A Photo An Hour – 23rd June 2022

Wow, last year it took me a month to get this post up, this year it’s only 3 weeks, so evidently I’m improving and getting back to my old efficient self. Once again, I can’t promise thrills, spills and excitement, but I can promise an insight into how I spend a very boring and average day in my life. And how I’ve spent that day every year for the last 6 years, apart from the years that I forgot on the 23rd and did it on the 24th. Which is obviously a much less ordinary and boring day.

Anyway, if you’d like to see previous years they are here:

2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021

7am

As is now my routine, I start the morning with coffee in bed and share some affirmations on Instagram. This morning’s affirmations are:

I enjoy moving my body

and

I am calm, confident and powerful

8am

I drag myself out of bed to walk the Pugs and put some make-up on. Not an exciting photo and my “dressing room” is basically a cupboard since I threw loads of stuff in there when I decorated the bedroom last year.

Hi there.

9am

Walkies time!

It is warm, so we drive round the corner to some nice cool woodland, except on the way there is a school or are apparently having a school trip, and 2 coaches have conspired to hold everyone up in the middle of the road for about 15 minutes. Which is annoying.

Here you can have a bonus photo of Peppa looking grumpy as really a blocked road is far too boring and I don’t want you to fall asleep before we’ve even got to lunchtime.

10am

We get back from walkies and I hang some washing out. One good thing about Summer, washing dries fast. I’m not really a big fan of the height of summer, give me some warm but crisp early autumn days, please.

I also have some breakfast and start work. Blimey, today really IS boring.

11am

I am working, here is a very exciting photo of my laptop.

I actually forgot to take a photo as I was so engrossed in my work. So this photo is actually from the afternoon as the eagle eyed among you will know by looking at the clock. I can promise the view was just as exciting.

12pm

I go for a lunchtime swim, an event that conveniently takes place over 2 hours so I have more things to take photos of. I am slowly getting more active. My back hurts still, but it’s not the same hideous crippling hurt as it was a year or so ago and I have been reassured it’s unlikely to collapse any further “because it can’t”. I’m starting Couch to 5k again (summer, an excellent time for that) and doing swimming, yoga and pilates at the expensive gym near my house.

I can get to the exciting gym on my lovely bike that my Roller Derby teamies bought me because they’re lovely and I miss them.

Getting there is great as it’s all downhill. Getting back is less so as I have to go back up the hills, but at least I’m red and sweaty when I get home, rather than when I arrive at the gym.

1pm

I’m out of the pool now. This is my new swimming costume, it’s FatFace via M&S and it’s very nice. I’m not in it because I’ve already got out of the shower so I would have to put it back on to take a photo, which is just stupid.

While I am getting changed, I also get a message from the dog groomers that we are supposed to be going to this afternoon to change our appointment as she is running behind.

2pm

I eat lunch while Pugs sit on me. This is quinoa from a packet because I’m too lazy to cook it myself with artichokes and feta and other vegetables stirred through it.

3pm

I am working again, here is another photo of my laptop. from a slightly different angle. Also not taken at 3pm. Seriously, this is not an exciting photo, it only looked fractionally different an hour later. During this time I also eventually manage to rearrange the dog groomers appointment so we can just go and get Peppas claws clipped as they are going crazy curly. Apparently, it took 2 nurses and a vet to hold her down the last time they were done.

4pm

We take the Pugs up to Diva Dogs. We haven’t been there since it moved onto an exciting little tucked-away parade of shops that looks a little bit like time forgot it.

Waldo and I sit under a tree in the shade. I can see Peppa making a fuss through the door until she finally gives up. Mr Gem goes to Aldi to buy “exciting crap”.

5pm

My brave little Princess has finished her manicure and comes to join me under the tree. It has not escaped their attention that 5pm is normally dinner time so they are excited to get home where the food is.

6pm

I actually forgot to take a photo until just after 7pm, so technically this is cheating again, but I put up a blind. Sort of. I bought a blind, then chopped the top off and stuck it to the door with a couple of bits of ribbon so I could tie it up. The blanket you can see hanging down the side is my previous answer to the keeping the sun out of the room issue.

I also didn’t cut the top in a straight line. Since then, I have hidden that bit with a piece of ribbon. I’m a creative genius

7pm

It’s evening walkies time. Just a quickie round the block as tonight is quiz night. We’ve been doing Jays Virtual Pub Quiz over Zoom with friends every week since it started in March 2020. A couple of times we have done it on another day, but we haven’t yet missed one, even when I was in hospital!

8pm

It is not my turn to cook tonight, so Mr Gem makes this lovely black bean chilli with nachos. I don’t know how you make chilli photogenic. It tastes lovely. It’s from a 10-minute Gousto recipe which is my go-to 2 people recipe book these days.

The dogs sit on the floor and stare at us hopefully, even though I’m fairly certain they don’t like chilli.

9pm

It’s quiz and wine time. I have already managed to stay awake about 2 hours longer than I managed last year. Yay me.

There are only 2 out of the normal 3 groups of us present as the third group are way cooler than us and are at Glastonbury with their children. I haven’t been to Glastonbury since I fell over in the mud and had a mostly miserable time back in 1997.

10pm

That’s enough excitement for one day. The Pugs and I are in bed with a hot chocolate and the air conditioning on. I got a Hotel Chocolat velvetizer for Christmas, so this is really posh hot chocolate, none of that rubbish from a jar for me, oh no.

We bought the air con unit pretty cheaply back in 2020 and haven’t regretted it for a second. On really hot days I just live in the bedroom all day.

11pm

It’s now just after 11pm, hot chocolate is drunk, the diary that I have been keeping since my Stem Cell transplant is written, my CBD oil is taken and I am now that all elaborate bedtime routines have been completed I am all ready in my eye mask for sleepy time.

I like this eye mask, it has stars on it and comes in a cute little bag.

I head off to the land of nod surrounded by Pugs in air-conditioned coolness. And so ends the 23rd June 2022.