Today marks 1 year and 11 days since we as a family first locked down voluntarily on the 17th March 2020, due to what I described at the time as a ‘Corona Virus scare‘ (blogged on 23-03-20). As of today in Wales, our ‘Stay Local’ order has been rescinded and the current lockdown has effectively ended.
By no means has everything just gone back to normal however. While stay local rules have ended and people can now travel further, they must do so within Wales. People within Wales cannot travel to other UK nations for at least a few weeks, and while self-contained tourist accommodation is also opened from today, there are still many restrictions. Retailers cannot fully open for non-essential items just yet, and hospitality sectors have remained closed. However given the restrictions are now lifted for travel, there’s likely to be a boost to tourism.
For us, it means very little so far. This is the third lockdown now in Wales for the coronavirus and I have been shielding throughout them all. The first lockdown spanned from March when we beat the government into locking down by a week, all the way through to August. Five months of not leaving our home (except once to fly a Red Dragon / Ddraig Coch kite in a field by the house), and staying totally isolated. I documented/blogged how we relied on many people for help; from my friends Brian and Viv, to the local pub owner who was volunteering to coordinate help for the village and many more (see previous blogs).
The second lockdown was the infamous ‘Firebreak Lockdown’, in November, and then the current lockdown that began in December 2020. While we have obviously tried to have a bit of outdoor time after the long five months inside, and in between other lockdowns, we have done so very carefully. We’ve been out, but only to very spacious or deserted places. I still have the shopping delivered (which I do not like), and if I absolutely have to go out, I stay in the car. Without fail.
We still sanitise everything that comes into our home/car, and we wash our hands very regularly. We wear masks a lot.
Despite having had my CV-19 vaccination, and having been told that it’s safe to stop shielding from the 1st of April 2021, I absolutely will not be trusting the public at large, or any place even remotely busy. Myself and my bairns will be wearing our masks, and continuing to maintain as much of a safe social distance from people for as long as we can.
I am not entirely convinced that we will not see lockdown again. I hope this is the last time I write about it here, I truly do, but I have a feeling it won’t be.
Updates
It’s not all CV-19 and lockdown though.
I have been building a website recently in and amongst my other online work, for the local Ynys Môn Labour candidate in the May 2021 Senedd Elections. I’m not a Labour member at the moment due to my issues with the UK wide leadership and the fact that I am rather fond of the notion of independence in Wales (now we have been forced out of the EU), however I do know Sam (Sam Egelstaff) a little bit and I’m happy to support her. I’m also still friends with quite a lot of CLP members and they asked for the help; and so politics aside, I have given it.
We have been planting sunflowers lately too, which is a return to our fascination with them and our efforts most years to plant as many as possible. For a few years we haven’t been able to do it properly, however this year we’re on form again. Forty of them are potted, germinated, grown into seedlings and planted in the garden already. We intend to pot another 40 or so in case there’s a last bout of frost and cold weather (given there’s snow on the mountains again), however we have already given some to our neighbours as we had too many to plant in the first batch, so I have no idea where they will go if all of the ones outside survive. That’s part of the fun though!
We did notice that the sunflowers seemed to be growing very quickly. Over five days they shot up, and as we posted the images to instagram, it was mentioned that they were growing at quite a rate. So I decided to try and film them. Using a small tripod and just my phone on the evening of day five, I recorded three hours of footage before I went to bed. We managed to shrink that footage down the next day to just ten seconds and we could see very clearly the growth happening in front of us. It was however such a short video that we realised we needed quite a bit more footage to make any use of it.
So, on day six, after editing the original three hours, I again used my phone and I left it recording for nine hours this time. The angle is different, however we managed to condense the new, much longer footage down to just twenty-one seconds. Put together, we now have quite a remarkable video that is still just 31 seconds long, but that shows over twelve hours of our sunflowers growing. We were fascinated by it! Simple things I suppose.
See it here:> 12 Hours of Sunflower Growth into 31 Seconds
While I am on the subject of flowers, Cerys has been digging quite a bit. My goodness, I don’t even know how she has managed it, but she dug three new borders in the garden and as well as the sunflowers; planted hyacinths, lilies, colourful daisies, heather and more. I’m so grateful. I spent some time outside in my chair with her while feeling sorry for myself because I couldn’t help.
Other than that, and despite me breaking another rib (yes I know; tut… but also, ouch!), we have been concentrating on training, working and volunteering. My son has been working hard on his editing skills and channel building at Jacob Bailey Gaming (he’s starting to learn how to use photoshop too – yeyy), and my daughter has almost single handedly rebuilt her own website over at Cerys Bailey Art, including editing the HTML and .css, despite never having done it on her own before. She’s going to be adding a shop to sell her artwork as prints, and she has some amazing pieces to be released soon.
We are also working on reviving Rocking Sprocket and Bailey Robotics. Most of the home education and robot stuff I usually post here will be transferred over to those new sites respectively as we get them up and running. Both of my halflings are learning so much at the moment as they work on all of these online projects, and I’m very proud of them.
I also started a new volunteering role within the criminal justice system. It’s one that I can do from my desk or in my wheelchair out in the community. I have been doing a lot of training, and quite a few courses since December to bring me up to speed. I was also invited because of my knowlege of LGBT+ human rights/equality issues, to get involved with some of the training and discussions around trans individuals during LGBT+ History Month as a subject matter expert at this new organisation. I was honoured to have been asked and frankly relieved that organisations are now taking things a lot more seriously, and asking for help when they realise it’s needed. They were all exceptional!
Coming Up
So far, that’s it. I like to record things here whether they are read or not. It’s good for me to be able to write about life as it happens, but also to be able to look back and see how things have changed. This blog has become very cathartic.
There are a few subjects I will be writing about soon (when current projects are significantly underway and I have more time), that are somewhat fun and exciting. I took a DNA test for instance and I have been tracing ancestry for months now. Not in terms of who was my natal grandad on my mums side (mum?), but civilisations I stem from, and where they lived and whether or not we can learn their languages.
We have also been building more robots (this time twins), and if we can manage it, we want to build a specific robot from an 80’s sci-fi film that I’ve never seen built before, and hopefully we will take it to some cosplay events later in the year/next year. There are plently of BB8s, R2D2s, Daleks, K9s and even now a few Johnny 5s. I’m hoping our choice will be a bit more unique. It’ll likely be over on Bailey Robotics, but I’ll write about it here too.
There’s also less fun and definitely not easy things to write about that relate to my past, and places like Almscliffe Crag.
For now, it’s nearly time to put the clocks forward and definitely time to sleep.
Tack så mycket,
Emma