The View from the Kitchen Table – June 2021

Over the last fifteen months, I had 39 weeks off in all which must surely look like heaven to burned out medical staff who have yet to take a holiday, and not for the first time, I look back on my life choices and think I could’ve maybe done something more worthy than making people look pretty for a living. I baked, cooked and ate my way through the first lockdown, fuelled by nervous energy and a steady diet of hysteria on social media.

The second lockdown was short by comparison at a mere six weeks which gave me time to Christmas shop and bulk buy tinned potatoes (I don’t know why either but I have about ten tins if anyone is looking for some) and wine.

The very valid reason I was bulk buying wine was because there were very vicious and unsettling rumours that the government were going to limit the sale of alcohol because they were concerned, we were using it as a crutch to get through the absolute poop storm that life had become. A crutch?! I was using it as a wheelchair to get me from one week to the next and they weren’t about to cut me off, so away I toddled as fast as my little legs could go, and crashed through the Swing doors of Shame (newly installed to embarrass buyers of alcohol but also-not putting anyone off) I bought loads because I felt if things were to get any worse it was just too much to expect me to go through it all sober. It was insurance if you like and a small act of defiance. Its ok though, it won’t go to waste.

Lockdown number three rolled in at a mere nineteen weeks long and there was only one answer to this one, and that was to take on impossible tasks that you’d never ordinarily consider. For me it was painting wooden bookcases that cover a wall and a half, only they aren’t wood, they are laminate, and not really meant to be painted, but that was the point of the challenge. So armed with Pinterest photos of designer decked out homes, I began a three-week project that could’ve been a disaster. Mr.the view was not convinced and every evening I would hear him come in to take a peek at what had been a perfectly good bookcase, and heave a disappointed sigh. It looked more like a DIY disaster by the day.

This was not a cutie project where I stood around with a roller and dungarees with a little paint smudge on my nose. It was getting headaches from inhaling the primer and four coats of paint with a panic attack after each one because it looked like it was never going to be ok. It was stepping in paint and cleaning up and halfway in I wanted to quit, but it got done and it looks good and its finished! like the lockdowns!

Aren’t they?!

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