Personal Blogs

As others have surely discovered already, just because you are not longer testing positive for Covid does not mean its effects cannot still be felt. Major stomach cramps had me ill and indisposed for four days soon after coming off Covid. Then I got that cold, the one everyone is getting - the nasty bastard. The cold the like of which you haven't had since you were a child: full of snot, goes to the chest, lots of coughing and a few days spent mostly asleep or, in the past at least, watching daytime TV; I took to a Netflix box set (Better Call Saul) and Tik-Tok (reading was slow).

Anyway, that was then and now is now. Now is catch up time for projects and work. There's also the perennial itch to be studying something but I rather think getting through the 44 books I have identified on my shelves that I am yet to read is where I start first. This is most history of the First World War - often books that were last published in the 1960s or earlier that I have been told about. This and my constant journeying to a multitude of local woods, all of which can be found on the excellent Find A Wood tracker on The Woodland Trust website. I now have around eight woods that I try to visit once a month, especially over the last few weeks not wishing to miss every part of the transition from winter to wood anemones and wild garlic, wild daffodils and bluebells, various orchids and now as the canopy closes over the verdant greens of oak, beech and birch while woodland glades and commons have emerging bracken and heather.