Weight
At my age I try to be unruffled about how much I weigh and not turn my weight or fitness into a control fetish. I've never been particularly skinny thin, nor hyper fit, all my life. I had a few years when I did weight training. But apart from that and swimming I've been averse to all other forms of regular exercise. In the past I've eaten sweets and confectionary things to excess, but, in my defense, I was brought up by parents who loved them. My mother, in later life, developed Type 2 Diabetes due to her profound love of cakes.
I still have that yearning for a sweet kick at the end of a meal. I can divert it into fruit eating, or into something not 100% sugar like marmalade on crispbread. Yet I do have to beware, I'm never more than a muffin away from returning to full sugar addiction. In the lock-down there are no swimming pools open to exercise in. Though we do a half hour walk every day, I nonetheless feel physically stiffer and less fit.
Before lock-down I weighed myself. The scales might fib a pound or two, but they cannot totally lie. My BMI was no longer just 'pillsbury dough boy' tubby, I was a gateau or two over a classification threshold, tiptoeing nearer the precipice of 'O.... my God your a Weeble!' In February I did two months without any sugar. Though this had little effect on my weight, it proved I could manage without it.
Since March I've been on a proper calorie controlled diet, which Hubby has joined me in doing. So far I've lost 21 lbs which means I'm halfway towards my target weight. The sensory limitations of being cooped up at home brings particular temptations, one of which is for a comforting sweetener, when things get difficult or too too dreary. So far I have resisted completely succumbing.
Waiting
Cottonwood Home - The Shop, will be one year old on 1st June. As I write it looks like we could re-open it on the 15th June. The long period of waiting may soon be over. There is a rough plan for the layout of The Courtyard, keeping a semblance of social distancing, with a defined route around and a limit on numbers in the shop. Our landlord has also set boundaries for how far our outside stands can come into walkways. Hence we are making plans to focus on a narrower range of stock on those displays. We've ordered visors and a perspex screen for our counter has arrived. So we are almost there. Until we re-open we wont know what footfall will be like. I suspect until the local caravan parks open and second homers return, (in July?) it will be day trippers and local trade only. Custom might be sparse.
Cottonwood Home - The Website, It's even more obvious now, that building up our online business will be the major factor affecting Cottonwood Home's longer term success. But keeping a shop and a website running effectively is quite a task.. Between the two of us we cover quite a broad range of retail skills. The lions share of the tech work tends to fall on Jnanasalin's shoulders, because that's part of his background. My abilities in that area are basic, my contributions usually being of a more hands-on creative or practical nature. Hubby is currently getting himself better informed on how to market ourselves effectively on the web, by doing an online course.
During the lock-down we've updated and refreshed the website, which any site regularly requires because a business should always be evolving. We do have a very lovely website with lots of new stock we've made or bought in from other craft makers on it, so if you've time give it another look.
You'll find it on: https://cottonwoodworkshop.com/
Wonderful 1During the lock-down we've updated and refreshed the website, which any site regularly requires because a business should always be evolving. We do have a very lovely website with lots of new stock we've made or bought in from other craft makers on it, so if you've time give it another look.
You'll find it on: https://cottonwoodworkshop.com/
Recently we watched Theatre de Complicite's The Encounter, which was a totally wonder-filled audio-visual performance. It featured a solo performance by Simon McBurney, Complicite's artistic director, backed up by a huge amount of technological wizardry. Its based on a book by Leon Mcintyre about his experiences with an Amazonian tribe the Mayoruna, who according to him could communicate telepathically. Can what he describes be true? As humans we are adept at turning stories about ourselves into exaggerated fictions, so could anything we say be ever said to be completely true?
The performance is a danger filled adventure and a meditation on a sense of self, presence and time, and what are these anyway? The Encounter's themes may chime in with many of our current lock-down experiences. For when what we all assume to be normal is stripped away, what are we left with? I ended up feeling profoundly moved by the performance, and haunted by its concluding sentence ' Some of us are friends'.
Wonderful 2
Another gem was the NT/Young Vic's production of A Streetcar Named Desire. The play is a piece of Southern Gothic, a grotesque melodrama, modern, yet partly arcane. The central character Blanche Dubois, is stylish but cranky, holding delusions of faded grandeur, who dominates the emotional tone of all who surround her. People either feel sorry for her or are suspicious she's not all she's cracked up to be. Her sister Stella's husband Stanley, played here with pumped up magnificence, by Ben Foster, sees through her and discovers some less than palatable facts that, once revealed, drive Blanche over the edge.
The slow revolve staging, had practical purpose so the 360 degree audience could see everything going on. But it also created a sense of unease, instability and threat circling around the performers. Gillian Anderson as Blanche was superb. It cannot be an easy part to place right, as it's written in such a mannered, arche way, yet she also has this underlying human fragility and pathos that cannot be lost sight of, or else she will turn into a caricature.
Exasperation 1
By lockdown week 10 we've both had a few days where we were just frustrated and irritable. Little tasks not being straightforward, or something going wrong, started to cause restlessness and mood swings to arise.
So we both took a day off our work, and went 16 miles up the coast to Wells next the Sea, simply for a change in the scenery. To hang around and bask in the sun of a different beach, eat pastries from a different baker etc.
Wells. like everywhere else, is still mostly closed or on click n collect, with a few places already shut up shop permanently. It was mid-week, and the beach in the morning wasn't too crowded, but after mid day it was getting busier. As the tightness of the lockdown eases and the days get longer and warmer, these beaches cannot help but get fuller. Lets's see how social distancing survives then.
Exasperation 2
Coming out of lockdown cannot help but feel, and is, risky. The confidence we hold in the advice we are given will be key. Once that is fractured it will be hard to mend. Our government having lost its moral credibility and sense of the truth, has been jumping the gun recklessly, it feels as if they are in a panic, doing things simply to be popular with the general public.
Its gone back into ' lets pretend' mode, let's pretend it's safe to do this, let's pretend we can get back to school or work, lets pretend we've always protected care homes, let's pretend DC did nothing wrong, let's pretend we've got an effective track & trace system in place, lets pretend our strategy has always been led by science, let's pretend we've got the virus licked, let's pretend our Brexit discussions with the EU are real, lets pretend we don't want a no deal Brexit, let's pretend Boris knows exactly what he's doing.
Lets pretend this wont end with me requiring ventilation before I explode from exasperation.
The slow revolve staging, had practical purpose so the 360 degree audience could see everything going on. But it also created a sense of unease, instability and threat circling around the performers. Gillian Anderson as Blanche was superb. It cannot be an easy part to place right, as it's written in such a mannered, arche way, yet she also has this underlying human fragility and pathos that cannot be lost sight of, or else she will turn into a caricature.
By lockdown week 10 we've both had a few days where we were just frustrated and irritable. Little tasks not being straightforward, or something going wrong, started to cause restlessness and mood swings to arise.
So we both took a day off our work, and went 16 miles up the coast to Wells next the Sea, simply for a change in the scenery. To hang around and bask in the sun of a different beach, eat pastries from a different baker etc.
Wells. like everywhere else, is still mostly closed or on click n collect, with a few places already shut up shop permanently. It was mid-week, and the beach in the morning wasn't too crowded, but after mid day it was getting busier. As the tightness of the lockdown eases and the days get longer and warmer, these beaches cannot help but get fuller. Lets's see how social distancing survives then.
Coming out of lockdown cannot help but feel, and is, risky. The confidence we hold in the advice we are given will be key. Once that is fractured it will be hard to mend. Our government having lost its moral credibility and sense of the truth, has been jumping the gun recklessly, it feels as if they are in a panic, doing things simply to be popular with the general public.
Its gone back into ' lets pretend' mode, let's pretend it's safe to do this, let's pretend we can get back to school or work, lets pretend we've always protected care homes, let's pretend DC did nothing wrong, let's pretend we've got an effective track & trace system in place, lets pretend our strategy has always been led by science, let's pretend we've got the virus licked, let's pretend our Brexit discussions with the EU are real, lets pretend we don't want a no deal Brexit, let's pretend Boris knows exactly what he's doing.
Lets pretend this wont end with me requiring ventilation before I explode from exasperation.
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