Beyond Selidor

It's been a while since I've had both the time and the energy to do one of these regular weekend catch up posts, which became a victim to my various travels, various visitors, my busyness at work (which seems doubly unfair since it's meant to be a quieter time of year), and then a stretch of time when either Matthias, or I, or both of us were ill. For the time being, we're better, and things are calmer.

We spent a few hours yesterday out at Haddenham — a nearby village — for its annual beer festival. We went for the first time last year, walking there through sunlit fields for several hours, but elected this time around to take the bus both ways, since large stretches of the walk are on main roads with no footpaths and no verge, which is stressful. The beer festival itself is more like a village fete — a couple of tents set up serving drinks, a scattering of food trucks, and stalls selling things like raffle tickets to raise money for the Scouts, face-painting for children, and homemade cakes by parents at the local school. The event takes place on the village playing field, which gets partially fenced off, and guests sit in groups having picnics on the lawn, or under the shade of marquees, listening to a variety of not-great local bands play cover music. (For the segment of time that we were there, we kind of lucked out and ended up listening to two groups of high school student bands — it's an extremely surreal feeling to see groups of fifteen-year-olds, dressed as you and your peers were dressed as teens in the 1990s, playing covers of all the big alternative rock hits of your own youth, that's for sure!) The sky was cloudless, the atmosphere was relaxed and summery, and the whole thing was a lot of fun.

Today, I've been swimming, cooking, and finishing off my rarepairexchange assignment. Due to all the busyness, travel and sickness I mentioned previously, I've gone a couple of weeks without sticking to my normal exercise routine, and Friday was the first time I'd done any kind of movement (other than walking) for quite some time. It feels fantastically good to be back in the water, to be doing daily yoga, and just to be moving my body again: it's disturbing how quickly the effects of a lack of exercise begin to be felt. I hope things will be able to settle back into a routine in this regard for the next little while.

The rest of the day should be fairly relaxed: slowly cooking dinner, finishing off my book, and resting in preparation for what is likely to be another full on week (made more complicated by the fact that Matthias and I decided to take Friday off in order to stay up on Thursday and watch the election results unfold, which means I have to cram quite a lot of work into only four working days). But a breeze is gently blowing through all our open windows, the garden is in full bloom with poppies, cornflowers, sweet peas and foxgloves, and I'm going to wander out to the bakery for an iced coffee, so I really can't complain.