Today marks the 129th day of my shielding. My last update was on day 94. So far we have survived quite well, with no symptoms of Covid 19, but of course that’s the idea.
Since the last update, we have had a change in circumstances, which has meant that I can now venture outside. Shielding advice changed in June, enabling me to spend some time seeing something other than the walls of our home. We still spent 120 odd days inside (at our home, in the house and garden).
The advice has changed such that I can now meet people outside as long as social distancing is maintained, and we can venture out to wherever we please to take a breather or exercise. The latter is not possible, but a welcome change of view has been nice. It now feels very weird being able to go out, almost like we’re breaking rules. Of course, we’re not, but the effect is there.
The directions given however still keep me from entering shops, working in a building, or being inside anywhere other than home. So the need to stay on the island is paramount should we need to nip home to use the toilet, or to eat.
We are managing this quite well still. We have less help now, but still enough to feel weird (I’m not good with asking for help, but I do when I need to). Friends help with medication collections, and we still get our food delivered; something I would not normally do either as it’s costing us about four times more than usual doing it this way. We make sure anything we need is ordered from online stores and if we need fuel in the car, we pay by card at the fuel station. All easy and manageable so far.
Although a lot is done by my daughter, granted; it feels nice having a bit of freedom. She’s been by far the biggest help during this whole event. In and around the usual support she gives, she goes out of her way to make sure I have the help I need without making me feel useless. I owe her a lot.
Shielding is going to be officially paused for us in Wales on the 16th of August. With that in mind, we have tried to get ahead of things by buying enough masks. I have bought them from two small suppliers so far. One was able to do some custom embroidery for us. The masks are good quality with space to put a filter. They are not the best fit, but I can work on that.
The second set I bought fit a lot better and have a HEPA filter included. We bought them to match a few bandanas we have and the lady donates some of the money earned to a Cancer Charity. Something extremely important to me. The pictures are in the album below this post. If anyone would like to know where I got them from, message me and I’ll be glad to share.
So with our new found freedom, we have done a little more than has been possible these last months. Since comet NEOWISE has been in the skies, we have been out and tried to capture it. Admittedly I am not as great yet with the manual settings on my new camera and so I have not been able to capture it in the way I would like (although we’ve seen it). I have managed to take a picture of Jupiter however. Driving around the island, we still have a lot of light polution, despite the island’s aims to achieve renowned ‘dark sky’.
It can however only really be found sporadically. There we managed to photograph, not just Jupiter, but the moons Calisto, Ganymede, Europa and Io. Next to Jupiter, we could also see Saturn and while I could bring it into vague focus and just about see the rings, I couldn’t steady the camera enough to take the picture. It’ll come with experience I’m sure. Photography is something I have loved for a long time, but I have never really been in a position to justify a camera. That has changed now and I will be adding a gallery to this website soon to house some of my images.
Some pictures for now can be found below.
I have also been building another robot. A friend built a modular tracked vehicle, or ‘MTV’, and wrote about it in Hackspace Magazine. Having decided to have a go at his idea, I ordered the parts and we got going. The robot is a tracked chassis, using two arduino boards.
One is controlling a 16 digit LCD screen and the other uses a signal from an ultrasonic sensor mounted on a servo to measure the distance in front of it. It’s nearly finished in its current form and I will write about it properly in my next blog.
My son also had his 16th birthday in quarantine. We had cake and spent the entire day building a range of Lego models. It was a relaxed and very memorable day. He’s grown into an incredibly dynamic young person, who never fails to surprise me. His vocabulary is extensive and he’s becoming a wonderfully well rounded, beautiful human being. I’m extremely proud of him.
Last of all then for now, I have finally managed to get myself a DNA kit. The kits have always seemed out of my reach at £80+, especially with a family to bring up on my own, however I was able to find one on offer at My Heritage for £49 and I jumped at it.
The kit has been received and the sample has been done and sent off in the post. I have activated the kit and really now all I can do is wait. My family have never been very open about our past. I suppose it’s the last level of control they have, and while there’s very little I can do about that, and very little they will; I can do this.
My Heritage will look at DNA profiles to find other people in my extended family line that they might have on record. This can be even if someone had their test done somewhere else. I don’t expect this to yeild many results, but who knows.
The main point for me was to get my raw DNA data, so that I can then use that to input it into other services I’m more interested in; services that will show ethnicity, familial origins, or even DNA links to samples taken from the bodies of ancient people during archeaology. It’s purely to know more about who I am. Hopefully my heritage is vastly and wildly mixed. We will see in time. When the results come back and when I have more data from other sites, I will write about it in much more detail.
I also left the Labour party. Time will tell where I will go and contribute my time politically in future, but for me it was time to leave.
I seem to be finding myself more and more unsteady these days. I recently fell over, gashed the side of my leg and I have a broken rib close to my sternum. I will have to see how that pans out.
Writing here has been quite cathartic, and so time willing, I hope to write a lot more in the coming months about things going on and changes happening. If only to just get it written down somewhere.
Until then.
Emma.
