Managed to take a few photographs around the Abbey area but it was a dull, grey and depressing sort of day and Wymondham was like a ghost town with very few people around and virtually all the shops shut - although Merv's bread kitchen was still open.
So my photographs rather reflected the way we are all feeling at the moment.
I have decided to take photographs of my garden on the 1st day of each month to try and reflect the changes in the seasons. A lot can happen during a month of course and if anything significant occurs I will take some interim photos as well.
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Thank you for all the lovely messages following my blog yesterday. Many of you will have gathered by now that I can express my feelings much better through the written word than through the spoken.
In the past, I have even been accused of "bottling things up." I suppose that one thing lockdown has done is prompted us to be honest about how we feel (whether that is written or spoken).
Yesterday morning I woke up thinking "what's the point of getting out of bed." It was warm under the duvet and cold out of it. So the easy option would be just to curl up. But that would be so wrong. So I got up, had breakfast, a nice relaxing and very hot soak and then went out for a walk.
But before I went I logged onto the internet and was delighted at the response to the previous day's blog. So many kind remarks about myself and my mates who accompany me on walks (all of course are just different manifestations of myself). The point I was trying to make was that within each of us there exists a number of different people. Sometimes we feel happy. sometimes we feel sad, sometimes we feel optimistic and sometimes we just can't face the reality of life.
I guess that's why I have set myself so many goals during lockdown. One reader suggested that the list was so long and there was no way I would achieve everything on it during lockdown. I disagree. The things I have put on my list are achievable and those that I don't complete during lockdown I will finish when it is lifted. The aims give me a reason to get out from under that duvet.
So I began to think of how I could leave a legacy from lockdown and, as usual, it has taken the shape of the written word. I would like to get three books/publications self published via Amazon by the summer.
The first will be my daily blogs which I am now busy putting into order and editing. By the year round (I started blogging on March 8th, 2020) I will have written 434 blogs. At the present time I have published 4,049 photographs (that number surprised even myself). The biggest task will be to select a few photographs to go with the text.
Then I am looking to finish my book on the Le Paradis Massacre and, finally, back in the 1970s I wrote a very silly light-hearted novel about the life of a young reporter in a seaside town (based loosely on my own experiences working in Lowestoft). If I can find this I will try and publish it.
If I could get those three published it would give me something tangible to look back on and at least say - those are things I achieved during lockdown.
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It annoys me greatly when I hear that there are so many people who would like to volunteer to help with the vaccination process but don't because of the need for them to fill in a 20 page form and produce certificates etc. I did have a quick look at this and they wanted a DBS check document issued within the last 12 months. My last one was issued in 2012. I would love to volunteer to help but I'm not prepared to go through the whole DBS thing yet again for the umpteenth time. Now is the time to save lives and not burden everything and everyone with red tape and bureaucracy.