These are undeniably strange times...

Day by day, we cope quite well. We set the alarm earlier now, partly because the days are stretching, and partly because leaving early for your walk means you encounter fewer people. So, unless it's a shopping day (and we've successfully reduced those to two a week now), we get up, we eat breakfast, and we're off.








We return, and the day slides into its comfortable indoor routine, and it's all really not so bad.

Then we pause for a news slot...

I read email news updates in the morning, and we watch TV news in the evening. We limit what we consume, but the sheer tragedy of what is happening is inescapable. The deaths (hundreds every day in the UK at the moment, with a total of more than 12,000 so far), the struggles of our healthcare workers (many still testifying to a lack of equipment), the economic downturn that is bludgeoning so many all round the world, the disruption, the uncertainty -- it's unrelenting.

So we've all become a little dualistic, I think. There's the real world, and there's the world you create in your daily routine. And you have to keep them separate, for the sake of your own sanity.

In my created world, I'm still "on holiday", pursuing New Things, to make up for the new things I'm not experiencing on the way to Istanbul...

I've been hugely aided in this endeavour by the sheer generosity of so many people and organizations who are doing special things, or making normal things available for free. I find this altruism enormously moving.

Over the last few days, I've:

1. Listened to a virtual recreation of the Hallelujah Chorus. The Royal Choral Society has performed Handel’s Messiah every Good Friday since 1876, apart from two years during the Blitz. Well, they weren't going to let some stupid-shaped bug stop them, so they did it electronically. I defy you not to cry, awed not only by the talent of human beings, but by their resilience, inventiveness, and sheer dogged defiance.

2. Again with a lump in my throat, I also listened to the concert performed by Andrea Bocelli, alone except for the organist, at the Duomo di Milano on Easter Sunday. Images of this amazing cathedral were interspersed with images of the desolate streets in various parts of Europe. Only last year, we were (re)acquainting ourselves with Milan, and revelling in its vibrancy. Who ever could have picked that we all had this ahead of us? Ave Maria, ora pro nobis...

3. Dug into some family history. Currently, you need no subscription to access the Manx Museum's digitized collections, and Ancestry also opened their archives for a short period. Of course, you end up with more questions than answers, but trawling through old newspaper articles, census records, and the like has been fascinating so far.

4. Made a cinnamon apple omelet by adapting the recipe here. As hot cross buns are off the menu for Nigel, and I can't get hold of the ingredients to do a low-carb version, this was the best way I could think of to satisfy that Easter spice craving... It was pretty nice, actually. The apple, butter, and cinnamon mixture goes nicely caramelly; add some walnuts for texture; and serve alongside the omelette, with sour cream on top.

5. Launched a 1 Second Everyday movie project. I'd been wanting to have a go at video for a while, and this is a bite-sized way to get started. The app helps you to, literally, record one second every day, and then stitch the clips into a little movie. My self-imposed rules are that I only record "routine" things (with our diaries, blogs, and photos, we already have enough ways of documenting "new" things). I'm just three days in at the moment, but I can already see that the exercise helps me think about movement.

6. Tried some Chilean wine made from Carmenere grapes. They have not only a great flavour but also an awesome travel story -- originating in Spain, but spreading to Italy and France, and then to Chile, where (unlike in Europe, where the vines were wiped out by an epidemic) they were kept alive by migrants. Travelling, epidemics... Seems somehow appropriate... We drank our Carmenere on Easter Sunday, to celebrate that supreme festival of hope, and to mark the one-year anniversary of our arrival in Kazakhstan, the first new country of our Big OE...


7. Walked to Aylmerton. That was today's trip, and it was substantially new. On the way, we got a closer look at St Margaret's, Felbrigg (which is particularly interesting for its depiction of St Margaret of Antioch emerging from the belly of the dragon).





Aylmerton itself has a number of points of interest. There's the restored cross (ancient in origin, it marks the meeting of three ways, and was part of the pilgrims' route). There's the long pond, through which horses and wagons used to be driven (so the horses would be able to drink and the wood of the wagon wheels would remain swollen). And there's the church of St John the Baptist (not, be it noted, St John the Baptist's Head), which has a noteworthy round flint tower.






Strange days. Just keep going. Just keep going.