Felt flat and shattered at the end of work today having failed to make progress on the things I wanted to make progress on. I felt like I spent the whole day in meetings going around in circles. There will be days like this, I know it’s inevitable. Progress is rarely linear, especially not in a situation like this.
Anyway, I dragged my sorry self up to the plot for an hour before dark, and sure enough felt much better once I started pottering about, sowing seeds, pulling out weeds and watering the beds. It’s amazing what an hour pottering outside can do to settle a frazzled soul. It helps that I’m still newly besotted with the raised beds, so that every time I go there I get all excited and happy about them again.
I sowed some lettuce seeds and a few flower seeds around the edges of the beds. In my mind’s eye, each bed is edged with a lovely row of pollen-rich flowers, tumbling over the sides and attracting all sorts of lovely insects. We’ll see if the reality lives up to the image I’ve conjured in my imagination…
J carried on working on the little shaded chillout area. It was lovely to see him absorbed and happy creating a lovely space for us – we joked about how it feels like he is finally moving in to the allotment and sharing it with me, after going there with me for 3.5 years. It probably sounds trivial, but it’s a huge big massive deal for me to genuinely share this space that’s been my safe and solitary haven for all these years.
I’m finding myself very easily brought to tears by stories on the news and on Twitter. Today it was the story of a tech leader in the NHS, returning home after 2 weeks away working on setting up the Nightingale hospital in London’s Excel conference centre to find everyone in her street out clapping for her.
And then we learned on the way home that the Prime Minister is in intensive care, which is shocking, not that the rest of it isn’t. I guess when the massive incomprehensible scale of all of this is made personal to one individual you feel familiar with (even if it’s only from seeing them on the TV), it’s going to make it more immediate and real.
Keeping the Plot 