what happened?

I haven't blogged for 76 days, which is probably a personal worst.

and the funny thing is, unlike the last few months of lockdown, it's not because i've not been up to much worth blogging - in fact, quite the opposite.

we travelled to London in July for a much awaited break - visiting friends for the first time since the start of lockdown. while we enjoyed the break itself, we did feel quite uncomfortable by the fact that our flights were quite literally packed, we took loads of trains that although not as busy as they would be on a normal work day, still were far more crowded than spaces we've been in, since the pandemic began. we ate out a fair bit, including in crowded-ish restaurants, although we did also spend more time outdoors than we usually would - basically it was about as close to normal as we could get, with the exception of wearing masks. and the fear.

luckily for us, we got back, got ourselves tested, and were all clear. phew!

we then purchased our first car. a pretty old one, but it has 4 wheels and moves under its own power, so it counts.

then came August. This time it was a longer vacation, but didn't involve meeting people.

Lake district was spectacular - better than we remembered it from our first visit 4 years ago, and that was just one day. This was 9 whole days. Loads of hiking, stuffed to the gills with awesome food, and plenty of miles on Vicki. I couldn't have imagined a better way to turn 38! Except for the addition of cake, of course, but that's probably because we were too stuffed with sticky toffee pudding and other goodies to bother with lowly cake 😁

This time, we were also less nervous than the London trip, because COVID-19 seemed to be genuinely on the decline, everyone was wearing masks when indoors (London seemed to be about 70%) and much better behaved social-distancing wise. And of course, we were mostly outdoors and did not use public transport at all.

Barely two weeks after our return, we had our first guests in our new home: Nickolai and Damian were over for Damian's birthday and some exploring of the Irish countryside. That half-week went by in a blink, and it was September already.

Imran, another old buddy from uni days was over from London at the end of his week-long trip along Ireland. He was only over for 2 days, but it was a good two evenings catching up and showing him a few of the sights of the city. And then, before he even left, I was on my next mini-vacation: a sailing course, which included living aboard a yacht!

One week later, we're already in the second half of September, and I have another weekend of sailing coming up, followed by a live gig (our first since the pandemic struck), a bit of volunteering over weekends... and I'm sure October will be over before we realize it too!

and so, in short, that's what happened!