insignificant ramblings of a 50-something woman
-
Running club, trees on Union Street, a royal vintage wedding dress
Someone at work started a running club challenge last week and since I’ve been running every day anyway I decided to sign up. I’m chuffed to say I’ve been at the top of the work leaderboard both weeks so far without doing anything different. I started running during lockdown and have just continued doing it.…
-
Absolutely enormous pants
Do you remember that scene in Bridget Jones’s Diary where Renée Zelleweger and Hugh Grant hook up and Grant discovers the “absolutely enormous pants”? I’ve just bought myself The Jones Briefs from Davy J and they are absolutely enormous pants. Davy J is a British manufacturer of swim wear, making sustainable and long-lasting items from…
-
Be cautious, COVID app, wild swimming, and distance education
The lockdown has mostly ended here insofar as much as it can end. Things won’t return to normal until there’s a vaccine but shops are allowed to open and people can go for holidays. Nevertheless our life hasn’t really changed. I’m still working from home. Ben is still working from home. The kids just finished…
-
Pets and toilet training
Cats are so easy. They come fully toilet-trained, don’t need to be taken for walks, don’t bark, and don’t require entertaining. It has been a long time since I had a cat and after 14 years of my dogs, Freud and Zeki, I had forgotten what is was like. I got Freud and Zeki as…
-
Her favourite human
It’s so nice to have a companion animal around the house again. Little Victoria has settled into her new environment so well. She’s formed a particular attachment to Daniel for some reason and often sits on his lap when he’s in class. The online school doesn’t break up until the end of this week so…
-
Meet Victoria
We got a kitten. Her name is Victoria and she’s 11 weeks old. She came from a village in Aberdeenshire after her mother had an affair with the neighbourhood tom. We had planned to get an adult cat from a shelter but this is quite difficult it turns out. We put in five applications including…
-
A bird feeder and 50% off eating out
The bird feeder in our backyard fell apart so we replaced it with one of those feeders that sticks to the outside of your window. They’re made in the UK by Meripac. I stuck it on the window yesterday and within hours there were birds there. Here’s a picture of it with three birds (the…
-
Tartan face masks
Nicola Sturgeon has been wearing a tartan facemask which I thought was very nice. I’m not sure where she got hers but I found a shop selling them online (ScotClans) and ordered some for us. They’re made in Scotland come with a PM 2.5 filter. You can have them made with any tartan you like.…
-
Union Street, face masks, and cat litter boxes
There are more changes happening in Aberdeen. Yesterday on my usual bike ride into the city centre I discovered the top of Bon Accord Street has been taken over with picnic tables for Soul Restaurant which is the church in this next photo. Many churches in Aberdeen have been converted into pubs, nightclubs, restaurants, and…
-
Strawberries galore, in the paper, and changes afoot
It’s Friday already. I don’t know where the week has gone. We’re getting so many strawberries just from our backyard right now. They almost spread like weeds here. This is what I picked when I went out this morning. Aberdeen is going through some very exciting changes. On an almost weekly basis now the council…
-
Aberdeen beach
I cycled to the beach today and It was nice to see vast empty scenes along the waterfront after the crowded images that emerged from Bournemouth last week. I would like to say it’s because Aberdonians are very sensible people and that is certainly true but I think the difference is really more to do…
-
Roots Catering, science experiments, and my crochet fox
We splashed out and ordered the three-course meal from Roots Catering on Friday night. Roots is an Aberdeen vegan food business. In normal times they sell vegan burgers by the beach. During lockdown they switched to an online purchase and delivery model for their burgers. Once a week they do a decadent three-course meal which…
-
Wallpapering the kitchen
Back in February we pulled a couple of cupboards from a wall in our kitchen. We wanted to put a table in the space and the shelves were in the way and a bit ugly too. Removing the cupboards left an even uglier patch on the wall behind. I love wallpaper and suddenly had an…
-
Embarrassing myself and the summer solstice
I’m finding the face mask I bought almost impossible to use. I wore it to Marks & Spencer this morning and I find it so hard to breathe that I have to take huge gasps of air with my mouth open. Today I inadvertantly inhaled some of my own spit which triggered a fit of…
-
The 2m rule, Joe Wicks, and Madeleine McCann
There is currently a 2m rule in the UK as part of social distancing which requires us all to stay 2m apart from others. Apparently there’s evidence that transmission rates are lower at 2m when compared with 1m. However, something I have noticed about this is that when you talk to someone from 2m away…
-
Imperial College vaccine trial
The Imperial College vaccine trial begins this week and of all the vaccine candidates being researched at the moment this is the one I most hope will be successful because it will be easy and cheap to make it in large volumes. It’s also a very new way to create a vaccine. Professor Robin Shattock…
-
Ancient bust of Julius Caesar found in river
Last night I was thinking about the tearing down of statues of disgraced people and began thinking about the Romans. The slave trade was very much a part of Roman society and there must be thousands of artifacts that would fail the “Coulston” test. I started searching and stumbled across this fascinating story of a…
-
Crowdless
There’s a terrific app which will tell you how busy the supermarkets in your vicinity are so you can choose whether to go or not. It’s called Crowdless and is free to download. You don’t have to register to use it and it collects no personal data. All it does is show you a map…
-
Vandalising history
Last week a statue of Edward Colston was thrown into Bristol harbour by anti-racist protestors because of Colston’s links with the slave trade. At first I thought it was a bit extreme and that they should have simply changed the plaque on the statue but apparently people have campaigned for years to have the plaque…
-
Fake waiting
There’s fake everything these days: fake news, fake meat, fake milk, fake designer clothing, fake art, and there’s even fake waiting. Fake waiting is when developers deliberately build a wait time into a program that serves no function other than to make the user wait. Apparently in some cases users prefer it. Waiting creates suspense…
rachel.blog 