Lockdown Week 9 In Review

I keep thinking about how Lockdown has enforced a social detox on us all.

We’ve been reduced to the basic members of our households.

Other than Ads and the kids, I don’t see many people.

My running routes are remote and this village is quiet. My neighbours on one side moved just as lockdown kicked in and the others are tucked away behind high hedges and trees.

And so when I do connect with one of my friends, I feel like a smashed up Eton mess of gratitude.

People are lucky I don’t get on the ground and hug their legs like a five year old.

Do you get that?

Massive appreciation of human connection?

And we all know that the rarer something is, the more beautiful – and valuable – it becomes.

Aaaaaaanyhow.

Last week I was saying how Boris-like the energy in my life was feeling. I decided to flip it and declared this week the start of the Oksana Diaries, summoning Villanelle vibes (who, in case you don’t know, is the hot blooded assassin from the series Killing Eve).

Well, it was an interesting start.

Here’s how my Villanelle week unfolded.

Juiced.

As intended.

Completely reversed the training schedule.

Instead of running West, I went East at the break of dawn.

Began a 6am circuit with a friend,

ran down wet cut grass hill

and turned my ankle.

How Ads found me when he came downstairs at 7.15am.

Please note the extraordinary self-nursing skills.

That is, one bag of peas wrapped around crunched ankle, held on by tea-towel bandage and secured with green garden twine.

Grass on feet = evidence of the cut grass that caused the incident.

All elevated above heart level.

Sat around …

Keeping all the important things elevated …

Getting brought tea.

Drew some stuff.

Not exactly the life of an international assassin, but definitely better than Boris.

Sat around more waiting for ankle to get better.

Started to feel grumpy about it.

Drew some more.

Did a little photoshoot with the Frida head and a pagan goddess flower pot who had some seriously impressive hair.

Made a socially distanced high tea for my mum’s husband’s birthday.

And while hobbling back and forth, plotted.

Plotted:

Where I am going to run, what I am going to do,

where I am going to go when my ankle is better and when this thumb-twiddling lockdown is over.

Plotting.

Balm. Doorstep visit from an angel in sunflower yellow dungarees, donning a bag full of CBD / Cannaboid oils. She’d brought them help sooth my crunched ankle. Thank you Nora.

Roses. All of them blooming in the garden. I delivered a bunch of them to my friend and it felt very Shakespearian / European / romantic.

Then, got given BACK two nice little jars of herbs from Mexico. Not sure what they are but YES to gift economies!

Prizes. Doing the prize draw for the Phea Raffle. That was good to do.

 New Moon. By yesterday my ankle was sufficiently better to take a midnight hobble, with my buddy. Felt naughty, forbidden and spooked. She doesn’t know how lucky she was not to have me wrapping my arms around her legs like a five year old. Haha.

Trying to work out whether to send my boys back to school or not. One is Year 10 and one is Year 1, so both are in the year groups that are considered academically vulnerable from the break in education. At first I was a definite NO. But now I’m questioning that. They’re both desperate to see their friends and the older one needs something. He needs to have his mind challenged, trained, enriched … and right now, being at home all day and a computer screen classroom isn’t cutting it.

That has been a challenge …

And increasingly frustrated travel lust.

Have time to sit and suss out what I’m going to do post-lockdown.

Consider people, values, movement, work and purpose that I want to move forward with.

Make a list of the places I’d like to go to in this world, once we’re free to move again.

Work out how we/I can get there.

A fully restored ankle.

Return to the love-of-my life … that blissful hit of endorphins from inhabiting a body that feels vital and alive from movement.

End in sight.

Start forming the next chapter.

Begin breathing magic into that chapter.

A golden ticket of an opportunity where I get to travel all over the world being paid a shit-tonne of money to write stuff (that I want to write and not what I get told to write) make art and interview martial artists, trapeze artists, temple artists and whatever other artists of life happen to be in the area. And I get to take friends/family. Imagine THAT.

Wishing you all a brilliant week.

 

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