Coffee, cake and some sad news.

Hey everyone!

Last week was an odd sort of week. There were lockdown highs and an extreme lockdown low. I am sorry to say that this will be my first blog post which is predominantly very sad.
On Thursday, the day of the final clap for the NHS, it was announced that my grandad had lost his fight to Covid-19. My grandad was a fantastic man. He lived to the ripe old age of 86, beating cancer three times throughout his life. We live a couple of hours away from my family so we only see them a few times each year, but growing up my grandparents had a huge part in my life. My grandad was a thumb-war champion when I was a kid, something that I still reminisce about with my brother. My first memory of writing was with my grandad. We wrote an autumn poem together during a school holiday break at my grandparent’s caravan. We lost the poem and the only part of it we could ever seem to remember was something about how the autumn leaves sounded when we stepped on them and the beautiful colours of autumn. More than 20 years on, every single time I saw him we would still talk about this poem and the one part of it we could both remember. After every visit, I told myself that one day I would write a new autumn poem for him. I never did write the poem. But I did publish a book and it has to be said that my grandad was the first person who ever encouraged me to write, so the credit is all his. I guess there is a moral to the autumn poem story, as there often is a moral to most stories: don’t do it tomorrow, do it today. We can’t hug all of our loved ones during this time but we can appreciate them and tell them how we feel. We can check up on them with a phone call or leave them a little reminder that we are here. And we can keep them safe, by following government guidelines and being patient. This will not last forever, but losing the ones we love will.

Raise a glass (and it must be a whisky!) to my grandad, John 1/10/1933 – 28/05/2020.
Rest in peace, Grandad

After telling you my extreme lockdown low, I’ll lift the mood a little with some lockdown highs for the week. Here they are in photo form…

I finally, FINALLY, managed to get myself a Costa. This was my first coffee in 10 weeks because I am seriously fussy when it comes to coffee and I will only drink Costa. And even then, it can’t just be any old latte… nope! My coffee has a minimum of six words in its title and I have a specific coffee for the warmer months and a specific coffee for the colder months. Call me crazy, but I know what I like.

So this is about as helpful as my cat has been this week. While I have been using the kitchen table to do my writing on an evening, my cat has been meowing at the sink until I turn on the tap, because drinking from her bowl is just out of the question. She has also discovered where the alcohol lives and she now likes to hide behind the bottles and scare the crap out of me when I reach for the gin. And no, that water bottle does not contain water…

My favourite thing about lockdown has been these guys. Every Thursday night, after the NHS clap, we have been sitting on the drive with the neighbours for a socially distanced drink. When life goes back to normal, I will really miss Thursday nights. Lockdown has given us the opportunity to really get to know the neighbours and they are completely amazing! This was a no-makeup kind of day just a few hours after the news of my grandad, so apologies for this horrendous photo of me!

This delicious piece of heaven was just one of ten treats brought to me by my bestie this week. This was the first one I tried and they just got better every time! I had an Oreo one last night. I loooooove Oreo! I knew that those tiny cake forks I bought would come in handy eventually.

And finally, this is my absolute best of the besties, Melanie (the buyer of the above cake). It was her birthday on Sunday so we had a barbecue in the garden where we frisbied burgers across the garden to everyone so that we could stick to social distancing rules. It wasn’t much of a celebration but at least we managed to do something. After she spent her last birthday being pregnant, we could not allow her to miss out two years in a row with lockdown still firmly in place. The neighbours all really appreciated my fire alarms going off when I underestimated how ridiculously big the sparklers for the cake were!
I know Mel will really appreciate these photos of us being on my blog. They were taken on the way home from a night out, sitting in a takeaway waiting for some garlic mushrooms, because we know how to be classy while living it up in York. Happy birthday, Boo!

So, that was my week in lockdown. One of my hotels has opened back up this week so it’s only a matter of time until I go back to work. I’ll keep writing and blogging until I do and I hope that I will have time to keep going once I go back.
Don’t forget to scroll right the way down to the bottom to leave me a comment!

Stay safe.

Love Love xx