Well, I'm sitting in the garden typing this up as it's 26 degrees inside the house right now. They promised thunderstorms all day but they haven't materialised yet. They've had heavy rain and flash flooding in Aberystwyth though.
I've just had six glorious days off. I was supposed to go camping near Abergavenny for three days but the weather was horrendous. I packed the car, got all the way up there (one hour drive!!) did a Waitrose shop and decided to go for a pub lunch before heading to the site. The beer garden was heaving as the government has created an incentive to encourage people to eat out. Monday to Wednesday the government will pay 50% of your food bill (up to £10 max) if you eat in. So everyone was doing their 'Eat Out to Help Out' bit. It was really humid and just as I finished the heavens opened with a clap of thunder. I was going to ask for my leftover cheesy garlic bread to take away but it was soggy within minutes. The rain didn't let up and I could hardly even see the mountain that I was supposed to be camping on, so I came home.
It was a good decision though as the next day it drizzled all day and humidity has been unrelenting. I would have then had to take the tent down on the hottest day of the year so far and drive home (probably getting stuck in Barry Island traffic) so I was perfectly happy to be at home.
I did a few more Skillshare tutorials and cleaned the house and the car whilst it was raining and then enjoyed a few lazy days in the garden. I got up early on the Friday and drove to my nearest beach with my morning coffee. It was blissful. So still. That evening it was as if all of my neighbours had gone on holiday, there wasn't a peep coming out of a single garden. It was soooooo nice.
Back to work tomorrow. I'm not looking forward to it. July was our busiest month on record. We opened 118 new files. Luckily, in order to enable social distancing in the office, the boss and me and Alex to move downstairs to her old office. I've only had three days in there so far so I'm still trying to organise my space and get into a new routine going up and down the stairs to get files etc, but it's so much less stressful. It's just a lovely, quiet, calm environment. We also have 6 Music on all day so it's a vast improvement on being upstairs with the noise, the shouting and the stress. I still can't wait to retire, but this will make the last few years a little more bearable. If we weren't in the middle of a global pandemic with a huge recession on the horizon I would have handed my notice in by now. I've tried living a normal 9-5 life for 18 years now and it's just not me. I want to create, I want to be my own boss and I want to work to my own timescales. I hate the sudden gear change from my calm home time to the frantic, stressful work life.
Having today (a Monday) off has been incredible. I went for an early morning walk around Dinas woods and bought fresh baguette from Lidl for breakfast. Apart from wearing a mask to the supermarket (which still isn't mandatory in Wales for some reason) it felt like a rather normal day.
I still wouldn't like to go to a pub in an evening though as everyone appears to be shit at social distancing when they're sober, so god knows what they'd be like drunk. So I'll carry on spending my weekends in my garden for now and let everyone else risk death for the sake of a night out. Yes, that's right, 1000 new cases were reported yesterday, but the government is trying to distract us for this by harping on about immigrants crossing the channel in dinghies.