Thursday photo #245

The Christmas holidays really seemed to drag here. The girls didn’t go back until last Wednesday and it seemed like such a long time between Christmas being over and school starting again. They’ve been back over a week now though, and it seems as if the holidays never happened. We are all firmly back into our routine and I’m finally finding the time to work.

A weekend outdoors

At this time of year, I always struggle with being indoors too much. The children go a bit stir crazy and we all end up stressed. With the Winter being so mild this year though, we’ve all spent more time outdoors. It has helped that our camper van has a hard top, so we’ve been able to go away a few times.

This weekend was another mild one, and we decided to make the most of it. On Saturday, we went wassailing at Brockhampton National Trust. Brockhampton is a beautiful manor house and grounds in Rural Herefordshire. Wassailing takes place across the UK at this time of year, it’s a funny ritual that traditionally took place on 12th night. It involved carol singing and alcohol. When it took place in a countryside location such as Brockhampton, it was done to bless the fruit trees to encourage a good harvest. These days, there’s less alcohol and more Morris dancers. It’s definitely something everyone should experience once and we all had a really fun afternoon both watching the wassailing and exploring Brockhampton.

We continued the outdoor theme on Sunday by going to watch the starlings murmuration at Kemerton Lake nature reserve in Worcestershire. The murmuration takes place when starlings come in to roost at sunset. They all flock together and fly around the sky in stunning formations, it looks like they are dancing. I’d never seen the murmuration before but had seen some amazing photos of it on social media, so we decided to take the girls to watch. It was an incredible natural spectacle and I would urge anybody to watch it once. I will be writing about it properly over the next few days.

Procrastinating

I think pretty much everyone procrastinates, but I tend to go through stages with it. Since getting back to normal after the Christmas break, it has been a struggle to persuade myself that work is a more productive use of my time than staring into the fridge.

So, I’ve finally decided to do something about it. I’ve started working at the desk in my office again because it definitely makes me more productive. I’m trying to avoid snacking because I’d happily just graze all day, which makes typing rather difficult. And lastly, I’m doing one thing at a time. If I’m working, I haven’t got the television on in the background. If I’m watching television, the laptop goes away. Although, I might still be tempted to mess about on Instagram on my phone.

I’m not sure it’s a fail proof solution, but it’s helping for now. Hopefully being more productive will be as good as having more time.

Thursday photo #245

These two have had a wonderful weekend and were particularly enamoured with Brockhampton. After the wassailing had finished, we took them to the natural play area. Here, they recreated the Morris dancing with sticks they’d found on the ground. I love this photo of them which does look like they’re playing Harry Potter, but they assure me they were Morris dancing.