3000 blips for hazelh

Unlike last time, I was determined not to be caught unaware for my blip birthday today - so much so that I marked it in my calendar.

After an online coffee meet-up with Arclight and alfthomas this morning, for our government-approved exercise today Mr hazelh and I ventured outdoors together for a walk up to Bruntsfield and back home along Princes Street. This outing was built around a mission: to find something appropriate to mark my 3000th blip. We expected this to be quite a challenge. In the event, the blip was in the bag just a few steps away from our front door. Regardless, we continued our walk. I really relished being outside after five full days cooped up in our basement flat.

Since it’s just a couple of months since my last blip milestone of eight years, the job of reviewing the period since then is much easier than last time. This is mainly because so little time has passed, but also because there is really only one story to relate: that of coronavirus reaching the UK.

Until March 11th 2020, life was trundling along as usual. At work I was attending all the meetings and supervisions associated with my role, examining PhDs, travelling on business, firing off academic conference papers and journal articles, preparing for an event on 19th March, looking forward to seeing Iris back in Edinburgh for her PhD examination - oh, and battling the email backlog!

In my personal life I was enjoying the usual social whirl (in my own flat  and elsewhere), visiting galleries, going to gigs and the theatre, visiting the sick, despairing over Brexit, going out for meals, and travelling back and forth to Northumberland to visit Mummy hazelh. I was looking forward to celebrating my birthday with Jon (whose significant birthday is next week), and then an Easter holiday trip to Malvern (to visit and play games with Cheeseminer) and the Cotswolds. I’m just grateful that Mr hazelh and I enjoyed our weekend in the Yorkshire Dales before all the home-working and travel restrictions came into force. I have to say that 24th March this year was a very strange birthday for this party animal.

These are my four favourite blips of the past couple of months:

Just another winter walk to work (29th January 2020)
Pavilion in the Queen Mother's Memorial Garden (4th February 2020)
Feral cats on the farm (2nd March 2020)
Peak daffodil (20th March 2020)

Exercise today: walking (14,561 steps).