Weeknotes 23

I was somewhat amazed to see Jamie Oliver’s “Keep Cooking and Carry On”, a cookery show made with Coronavirus (COVID-19) in mind. As if there was any doubt how quickly he put this out, he even makes a joke about people stockpiling pasta in the first episode.

Don’t worry, everyone: there is a new series of “The Repair Shop”. I suspect it was held in reserve for times of crisis.

Thanks to meticulous planning around C’s bed time, E and I managed to watch Yorgos Lanthimos’ “The Favourite” and loved it. Like Euan, I choose to believe the ballroom dance is real.

I haven’t really been taking advantage of being able to leave the house for one form of exercise a day but did venture out for a stroll with C. While it was a nice change to get fresh air and focus on something more than a few metres from my face, I found the silent negotiation of pavement space with other pedestrians strangely stressful.

Last week’s ant situation led me to fill conspicuous gaps in our kitchen worktops with silicone and—touch faux marble—we haven’t seen any more curious insectoid invaders.

My mum sent us a copy of “My First Signs”, a book of British Sign Language (BSL) signs for children. While there is debate about the effects of baby sign language, my sister is profoundly deaf so I’m keen to teach C some sign language regardless.

Reading the signs in the book makes it clear the sign language I use with my sister has morphed from BSL into our own private language. After sending her photos of the book, she immediately proposed her own sign for “toilet” as she is not a fan of how it might be confused with a gesture of defiance.

In a home baking first, E made a batch of 14 croissants over three days using a recipe from a Bread Ahead vienoisserie course she did three years ago.

We now start our day eating more than our daily recommended amount of butter.

For the past few weeks, I have been seeing bizarre advertisements on Instagram declaring “Bear Grylls [sic] TV Career is over!” because the “sources of his wealth became known”. Despite reporting these ads as scams to Instagram, they continue to flood in from various accounts with different images but always the same message.

I asked E what his real name is and she replied “I don’t know; Michael Microwaves?”