Lockdown Diary - Monday 18th January 2021

I now have spare time on a Monday, no yoga class (or any other exercise, bar walking, for that matter), which means I can use the time for other purposes...

After breakfast I begin my day by starting to read the remainder of yesterday's paper and contact a mate in Berlin to see if he's up for a chat this morning or afternoon.

By the time I've finished the paper the word from Berlin is that we're on for a call this afternoon.  

As I have spare time I decide to start the Idler course 'The History of London', which presented by Dr. Matthew Green, historian and broadcaster, who has written a book called 'London: A Travel Guide Through Time'.  The first lecture is about Medieval London, centred around the year 1390.

One of the most interesting things I learnt (that is fit to print here!) is that back in Medieval London everyone would have been in varying states of drunkenness: because the water wasn't fit/safe to drink, poor people drank ale all day - typically a gallon (i.e. 8 pints) whilst richer people drank wine, again typically a gallon a day. Apparently the ale was a little weaker (but not much) than beer today, the wine was not.  It's one of the reasons why the slightest dispute often resulted in extreme violence.

The lunchtime carers visit and lunch itself, made with son #2's help, interrupted the first lesson (which was almost 80 minutes long), and so it's still incomplete when the time comes for Germany to be calling.

My call to Berlin, over Signal, began at around 2:30 p.m.

Some 90 minutes later we'd exhausted our conversation on personal health, work, Trump, Brexit and coronavirus.  The news from Berlin is that the UK is doing a much better job of vaccinating its population than Germany is theirs. 

Time to finish watching the rest of 'Medieval London'

After that I spent a brief period burning CDs for the five or six albums I've most recently bought from Bandcamp:  digital is all well and good, but when I want to play music in the living room, it's about a thousand times easier to play them on CD than over the network.

After a quick check of the newly burned CDs, it was time to make dinner. Son #2 had already started but I helped prep the potato, as we were planning to experiment with making chips using the air frying feature of our new all-singing, all-dancing, pressure cooker, slow cooker, air fryer thingy.

Dinner made time to sit down together and watch another episode of 'Mr. Robot' and catch up on our respective days.

One of the CDs I burned was the album 'Sprungur' by Hekla.  From it this is the haunting 'Tvö Þrjú Slit' - not sure what it means, but I rather like it. (It's Icelandic, if that helps)

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