a really good day. The weather has gone off abit now so don't know what else we'll do but its so nice to have a break from work and to be able to have conversations with T rather than just chats which it felt like we were doing, oh and I've finally got round to ordering us a new musical box but more of that later.